Hampshire at War

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Patricia Ross. Hampshire at War

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HAMPSHIRE AT WAR

Follow ‘Mee’ to Gloucestershire Hampshire Hauntings and Hearsay

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“When I joined the WRNS my name was Peggy White and I lived in the north of England. Joined first of all as a Wren living at home, and then I was made an officer and sent up to Greenock as a cypher officer. I went to Glasgow as a cypher officer then I was sent down to HMS Mercury to do the signal course. I was the second one to do it. It was an RNVR course - mostly men but a few women were allowed on this course. There was one course before mine and I think they had a year between to see if it worked, and then we were sent off and when we finished (it lasted for about four months) it was frightening because we had all these things with flags and signals. We had to learn Morse code, you see.

“And you had these awful … In the classroom you had a buzzer, and we all had our names - call signs - and mine was WIG. The instructor would send a signal to WIG and I had to reply to it. It was all rather frightening, but we survived. I expect they were desperate. We used to do this flag signalling - out on the terrace with battlements round and a sailor would stand sending signals in semaphore. We used to be in pairs and one would have her back towards the semaphore, and the other would be writing down. And when we had sailors, they used to say, ‘Would you like me to say what he’s making or would you like to say what you think he’s making?’ Anyway, somehow we survived.”

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