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This story is taken from an interview with Lillian Laverty, and has been added to the site with their permission. The author fully understands the site's terms and conditions. The interview was by Deirdre Donnelly, and transcription was by Bruce Logan.
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I’m from Leicester. I joined the WRENs in 1940, and I stayed on a couple of years after. I got married and stayed on 2 more yrs, until expecting my first baby, and I had to come out.
Chatham was my depot, but I got round different places.
The air-raids we had … training at Greenwich naval College, first night was the London blitz. That was terrible. After that I went to Liverpool and got the Liverpool blitz!

I was at Maydown, the last — 1944, last yr of the war.
It was a wartime station. Fleet Air Arm training base, named HMS Shrike. They were all very pleasant days, really. I was Petty Officer cook, and before I came out the last year I was CPO. I married a man from Newtownards. He was in the RN. 55 yrs until he died 5 yrs ago.

We had accommodation of our own. Nissan huts. We used to, so many girls in the hut. I had my own wee place at the bottom. Duty was near the airfield, where you stayed was a mile away.
Off-duty, husband and I were both ballroom dancers. We danced every night at the Derry Guildhall. The camp had the Chief’s messhall.
I remember the White Hall — it was old then, it’s been renovated now.

We could walk over the airfield to Lisahalley. We spent a lot of time over the border — Muff and Moville. Those days you couldn’t get chocolates here. You went over and got them there. Rationing, of course — a wee dish with a ration of butter and so on.

Most WRENS here were English.
It was a quiet life, really. Quieter than Greenwich. Chatham is closed now. I loved it here. My husband wanted to settle here, he belonged here.

Loads of Yanks here. I never could take to them. I was sent to the dances, to look after them, but I couldn’t warm to them. I never looked for cigs, I didn’t smoke. The girls all got cigs.
They were mostly army, the yanks here. The sailors didn’t like them — they were jealous. The Yanks had everything we didn’t. At the Dances they had all this spread — food, ice cream. That’s why the girls liked them. I didn’t care about the money.

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