by Vicky Unwin
c/o Fleet Mail Office Suez
30.8.44
‘A Romanesque Group’: Aenid Brothers and friends at Baalbek, August 1944. Note the full uniform and hat!
Sheila with a gargoyle, Baalbek.
Tons of love – Sheila.
This was the signal that Sheila had been waiting for – that she was to prepare for departure.
However, this letter was written just before an almighty row blew up, which was never revealed to her mother. Tucked in her writing case, I found a memorandum written on 1 September to the Chief Officer, WRNS, Levant and Eastern Mediterranean, defending herself from a charge of ‘deliberately disobeying the Maintenance Commander’s instructions’.
After arriving in Suez at 0550, where she wrote the above letter, she was ordered by the Maintenance Commander to catch the 16.15 train to Alexandria in preparation for sailing. However, she argued that she had ‘no luggage’ and he gave her permission to travel early the following morning, whereupon she took her uniforms to be ‘dhobied’. Permission was rescinded, however, and she was then re-ordered to catch the afternoon train with a couple of hours’ notice – which of course she could now no longer do as she had not ‘even begun to pack’ and her uniforms were being laundered. She then called the Chief Officer in Alex and cleared that it was ‘in order’ to travel the next morning.
However, this message did not get through to Suez, and the Maintenance Commander’s Chief Petty Officer arrived to fetch her; when told she was not going until the next morning, she was hauled before the Naval Officer in Charge, Suez, who ‘severely reprimanded’ her and told her she ‘was not to be trusted’ and that he was ‘very disappointed’. To add insult to injury, she was ‘confined to quarters’.
Naturally she was devastated as she felt she was leaving Suez ‘under a cloud which is not justified and, in view of the fact that I am leaving this Command for the United Kingdom, an adverse report would be most prejudicial to my future career in the Service’. We will never know whether she was exonerated or whether this was indeed to form a blemish on her perfect service record. That she kept this letter – in pristine condition – hidden away, demonstrates how serious a matter it was.
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Sheila’s joining instructions, carefully pasted into her scrapbook, show that she was travelling first class on the Highland Princess, departing from Alexandria. What a difference it must have made to be able to sail back via the Mediterranean rather than round the Cape! She was ‘Officer-in-Charge’ of all the Wrens on board.
On arrival in England on 2 September she received her ‘discharge certificate’ and one assumes she then received her leave entitlement and went home to Durham. There are no letters until they resume in May 1945, right at the end of the war, when she was sent to Germany. The only ones that survive are those from Robin.
She was instructed to report for duty in Harwich on 4 November, where she worked as a Cypher Officer. Unsurprisingly there are no scrapbook entries or letters dating from Harwich in 1944. It must have been quite a come-down after the excitements of Egypt.
She had been away from home for four years, and abroad for the best part of three. During that time she had been closely involved in probably the most important military campaign of the war, the invasion of Sicily, whose success triggered the further invasion of Italy and was the turning point for the Allies. At last they could begin to see that the strategy of encircling the Axis forces in Europe with a pincer movement could work – starting in France (the Normandy landings), down to North Africa and extending back up via Italy to Russia.
She had left England a newly commissioned Third Officer, still rather green and naïve; she returned a decorated Second Officer, with a wealth of experience, who had rubbed shoulders with some of the greatest of the naval commanders and admirals as well as countless dashing and sophisticated army officers. In other words, she returned home a sophisticated and worldly woman and a senior officer. Quite something for a girl from Norfolk.
But for Sheila, it was a homecoming with mixed emotions: the circumstances of her departure must have caused her great anguish; her love-life was in disarray and, while she would have been delighted to see her father and other friends and family, one suspects that she dreaded the inevitable criticism from her mother – in particular over letting John, Bruce and Robin slip through her fingers – that would no doubt be meted out, now that distance was no barrier. Once again she would have been champing at the bit to regain some excitement in her life through a final posting.
1945
‘Oh it’s all such a stupid muddle’
The war ended on 7 May 1945, a few days after Hitler and Eva Braun committed suicide. The Allies had the enemy surrounded on all fronts and Auschwitz and the other concentration camps throughout Europe were already being liberated as early as January of that year. The Yalta Conference, the second meeting between Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin, was held in February to discuss the future of a post-war Europe. It was agreed, at Russia’s insistence, that Germany was to be divided between the Big Three and France to prevent it from re-emerging as a unified power. Victory, in other words, was a foregone conclusion.
This division of Germany was to lead to great rivalry between Russia and the US, in particular, over the ‘brain drain’ of German scientists at the end of the war and, a few years later, to the Cold War. As soon as the war ended, the US controversially bagged eighty-eight rocket scientists including Wernher von Braun, inventor of the V2 or ‘doodlebug’, who later made a great contribution to the Space Race on the US’s behalf.
Germany was in a terrible state after the war, with as many as 5.2 million displaced persons and 20 million homeless, due to the ferocity of the Allied bombing raids, which had left Germany a smouldering ruin. In addition, there were over 12 million Germans living in non-German territories and 6 million of these were expelled in the most barbaric conditions, by the Russians and the Poles in particular; as many as 1 million died – frozen and starved in slow-moving trains taking them ‘home’ – and millions of others were used as forced labour in Russia as retribution for the terrible damage inflicted by the Nazis during the war.
The Allies had destroyed transport, infrastructure and industry, along with some of Germany’s most glorious buildings, such as Cologne Cathedral and the city of Dresden – some say with a vindictiveness that was disproportionate. Agriculture had come to a standstill and much of Germany was starving as the Nazis had relied on imported labour and prisoners for producing food. After the war, the US was importing food for over 7 million POWs, but this went not to Germans in Germany, but to those that were displaced by them during the war. Imports of food were therefore banned and, after the war, adult death rates increased by a factor of four, and those for children by a factor of ten. The International Red Cross was banned, and even German agencies such as Caritas could not distribute imported food. In the cold winter of 1946–7, calorie intake was down to 1000–1500 per person per day.
The interim governing body was called the Allied Control Council, and it is referred to in Sheila’s letters home, as she is toying with working for them in Germany (she calls them Mil.Gov or Control Commission). Their objective was the de-Nazification of Germany, mainly its ideology and symbols such as the swastika. Reading her letters, it is hard to get a handle on what the post-war occupiers did: but piecing together the evidence it seems the navy was involved in mine-clearing and sweeping; all services were involved with the surrender of the German armed, naval and air forces. My father, for instance, in 1945, played a senior role in the operation to transfer the German navy, anchored at Wilhelmshaven and comprising some 500–600 ships, to the Russians. After commandeering the ships by waking the German commanders at 2 a.m. to prevent them scuttling their boats, the fleet was sailed to Riga in Latvia where it was handed over to his sailing companion, the Russian Admiral. Interestingly, many of the German sailors opted to remain in Russia, preferring the ideals of the communist state.
Sheil
a, as a Cypher Officer, must have been in charge of directing the messages in relation to the naval operations, but it seems it was not that busy: she often refers to having little work to do and finds time for knitting while on watch. The contrast with the high life lived by the occupying forces and the destitution of the local Germans is something that troubles Sheila greatly.
Sheila’s main objective in 1945 seems to be deciding which of her suitors to marry and, as in Egypt, this dominates most of her letters in the latter half of the year. She realises that her time in the WRNS is coming to an end with the war, and that her admirers will be dispersed. Apart from not wishing to return home unwed, I get a sense she wanted to beat her sister to it!
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The first letter from Germany is not written until 19 May. I have tried to piece together what her movements were in the meantime. We know she went to work in Harwich on HMS Badger in November 1944, and can only assume she stayed there until posted to Kiel sometime in May. Her scrapbook contains several Christmas cards for 1944, including one from Jaap, who is ‘with your people again … which is all for the better’. It is from HMS Maidstone and VII Submarine flotilla; another from Aenid who is still in Egypt, two from Robin in Italy and one from Bruce, who encloses a train ticket for Berlin ‘for use on your next leave – will book your room in a hotel later!!!’ There is nothing from John Pritty.
On 8 January Sheila attends the memorial service at Westminster Abbey for her old boss, Admiral Ramsay; her scrapbook contains not only the order of service but also cuttings of all the tributes from the newspapers of the day. In February she is made Head of Department at Harwich Cypher office, and is booked on a course to take place on 7 May. Given the date (the date Germany surrendered!) I imagine it was delayed as she attends a course in Petersfield in July.
I can only guess that she was sent to Germany some time before VE Day [Victory in Europe Day] on 8 May and that only one or two letters are therefore missing. As she was Mess Secretary it implies she was there for at least a month, plus she had time to buy and send a cheese, which arrived before 19 May:
Kiel
19.5.45
My dear Ma –
I can’t remember when I wrote last – it was ages ago I believe …! I’m glad the cheese arrived O.K. – Yes I knew it was in 6ths – I bought it myself!
I do like being here; the old boy I work for is a dear and also the other Wren in the office, Betty Mackenzie. I have just turned over as Mess Secretary to her and I was only 3/1- out in the accounts – not bad!
We had our housewarming party here on Wednesday – it was a great success – we danced till 2 – I met such a nice person in the 8th Hussars – the Adjutant, one Richard Dill on Saturday – last night with the 4th R.H.A. [Royal Horse Artillery] who are stationed here, gave a special dance for us in their Barracks – we had a sit down dinner which lasted till 11 o’clock!! And then we danced till 4 am – It was such fun, all on Champagne too, but my goodness, I had a terrible hangover today. The worst I have ever had! Only gin with the Captain at midday saved me, and in the afternoon I rode with 2 of the RHA (who are experts) over the most heavenly country – lovely fields and lanes, and this evening I had an hour’s tennis! Consequently I am worn out now and have been dozing in front of an open log fire.
Oh, the parcels have never arrived yet – I do wish they would come – I really do need some clothes very badly, my red evening dress has got pitch black round the hem where it dragged on the ground last night!
I went to see the Kiel Gov. people and lodged some new papers, my others having been lost. Is this Col. Stewart contacting me, or am I to phone him up? Let me know.
No news of R. for 2 or 3 weeks – I hope all goes well – must stop as I am honestly nearly dead. Dawn was breaking and birds (nightingales I think!) were singing, when I got to bed. We have hosts of owls –
Heaps of love, Sheila
Kiel
25.5.45
My dear Ma –
Many thanks for the parcel which arrived intact 2 days ago – don’t forget to let me know what I owe you for the blouse – I always seem to lose your letters when I write to you – I can’t find your last at all – I hope you are sticking to your diet and thus getting better. At the minute I am filling in time before going out to dine at the Yacht Club – I have spent most of the day in the pouring rain at a local gymkhana – It was such a shame because it would have been such fun. I went with a crowd of people from the ship – but the thing was run by the Air Force – Naturally enough, most of the events were won by the Army. I met my gorgeous young Hussar there – he’s too beautiful for words – tall, dark, blue eyed and very good looking. Awful faux pas – he was wearing a wonderful Hussar greatcoat piped with yellow and I thought he was a Pole!! Later he came and greeted me, I didn’t recognise him at all! There is a super gymkhana at Hamburg on Saturday which I hope to go to with him.
This dinner in the Yacht Club is in aid of meeting the Chief Country Commission Signal Officer who’s coming up here for the weekend, damn he’s here –
26/5
Well, it’s now tomorrow, as you can see. I went to this dinner party last night but am now of very mixed opinion about joining Mil. Gov. To begin with, the party consisted of the whole P and T [posts and telegraph] Dept. of the Mil. Gov. here and the Chief man and his PA – The latter turned out to be a civilian, and his P.A. a braw Scots lassie from Dundee – The P and T dept. of Kiel proved to be mostly civilians of the Post Office clerk variety, mostly without a ‘haitch’ in their ’eads – I don’t think there would be any difficulty at all in ‘getting in’ – but the thing is, I honestly don’t think I could stand working with and for such people – they’re all very nice and all that – but not to work with and live with – They were all Sergeant and Chief Petty Officer type – the fact that one had been an officer in the Wrens meant nothing to them; it’s all so hard to explain, but you’d know exactly what I mean if you had met them – This P.A. girl had been an OR [Other Ranks], I believe in Mil. Gov or A.T.S. [Auxiliary Territorial Service] and was very bouncy – No idea of how to behave or anything. Yet she has this frightfully good position – This, of course, is so typical of the new government, all these people are probably excellent at their respective jobs, but have absolutely no background and no savoir faire at all – and this is the typical class of Englishman you find out here in Mil. Gov – a very bad example to judge England by, I feel – The thing is, that they all seem very keen for me to join as soon as possible and I don’t know what to do at all – I’d have to sign on for a year – I believe I could go wherever I want to; this old boy is the complete head of signals for Control Commission in Germany, and if he likes you, they say he will fix you up immediately. I must say he seemed very keen to take me – I should have to join as a Cypher Officer – a thing I told him I had no intentions of doing – but he said I’d only nominally be a Cypherer – but would do other jobs – he also asked me where I’d like to go – I murmured Berlin – but think I’d plump for Austria if asked again. I do wish I knew what to do – If only I knew what prospects, if any, there are of getting the type of job I have in mind. It might help me to make up my mind. As you know, I wrote to Daddy to enquire and I have filled in and returned the form he sent me – I don’t know whether I am flying too high in my desires – I have a horrid feeling the Navy will decide to get rid of me quite soon as we get signals daily saying we must cut down staff. Rosemary had some wonderful idea that I should go out to Egypt again as they are very short of people there, but I’m not sure if it wouldn’t be better to come back to UK and try my hand there for a bit. Frankly, I’m completely puzzled –! And even all my young men have vanished one by one!! How are the mighty fallen!!!!