Brave Faces

by Mary Arden

  I walked into the Special Ophthalmic Unit and was greeted by a Wren Writer who asked me my name and then told me to follow her upstairs. We walked along a long corridor before she stopped and knocked on a door, with the name Surgeon Commander Timpston on it.

  ‘Enter!’ a man’s voice boomed out from behind the door. The Wren Writer opened the door and gestured for me to go in.

  Surgeon Commander Timpston was sitting behind his desk looking intently at a file with a rather serious expression on his face, but when he looked up and saw me come into his office he gave me a big smile, which made me immediately feel relaxed.

  ‘Good morning Sir,’ I said extending my hand before remembering that I wasn’t supposed to do that. ‘I’m sorry I’m a bit late, but there wasn’t any transport. Thankfully I managed to thumb a lift with a kind officer!’ I waffled on, forgetting my father’s advice about talking too much. ‘Wasn’t I lucky? Otherwise I might have been late for my interview.’

  The Surgeon Commander laughed, obviously seeing the funny side of my predicament. It was good to know that he had a sense of humour. He then stood up and shook my hand briefly before pointing to a chair, indicating for me to sit down.

  ‘I received a letter about you from First Officer Smitherson. She has recommended you to me, and thinks you are well suited for the work here,’ he explained. ‘She also mentioned that you speak several languages, which would be very useful to us.’

  ‘First Officer Smitherson has been very kind to me Sir, and has been doing her best to find the right category for me,’ I replied.

  ‘She and I are not only colleagues but our families are old friends as well,’ he continued, ‘So I trust her judgement.’

  He then explained that the work they were doing there was very serious, and he wanted me to understand the importance of it as it could save lives. If I was accepted, I would not only be training pilots how to use night vision, but also assessing their ability to see in the dark and I would be finding out the reasons why some of the pilots seemed to fail their tests when there was no physical problems with their eyes.

  ‘I need someone who will get on well enough with my boys to sense if the reason for failing their night-vision test goes deeper than just their bad eyesight,’ he continued.

  ‘First Officer Smitherson describes you as ‘very well put together’ and feels that you will be absolutely perfect for what we’re looking for. However, I have to tell you that the category of Night Vision Tester does not reflect the importance of the role; it’s in the Leading Wren category, which is only one up from the lowest rank. I have been doing my best to get this work upgraded to reflect the responsibility that goes with it, but so far, Night Vision Tester is still considered Other Rank I’m afraid.’

  I told him that I understood; I was well under age for a commission anyway, so not being an officer would not worry me one bit.

  The Surgeon Commander smiled, ‘I’ll ask my most experienced Night Vision Tester to explain it all to you in a while but, basically, you will be training pilots how to use their night vision, which requires a different way of seeing than when using one’s eyes in daylight. I’m convinced that this training saves pilots’ lives, as it prevents them from being blinded when a bright light upsets their darkness adaption.’

  I went cold with shock, and asked, ‘Would this training help pilots blinded by search lights?’

  ‘Certainly,’ the Surgeon Commander replied emphatically.

  ‘Then, Sir, I must do this work!’ I said without a moment’s hesitation and told him how my dear friend Andrew had lost his life, when he had been caught in the Germans searchlights. When the interview was over he told me to wait outside the office for his senior Night Vision Tester, who arrived shortly afterwards.

  ‘Hello, I’m Lydia Grey,’ she said warmly, ‘are you the new girl?’

  ‘Oh, I do hope so,’ I exclaimed.

  I liked Lydia immediately. As I looked around her office, I noticed that there were two typewriters on a long shelf, a cupboard full of forms, a telephone, and two small table lamps. The room was warm and had a carpet on the floor and, oh bliss, a gas fire for the winter months. We walked to the darkroom, so that I could see where the Night Vision Testing took place and then Lydia told me that I could watch her conduct a test after lunch to get an idea of what it was all about.

  As we walked to the Wrens’ mess, she explained that only four Night Vision Testers had been trained so far and each of them had been posted to different naval air stations after their training. She told me that the individual Senior Surgeon at each air station was responsible for the unit, but that Surgeon Commander Timpston took overall command of the NVT category.

  ‘He is like a father to us, so we have nicknamed him Daddy-T,’ she giggled, ‘and he protects us from the bossy Wren Petty Officers as well,’ Lydia added smiling. ‘However,’ she continued seriously, ‘out of working hours, naturally, we all have to obey naval discipline like all the other Wrens.’

  While we ate our meal, Lydia warned me that if I was accepted as part of the Night Vision Testing team it would take several weeks for me to learn how to do the testing, but if I was patient and didn’t mind sitting in and watching her for a few days, she was quite sure that I’d learn to manage on my own without too much difficulty.

  After lunch we went back to the eye unit, and Lydia led me straight down to the cellar where the Night Vision Tests were carried out. I noticed that the darkroom door had been left wide open, so she explained that this was because they took every opportunity to air the room between tests. Lydia then showed me a hexagonal machine that had six chairs placed all around it.

  ‘When it’s switched on, silhouettes show up on all six sides. These vary from images of a plane, a car, a house, an apple or whatever, and they are difficult to see, but we train the men to understand that if they move their eyes sideways, the images become much clearer.’

  I thought it sounded quite complicated, but decided to wait until I had seen a test before asking any further questions.

  ‘When the men sit on the chairs, we clip on these short chains to the back of their collars and then to the chairs, but first of all we measure the correct distance they need to be from the machine, so that they are all exactly the same distance away.’ She paused for a moment while I took in the information.

  ‘The clips often come undone if the men try to cheat and lean too far forward in order to see the silhouettes better, but I don’t make a fuss, and just clip them back on. Don’t worry you’ll soon be able to feel your way from chair to chair in the darkness to clip them on again; the men seldom try to cheat a second time,’ she said with a grin. ‘While the men are doing this test we lock the door so that no-one can come in and let in the light, because it takes twenty minutes for the eyes to become adapted to the dark, so if the door is opened and light gets in, we have to start the test all over again, and there just isn’t any time to spare, as Testers have to carry out four tests a day.’

  ‘Do you mind being locked in a dark room with six men?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t really think about it,’ Lydia replied, ‘I just get on with the job.’ She then pointed out what she called a panic button, situated just above the main light switch.

  ‘In an emergency, I know I can alert the office upstairs where a spare key is kept, and someone will be down here in seconds,’ she laughed. ‘But, thankfully, so far, I’ve never had to use it. What you do have to remember, of course, is to always take the key from the lock inside and hang it on the wall before you start the test, that way, if you do need rescuing, the key will fit in the lock on the other side.’

  I thought it sounded very sensible, but couldn’t imagine what kind of an emergency a Tester might need rescuing from. Lydia now showed me how the men used Braille boards.

  ‘They’re similar to those used by blind people,’ she explained. ‘As you can see, the metal strips are spaced inches apart, with another strip down the middle, so that the men taking the test c
an feel with their fingers where each space is, to write down what they think they are seeing on the silhouette machine.

  ‘It’s all very straightforward once you know what you are doing,’ she continued, ‘and we often let the boys have a trial run. You see that there’s a pencil attached to a string on each board? One of our jobs first thing in the morning is to make sure that the pencils are sharp and that we have a few spares in this jam jar ready, just in case someone presses too hard and breaks the lead.’

  I felt certain that I could do all of this, and I was thankful that there was no height restriction to do the job.

  ‘It will take you a while to learn the words of the lecture that the Testers give the men, as their eyes adapt to the dark and, of course, you must be able to understand it all yourself first!’ Lydia chuckled. ‘But there’s no hurry, it took me several weeks to learn it and I’ll give you any help you need.’

  Lydia asked me if I had any questions. I told her that I had, but I would wait until after that afternoon’s test so that I could see for myself how it all worked. I was relieved that Lydia was a patient teacher, and started to get excited about the prospect of becoming a Tester myself.

  Lydia went on, ‘One other thing, Mary, you’ll have to get used to a bit of schoolboy horseplay, especially when you get to the part of the lecture that explains how essential it is for pilots not to drink any alcohol for at least twenty-four hours before flying at night, because doing so affects their night vision. You should hear some of the moans and groans and swearing!’

  Later that afternoon I attended a test with Lydia. We sat in the pitch-dark Test Room with six men, as I listened to Lydia giving them her lecture on how to see in the dark and how to use their eyes differently by using things called Rods and Cells. I wondered whether I would be able to remember it all, as it sounded very complicated. She then began the test with the hexagonal machine, and I tried to recognise the correct shapes made by the silhouettes. I found it quite difficult initially, but when I moved my eyes sideways and looked at them from a different angle, they became much clearer and I began to understand what the test was all about.

  The men started muttering curses under their breath as they clumsily held the Braille boards in their hands, trying to write down what they were looking at in the dark. Several of the men leaned forward too far so that their clips pinged off their collars, and I wondered how Lydia managed to clip them back on again without falling flat on her face, or worse still, landing in one of the men’s laps.

  When the test was over, we all had to wait for a few minutes until our eyes adapted to the light again, and then Lydia told the men to file out of the room and go back upstairs into the daylight. After they’d all left, I helped Lydia tidy up the room before we made our way back up to her office. She then asked me to excuse her, while she went to report to Daddy-T. After a few minutes, she came back to tell me that he now wanted to see me, so I followed her back to Commander Timpston’s office and after she left he asked me to sit down.

  ‘I hope you found today interesting Mary?’ he asked.

  ‘Oh yes Sir, absolutely fascinating.’

  ‘Good, good,’ he said smiling. ‘Well Lydia has told me that she thinks you could cope with the job quite well, and as I mentioned before, I trust her judgement completely, so if you would like to become one of my Night Vision Testers, then I’d love to have you on board.’

  I wanted to run over and hug him, but fortunately managed to restrain myself and simply say, ‘Thank you Sir’, and then went to find Lydia to give her a hug instead.

  It was obvious that she still had a lot to do that day, so I told her that I had better go before it started getting dark. As I was about to leave Lydia said, ‘It could be a month before I see you here again, Mary. At first you’ll be sent home and then you’ll return to Vernon to be kitted out with your uniform before starting work with us here at Daedalus. Make sure you bring a few civilian clothes with you to change into in the evening. We’re not allowed to go out with the naval officers while wearing our uniforms because we are Other Ranks, so we get over the problem by wearing our civvies, which means we don’t have to salute them or call them ‘Sir’!’

  Lydia then gave me a piece of paper, which authorised transport for me back to the ferry at Gosport, and then said, ‘Well Mary, welcome aboard, and look forward to seeing you soon.’

  It was only when I started making my way downstairs that it dawned on me that I had at last been accepted, and I was now a Wren.

  CHAPTER 7

  1942

  When I got home to Woking, my parents wanted to hear all about what I had been doing for the last two weeks at HMS Vernon. It felt a bit like school holidays again, with me chatting non-stop about the different categories I had tried for. They were thrilled to hear that I had been accepted into the Wrens at last, and my mother started making a list of all the clothes she thought would be suitable for me to take when I returned to start my training.

  When I went to see Kay, her son Richard proudly introduced me to his new little sister, who they had decided to call Julie.

  ‘She’s so tiny, Kay,’ I said in wonderment, ‘I hardly dare hold her.’

  Kay gently placed Julie in my lap while I told her all about my experiences of the last two weeks. She asked me how long I would be in Woking before having to go back, as she wanted to have the Christening while I was at home, and asked me to be Julie’s godmother. I was thrilled.

  The Christening was held the following week and was a small celebration with only her nearest relatives and closest friends attending. My mother and I put on our prettiest hats and we all had a happy day filled with laughter. When it was my turn to hold the baby, I was convinced that she smiled at me, but my mother told me later that all young babies do that.

  ‘It’s wind!’ she said laughing.

  When my brother William came back from his cadets’ camp, I was amazed at how tall he had grown, and although he looked strong and healthy, I sensed that something was wrong, so later that evening I asked him what was upsetting him.

  ‘With Peter away, God only knows where,’ poor William began, ‘and with you about to go away too, how will I know where to find you or Peter if anything bad happens to our parents?’

  I tried to reassure him by promising to send him my address the moment I knew it.

  The next morning, my instructions arrived in the post, telling me to report back to HMS Vernon in two days time; the letter was accompanied by a rail-voucher from Woking to Portsmouth.

  On the day of my departure, my father took my suitcase in his car and I stuffed everything else either in my bicycle basket, or strapped it onto the grid over the back wheel. As I pedalled to the station I decided that it would be better to send my luggage in advance, when I was sent to another naval air station in the future.

  When the train arrived my father helped me to load my bicycle and suitcase into the Guard’s van, and then kissed me goodbye. I told him that I would ring him as often as I could, and he reminded me to reverse the charges.

  I was thankful to see that there was a lorry to meet me when I got to Portsmouth, especially as I needed help with my bike and luggage. On arriving at HMS Vernon I was allocated a different Nissen hut to the one I’d slept in before. The mattress on my bed was even harder than the last one had been, if that was possible.

  On my first day back, I was told to report to the Sick Bay for my inoculations. The only jab I reacted to was the one for diphtheria, which hurt and caused my arm to swell-up. It also gave me a temperature for the next twenty-four hours.

  I collected my Wren’s uniform, and didn’t mind wearing the rather baggy outfit too much but I hated the hideous pudding basin hat, as it made me look like a schoolgirl. How I envied the officers in their smart three-cornered hats! A few days later when I returned to the naval stores, a friendly male Petty Officer told me not to worry about my hat as a new style had just been ordered for Other Rank Wrens and it was shaped like a sailor’s hat. He th
en showed me how to sew on the HMS Vernon hatband loosely, so that I’d be able to slip it off and replace it with an HMS Daedalus band once I moved there.

  The Petty Officer then asked me whether my shoes were comfortable. I smiled and said that they fitted like a glove, which made him laugh, but he knew what I meant.

  I would now need to buy an additional suitcase to pack all my uniform in, so I asked whether I might buy one of the nice green canvas suitcases with brown leather at each corner that I could see on the shelf.

  ‘Sorry love, they’re only for h’officers,’ the Petty Officer explained, pointing out the one for Other Ranks, which was brown and appeared to be made of cardboard, so I turned my nose up at it. He kindly suggested that if I caught the bus outside the gates, it would take me into Portsmouth town centre where I would be able to buy a squashy holdall bag, which might be more my style and perhaps more useful too. He then issued me with some badges to sew on my coats, with anchors on them to show that I was now a Leading Wren.

  That afternoon, First Officer Smitherson called me to her office and wished me good luck. She explained that she would receive occasional reports about my progress from Commander Timpston, and that if I was ever in difficulties, I was to go to him for advice.

  ‘Good luck Leading Wren Arden,’ she said as I left her office.

  The day I arrived at Lee-on-Solent, a driver was waiting to collect me. I explained to him that I was billeted in one of the bungalows belonging to Commander Timpston’s unit a short distance from HMS Daedalus, and asked him whether he’d mind me dropping off my belongings first before reporting to the main base.

  When we got to the bungalow I found that the curtains were drawn and all the doors were locked. The driver helped me put my luggage into the garden shed before leaving me to make my own way to HMS Daedalus by bicycle.

  I now had to check in at the Billeting Office first, and then report to Commander Timpston to tell him that I’d arrived. I reached the main gate, showed my identity papers and cycled on to the Billeting Office, but then a Wren Petty Officer suddenly barked, ‘You are wearing the wrong hat-band! You should have the one for HMS Daedalus not Vernon, you stupid girl.’