大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by a volunteer from CSV London on behalf of Mabel Howes and has been added to the site with her permission. Mabel Howes fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

I joined the WRNS at HMS Ganges, Shotley in April 1940 as a writer but transferred to telephonist when a vacancy occurred. By April 1944 I was promoted to P.O. Wren and after an interview at Fort Southwick was chosen to supervise the Telephone Exchange at Southwick House where the D-Day landings were to be planned. The Exchange was built in the cellar and our secret address was Naval Party 1645 c/o BFMO Reading. Admiral Ramsay was Allied Naval Commander of the Expeditionary Force and meetings were held daily in the War Room with General Eisenhower, General Montgomery, Air Chief Marshall Leigh Mallory and their Chiefs of Staff. The War Map is still on view in the War Room. I was on duty all night on 5 June '44 and listened to 大象传媒 News at 9am for the landings in Normandy to be announced.

In August 1944 Admiral Ramsay decided to moved to France and I was one of the first four Wrens to go in the Advance Party to set up Communications and Quarters. We left Portsmouth at night by destroyer and crossed to Arromanche, where we transferred to a landing craft which took us alongside the Mulberry Harbour. A 15 cwt truck was waiting for us and it was a long, dusty ride along bombed roads to Granville on the West coast.

We stayed in a guest house for two weeks, then were told to move into an empty Medieval village called Hauteville which was surrounded by a very high wall and entered by a portcullis bridge. The main party were due to arrive that day but they didn鈥檛 turn up. So we four wrens chose an empty house in a side street and barricaded ourselves in a room on the second floor with our kitbags. We slept on the floor with our gasmasks as pillows and covered by our duffel coats, ever mindful that the Germans were just across the water in the Channel Islands. What a relief when the Main Party arrived next day.

At the end of September 1944 we moved to Bougival near Paris, to two long wooden huts divided into cabins with a washroom and toilets at one end. There was no heating at all and only cold water taps in the wash basins. They stood in the grounds of Chateau La Celle St. Cloud, so when winter arrived there was plenty of wood around to fuel the army field copper which our resourceful Quarters Petty Officer, Dorothy Harvey, acquired. We had each been issued with a large green canvas bag containing a canvas camp bed, a canvas chair, a canvas bucket and a canvas bath with a folding wooden frame. At last we could bath! First water was ladled into the copper and a fire lit under it. Having assembled the bath and frame we then kept watch so nobody pinched our hot water, which was eventually ladled into the bath. When we sat in the bath the canvas lowered on the floor which was very cold and with Wrens coming in and out it was draughty and there was no privacy. So we didn鈥檛 bath very often.

It was so cold in December 1944 with deep snow everywhere, getting to work at Chateau D鈥橦ennement a few kilometres away was very hazardous. One morning our truck skidded on the icy hill leading to St. Germain-en-Laye and we almost ended up in the river. So in February 1945 we moved to a large house in St. Germain-en-Laye. Heaven. How I appreciate my warm bathroom now.

In the 1945 New Year's Honours I was awarded the B.E.M., British Empire Medal Military Division, and was congratulated by Admiral Ramsay. The next day, 2 January 1945, he was killed in an aircrash.

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