Wrens - They Also Served

by Sheila Blinoff        

This week Pauline Hebb sells Remembrance poppies at Yonge and Bloor outside the Metropolitan Reference Library where she worked for 15 years. As she meets old friends from her career in the maps, history and theatre departments, her thoughts turn to her own brush with history and the wartime camaraderie in the Women's Royal Navy Service (Wrens).

In 1917, the British Admiralty formed a corps of women as a support service for the Royal Navy. By the Second World War their duties had expanded to servicing anti-submarine equipment, aircraft maintenance,c iphers, communications, signalling and wireless telegraphy. They did the same work as men, but did not serve at sea on warships. By 1944 there were over 74,000 Wrens deployed in Britain, the Mediterranean, the Near, Middle and Far East, Australia, Europe and North America. Canadian Wrens trained in Galt, Halifax and Esquimalt.

Pauline joined up in 1944, as an 18-year-old, and was sent to Scotland to work on a submarine depot ship anchored in the River Clyde where she sent and received communications about troop and ship movements using the most antiquated switchboard you have ever seen. Submarines came in for refuelling and supplies, then glided back out into the North Atlantic. Later Pauline worked at a naval air base, then in communications in Liverpool.

We were always being moved but I liked it all. I was thrilled to be helping. We were all fighting the menace in Europe together, although we didn't know about the death camps until later. We were determined not to let England be taken. Winston Churchill was a great influence and leader.

At the end of the war Pauline married a Canadian seaman, and came to Canada in 1947. She has lived in Lunenberg and Montreal and for the last 20 years in the Beaches. She is an active member of the Wren Association of Toronto.

A statue honouring the contribution of Canadian Wrens stands in Galt (now Cambridge) at their old training ground. Recently the American government unveiled a memorial in Arlington Cemetery to all the women who served from the Civil War to the present. We are pleased, said Pauline, that women are now receiving recognition for their wartime contributions.

If you're at Yonge and Bloor this week, buy a poppy from Pauline. They represent everything that happened and everyone who fought and died for us all.

Activities... Dates ... Mailbox ... Other Events ... Previous Activities ... Home ... W.R.N.S. Home Page