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I joined the WRENS at the age of 18 and served between 1943 and 1946. Early on I was stationed at Felixstowe with HMS Beehive and housed on land. My primary work was in Boon Defence, managing hydrogen balloons, initially on a shift basis. The balloons were about 6 feet in diameter. We would blow them up with hydrogen and attached to them would be nets full of phosphorus. We would fly them up when the prevailing wind was over Germany and the idea was that they would come down on their cables.

One day I had an accident while handling the balloons. My hands were slippery with grease and one of the phosphorus bottles slipped and broke on my ankle. The burning just wouldn’t stop. I was in sick-bay for 2 months. The doctors didn’t know quite what to do. And the thing about phosphorus is it’s luminous and you can only see it properly in the dark. So I’d have several uniformed officers peering under my blanket to check my glowing ankle!

There were local diversions to break up the monotony of long work hours, route marches and endless inspections. ‘Going Ashore’ meant going in to town, sometimes to Ipswich if accompanied by other WRENS.
The Americans would also send a lorry with bench seats and a blanket to take us to dances at the airbases. Often there were big bands. It was good fun.

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