大象传媒

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FROM TEASHOP TO FRONT LINE

My mother, Kathleen Brown, was twenty when war broke out and had lived and worked all her life in a small Yorkshire town. After she died in 1994, I found an account she had written of her wartime service in the WRNS 鈥� as she said, just so I would have some idea of what it had been like. These are some of the things she told me about.

鈥淜nowing I would have to do some war work eventually 鈥� I had been deferred as a statistical clerk in the food trade 鈥� I volunteered for the Wrens. They were a bit fussy who they took; you had to have a secondary education and at this time all were volunteers. They needed only cooks and stewards 鈥� not for me! When I was called up in 1943, having once volunteered for the Wrens and having the two references required, they took me.
First I was sent to Hounslow Government Training Centre in Mill Hill for two weeks travelling each day from lodgings in Earls Court. Either side could opt out after this time. Not that I got the chance for after only one week I was sent to Brighton on my course as a Seaman Torpedoman to learn about electrics,torpedos,demolition and mining with me finally specialising in electrics. Three of us 鈥� Joan, Jane and myself who had met at Mill Hill, were allocated to Electrical Workshop Dover and the fourth, Binkie, to Depth Charges.
We lived at 14 East Cliff, Dover 鈥� a happy quarters. When there was shelling, we all slept in the caves in the cliff and the bunks used to shake with the explosions. The bottom bunk for me! We were provided with large and noisy oil drums to use as toilets. It could be very nasty finding your way around in the blackout when there was no moon. We had to rely on torches.
A free bus stopped outside number 14 and took us to work in Ferry Dock. So we lived and worked inside a Restricted Area.
I worked as mate to Robbie, an electrical artificer on MTBs, MLs and MGBs of Coastal Forces. And that is where I met my husband-to-be Ken, the coxswain of MTB 219 which was based in the Pens. We were married in 1947.
We had to keep an invasion case packed with a change of undies, a sweater, a candle, and chocolate. I think the threat of invasion is what made me most fearful.
There were splendid canteens in Dover with lovely soft cheese rolls especially the Bethel and the one near the RC church. There was a super priest there called Father Sewell who was so popular that the church was always packed as lot of people went there who were not Catholics.
Dances at the Town Hall were popular and very cheap; we also went to HMS Wasp which had been the Lord Warden Hotel. Dancing was sometimes to a gramophone and sometimes to a band. We might get a lift in one of the huge army lorries or on a bren gun carrier or motorbike to tea dances at Bobbies in Folkstone or to service concerts. It was difficult to ascend in a tight skirt. (We wore bell-bottom trousers for work).
I eventually became part of the maintenance staff of the 8th MTB Polish Flotilla and moved with them from place to place. Brighton and Portsmouth saw me again as did Portland and Felixstowe. At one time I worked on trawlers at Queensborough Pier and stayed in horrible quarters at Sheerness where it was very cold and the air always smelt of the glue factory. That is where I had my first and last lesson on how to work a dockside crane. The electrical resistance burnt out and made it difficult to get in the right position for me to come back down the ladder.
But when I think of being a Wren, I think of Dover maybe because I met Ken there. I was eventually demobbed on VJ Day from Felixstowe and returned to my old job at the Caf茅 Imperial in Harrogate.鈥�

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