大象传媒

I Rosina Morley give Valerie Oxford permission to add my written or transcribed material to the 大象传媒 People鈥檚 War Website

Few Bumps in the Night

When war broke out I was 16 years old and I was still at Tonbridge Girls鈥� School. We had a lot of lessons in air raid shelters and I learned shorthand in very poor light. When I left school I went to work on a local newspaper, The Sevenoaks News鈥�, as a cub reporter 鈥� the women ran the paper as the men were away at war. When I was 18 I joined the Wrens and served for 1陆 years in the London Signals Office, keeping shipping updated with weather and possible confrontational activities. I also worked at Dover in the tunnels and went to Chatham to do a coding course. After a couple more postings I returned to London to prepare to go to Singapore. My father died of cancer and I couldn鈥檛 go as Mum had 6 children to support. I was discharged on compassionate grounds and went home and returned to the local paper.

Our home was in direct line with the coast and sixteen bombs were dumped on us. Bombs would be high explosive; parachute mines; and fire bombs which had to be doused immediately as they not only destroyed homes they also acted as beacons giving great light until doused.

Bath time in the Wrens

When I came to Dover as a Wren I was billeted at Kings School Dover. I worked in the tunnels at Dover Castle, still as a signals wren working 4 hours on watch. Sometimes when shelling from France was heavy the relief watch couldn鈥檛 get in and we had to stay on and we lived in the tunnels without a break. The food was minimal 鈥� hard tack and pilchards and cocoa. We were moved from Kings School to London Warden Hotel on the sea front and it had been sealed up from the start of the war. It was mucky and the windows had tar paper on them, there was soot everywhere. We had to clean it. The men put the bunk beds up for us to sleep on. We pinched one square of window out to get light and air into the rooms. The baths were fun, 3 huge ones to a room, only 4鈥� water allowed and 3 wrens to a bath making 9 in the room. There was 1 bar of soap per bath.

There was a dining area where we had our breakfast and off this area were small archways leading to tunnels. Down one of the tunnels was the kitchen with various pans of food for breakfast ready to be carried through. We recognised prepared dried eggs, baked beans but were puzzled by a cauldron. We looked in and said 鈥減runes!鈥� until some started moving with legs 鈥� there were cockroaches mixed in with the prunes.

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