Description
Object description
Extract from a ts memoir (22pp, written in 2003) written in an anecdotal style and occasionally interspersed with extracts from a contemporary diary, covering the period from summer 1939 to the end of 1945, and including the preparations for war, the evacuation of her school, Ravenscroft School, Eastbourne, to Thurlestone hotel in Devon, moving back to London and then to Selborne, hearing a dog-fight overhead (August 1940), working on the farm of a friend of the family in Bighton, moving to Edinburgh and taking the entrance exam for Edinburgh University, joining the Women's Royal Naval Service (WRNS) (November 1941), going to WRNS Training Depot in Hampstead, training as a despatch rider at Knightsbridge Barracks, her posting to Milford Haven, Pembrokeshire, (circa January 1942), her transfer to the Admiralty (February 1943), the Wrens Quarters at Bowden Court, near Nottinghill Gate, her motorbike being kept on Horseguards Parade, having to stop being a despatch rider due to medical reasons, applying for a commission as a cypher officer, being stationed at the Port of London Authority building working in the Navy Cypher Office as a trainee, attending the Officers Training Depot in Hampstead, being posted to HMS DRAKE, Plymouth, a two year overseas posting being cancelled at the last minute, sailing on HMT MOOLTAN for India (Spring 1945), details of the voyage and fellow passengers, including meeting her future husband, Graham, then an Army Major who had fought with the Chindits in Burma, volunteering to go to Fort William, Calcutta, to work for the Royal Indian Navy (RIN) (May 1945), hearing that her Grandfather, Major H S Nicholson (known as Scoble), was safe after being interned by the Japanese in Sumatra, getting compassionate leave and going to the Repatriated Allied Prisoners of War India (RAPWI) hospital in Jallihall, near Bangalore to stay with him until they could go home together (October 1945), having to perform duties on the ship home as she was otherwise a 'combatant' WRNS officer on a Hospital ship, with details of the other RAPWI patients on board, their arrival at Southampton, and her demobilisation, with many details of her duties, billets, her active social life, journeys, fellow WRNS and other acquaintances, coping with the death of friends, meeting Anthony Eden, Noel Coward, Lord Mountbatten, and Ian Fleming's then girlfriend Muriel Wright, and often mentioning her mother who was at first a District Commissioner for the Red Cross, then in the WRNS as a 3rd Officer at HQ of Flag Officer Submarines (1941), and later working for Admiral Ramsay in the run up to D-Day.
Content description
Extract from a ts memoir (22pp, written in 2003) written in an anecdotal style and occasionally interspersed with extracts from a contemporary diary, covering the period from summer 1939 to the end of 1945, and including the preparations for war, the evacuation of her school, Ravenscroft School, Eastbourne, to Thurlestone hotel in Devon, moving back to London and then to Selborne, hearing a dog-fight overhead (August 1940), working on the farm of a friend of the family in Bighton, moving to Edinburgh and taking the entrance exam for Edinburgh University, joining the Women's Royal Naval Service (WRNS) (November 1941), going to WRNS Training Depot in Hampstead, training as a despatch rider at Knightsbridge Barracks, her posting to Milford Haven, Pembrokeshire, (circa January 1942), her transfer to the Admiralty (February 1943), the Wrens Quarters at Bowden Court, near Nottinghill Gate, her motorbike being kept on Horseguards Parade, having to stop being a despatch rider due to medical reasons, applying for a commission as a cypher officer, being stationed at the Port of London Authority building working in the Navy Cypher Office as a trainee, attending the Officers Training Depot in Hampstead, being posted to HMS DRAKE, Plymouth, a two year overseas posting being cancelled at the last minute, sailing on HMT MOOLTAN for India (Spring 1945), details of the voyage and fellow passengers, including meeting her future husband, Graham, then an Army Major who had fought with the Chindits in Burma, volunteering to go to Fort William, Calcutta, to work for the Royal Indian Navy (RIN) (May 1945), hearing that her Grandfather, Major H S Nicholson (known as Scoble), was safe after being interned by the Japanese in Sumatra, getting compassionate leave and going to the Repatriated Allied Prisoners of War India (RAPWI) hospital in Jallihall, near Bangalore to stay with him until they could go home together (October 1945), having to perform duties on the ship home as she was otherwise a 'combatant' WRNS officer on a Hospital ship, with details of the other RAPWI patients on board, their arrival at Southampton, and her demobilisation, with many details of her duties, billets, her active social life, journeys, fellow WRNS and other acquaintances, coping with the death of friends, meeting Anthony Eden, Noel Coward, Lord Mountbatten, and Ian Fleming's then girlfriend Muriel Wright, and often mentioning her mother who was at first a District Commissioner for the Red Cross, then in the WRNS as a 3rd Officer at HQ of Flag Officer Submarines (1941), and later working for Admiral Ramsay in the run up to D-Day.
History note
Cataloguer SJO