Plotting with the WRNS

After leaving school at the end of 1942 I joined the WRNS. My first posting was to Crosby Hall in Chelsea where I did a Radio Mechanics course, with lectures at Battersea Polytechnic. However, I failed the final exams! After a couple of weeks at a Drafting Depot in Southsea I ended up in Weymouth as a Plotter. We were taken to the Naval Centre at Portland by transport when we went on watch. It was quite a small plotting room and there were only three of us on duty at a time.

I was on watch the night D-Day started — it quite suddenly became very busy and very exciting. Many landing craft and Tank Landing ships went out from Weymouth. When we eventually came off watch at 8am the sky was full of planes towing gliders! A week before D-Day we were bombed out of our Quarters and had to sleep on mattresses on the floor at a Hotel — which was also the Mess.

After spending a year at Weymouth I was posted to Harwich. Our Quarters were at the Cliff Hotel in Dovercourt. The Plotting Room was at Parkstone Quay. Flying Bombs were sometimes shot down over the sea. Then the V2’s began.

My final posting was to Dover where we were in the Plotting Room below the Castle, The Casemates (tunnels which have been there for hundreds of years). When VE Day came we were made redundant and were sent home on “Accommodation Leave”, until I was demobbed at Chatham. Two weeks later I was married and went out to Argentina and a very different life.

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