Wrens At Sea

My Mum, Valerie Mary Headeach (nee Clark)joined the Wrens during the war. It was her chosen force, she didn't want to wait to be called up and be forced to join the land army, so she joined the Wrens instead.
She was a trained secretary but was stationed in Greenwich and worked as a decoder. This was how they spent their days, decoding messages and passing them on, and though she says she probably passed on some very important messages, they never actually had a clue what the messages meant.
She was in Greenwich at the time of D-day. They knew something was up, because the whole fleet was assembled on the Clyde and all leave was cancelled. Then they got up one morning and the whole fleet was gone. She said it was a very eerie experience, because it was some time before the news of the invasion came through.
Towards the end of the war, she and three other Wrens were actually sent to sea as radar operators. Four hours on, eight hours off, 24 hours a day. Mum was posted to the Isle de France, a French cruise liner which was being used as a troop ship by the Royal Navy. They sailed to Nova Scotia and until a few years ago, still recieved Christmas cards from several of the lads she met on board.
She was quite put out when the war ended as their next trip had been scheduled for New York and she had been hoping to spend her 21st birthday there. Instead, she spent VE day celebrating up a lamp post in London.
Not such a bad experience for a young girl, after all!

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