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Five’)—our notional ship. We would wear no category badges, and if anyone asked us what we
did we were to say we were secretaries. We were told we would never be posted anywhere else,
because the work was too secret for us to be released. Everyone had to sign the Official Secrets
Act. So effective was this lecture that each time I left the building where I worked, I just dropped
a shutter and blanked it all out. There were Foreign Office, naval, army, and air force personnel
at the Park, but we never knew what was done in other sections.
We returned to the transport bemused and subdued by all this secrecy, still with no idea
where we were going. The transport left the sleepy town of Bletchley and drove nine miles into
the country, through woodland, until we came to the village of Woburn. We turned by a church
and drove through a very imposing set of gates into beautiful parkland. In front of us stood the
magnificent stately home of Woburn Abbey. This was HMS Pembroke V.
The transport stopped at the main entrance, where a WRNS petty officer met us. The officer
took us into an enormous hall that had been made into a Regulatory Office. There we were
issued with station passes for the Abbey and told that every time we went out our passes must
be handed in, and picked up again when we came back. The only exception to this was that
when we came back at midnight from the evening ‘watch’ (the naval term for ‘shift’), we would
find them in our own labelled post boxes—a huge rack of cubby holes on the opposite side of
the hall.
After climbing up the grand staircase to the second floor we were allocated temporary
accommodation. All the off-duty Wrens were very helpful and showed us everything that we
would need. I can still remember being impressed by all the double green baize doors. The
rooms were very grand—formerly they were bedrooms used by the Duke of Bedford and his
family. The toilets were of Delft china and were raised two steps above the floor. The walls were
lined with red silk. The bathrooms were impressively large, with the bath on a ‘throne’ two
steps up, encased in mahogany and very gloomy. One of the first things I heard was that a nun
haunted our corridor. A girl called Dawn told this to me with great relish and assured me that
her friend had actually seen the ghostly nun.
After we finished our fortnight’s initiation at Bletchley we were allocated to watches, A, B, C,
or D: fortunately, I was put on C watch together with four friends I had made. At that stage we
were moved out of our temporary accommodation and up into a room under the eaves at the
front of the house, the servants’ quarters, where eight of us shared a ‘cabin’ called ‘Swordfish
50’. The cabin was spartan, just four bunk beds, four chests of drawers, and a built-in cupboard
where we kept our cases, food, and so on—until we discovered the resident mice.
Being up under the eaves, the room was very hot in summer and cold in winter. With eight of
us packed into it we had to leave the windows open, and when snow drifted in onto the window
sill it would stay there for about three weeks: Bedfordshire is supposed to be the coldest county
in England.
Our sitting room, or fo’c’sle as it was called in the WRNS, was less cramped, being the largest
and grandest room in the house. The walls were completely boarded up. Standing in the room
were three electrically heated metal tubes, each four feet long. When we were off duty we sat
huddled around these tubes with our greatcoats on. Later on, a pleasant square room next door
to our cabin was converted for our use. There was a marble fireplace and, joy of joys, a fire was
lit for us in the winter. We were provided with sofas with pretty cretonne covers: this was the
nearest thing to comfort that I came across during my career in the WRNS.
Our mess was the original kitchen, situated at the further end of a ground-floor passage
paved with stone flags that were worn down with age. We ate off scrubbed tables, and we all kept