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This story has been submitted to the People’s War website by Anne Wareing of the Lancashire ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Guard on behalf of Lyn Lord and has been added to the site with her permission…

I was fifteen when the war started and living with my parents in a hotel in Edinburgh. I remember mum crying on the day war was declared and how it was such hard work making blackouts for all the windows of the hotel.

My father was a very strict man and got even stricter when the servicemen started to arrive. I went off at 17 to join the WRENS and was told that my parents would have to sign the form on my behalf, as I wasn’t old enough. I took it to my father and surprisingly he signed it straight away, saying it was the best idea for me. I took the form back on the Thursday and by the following Tuesday I had reported to Portsmouth at HMS Canberra for my training.

How I hated it, I was so very unhappy I cried most nights. There was this Petty Officer and he made my life hell. Then I thought, well I’m here I’d better start making the best of it, so I stuck with it and 6 weeks later I began to enjoy myself.

I moved to Cauldrose in Devon to HMS Gannet then on to Northern Ireland. I worked hard and got promotion, and then moved from Eddlington back down to Portsmouth.

By now it was 1944 and I went in for a Petty Officer, I had to go to Yorkshire but I got it. I was then sent to Gibraltar where I was stationed when the war finished. It was funny really, I spent all those years in the WRENS but the only time I went on a ship was when I went to Gibraltar then sailed to Malta to pick up other WRENS stationed there.

After the war finished I signed up for another 10 years only leaving the service when I married, I made many friends; discipline was very strict, but I thoroughly enjoyed my time in the navy.

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