Copyright

Justin Smith

Published On

2024-12-19

Page Range

pp. 15–54

Language

  • English

Print Length

40 pages

Media

Illustrations10
Videos2

1. Wrens’ Calling

(London, 1942–1944)

Chapter of: The Birds That Wouldn’t Sing: Remembering the D-Day Wrens(pp. 15–54)
Women from a wide spectrum of social backgrounds volunteered to join the Women’s Royal Naval Service (WRNS) during the Second World War. Induction at the new central training depot at Mill Hill in London tested the metal of many and introduced them to the rigours and idiosyncrasies of life in the ‘Senior Service’, its nautical rules and terminology. By 1942, the quest to relieve as many men as possible from shore-based roles to serve at sea, led Wrens to be trained in a range of highly-skilled tasks, some of which, such as Anti-Aircraft Target Operators were semi-combatant. However, those novice Wrens with relevant civilian work experience were drafted into communications roles, as Coders, Telegraphists, Cyphers, Signallers, Plotters and Writers. Joan Prior, a qualified shorthand-typist from Barking in Essex, joined a handful of new recruits selected to work at Norfolk House for the Allied Naval Commander Expeditionary Force (ANCXF), Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay. It soon became clear that their top-secret work was engaged in preparations for the largest amphibious operation in the history of warfare, Operation Overlord.

Contributors

Justin Smith

(author)
Professor of Cinema and Television History at De Montfort University
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4141-9150

Justin Smith is Professor of Cinema and Television History at De Montfort University Leicester, where he is Director of the Research and Innovation Institute in Arts, Design and Performance. Since 2010 he has been Principal Investigator on the AHRC-funded projects Channel 4 and British Film Culture (2010-14), Fifty Years of British Music Video (2015-2018), Transforming Middlemarch (2022-3) and Adapting Jane Austen for Educational and Public Engagement (2024-5). He is the author of Withnail and Us: Cult Film and Film Cults in British Cinema (I.B. Tauris, 2010), and co-author (with Sue Harper) of British Film Culture in the 1970s: The Boundaries of Pleasure (EUP, 2012). With Karen Savage, he is the co-author of ‘Deference, Deferred: Rejourn as Practice in Familial War Commemoration’, in Pinchbeck, M. and Westerside, A. (eds) (2018), Staging Loss. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97970-0_3 . Smith’s interest in digital innovations in the archive is illustrated by https://middlemarch.dmu.ac.uk/ (2023) which is considered to be the first digital genetic edition of a screen adaptation of 19th Century literature. Smith is an archival historian with special interests in post-war British cinema, television and popular music, exploring issues of cultural identity, popular memory and family history. https://www.dmu.ac.uk/about-dmu/academic-staff/technology/justin-smith/justin-timothy-smith.aspx