Love and War in the WRNS

Love and War in the WRNS PDF Author: Vicky Unwin
Publisher: The History Press
ISBN: 0750964677
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 405

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Book Description
Sheila Mills’s story is a unique perspective of the Second World War. She is a clever, middle-class Norfolk girl with a yen for adventure and joins the WRNS in 1940 to escape the shackles of secretarial work in London, her unhappy childhood and her social-climbing mother. From a first posting in Scotland in 1940, she progresses through the ranks, first to Egypt and later to a vanquished Germany. Extraordinary and fascinating encounters and personalities are seen through the eyes of a young Wren officer: Admiral Ramsay, the Invasion of Sicily and Operation Mincemeat that triggered it, The Flap, the sinking of the Medway, the surrender of the Italian fleet and the Belsen Trials. These observations are peppered with humorous insights into the humdrum preoccupations of a typical Wren – boys, appearance and having fun, while worrying about home and family. This treasure trove of hundreds of letters, along with scrapbooks and memorabilia, some of which are reproduced here, was discovered in bin liners shortly after Sheila died. Her daughter, Vicky, has pieced together a fascinating and unusual record of the Second World War from a woman’s perspective.

Love and War in the WRNS

Love and War in the WRNS PDF Author: Vicky Unwin
Publisher: The History Press
ISBN: 0750964677
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 405

Get Book Here

Book Description
Sheila Mills’s story is a unique perspective of the Second World War. She is a clever, middle-class Norfolk girl with a yen for adventure and joins the WRNS in 1940 to escape the shackles of secretarial work in London, her unhappy childhood and her social-climbing mother. From a first posting in Scotland in 1940, she progresses through the ranks, first to Egypt and later to a vanquished Germany. Extraordinary and fascinating encounters and personalities are seen through the eyes of a young Wren officer: Admiral Ramsay, the Invasion of Sicily and Operation Mincemeat that triggered it, The Flap, the sinking of the Medway, the surrender of the Italian fleet and the Belsen Trials. These observations are peppered with humorous insights into the humdrum preoccupations of a typical Wren – boys, appearance and having fun, while worrying about home and family. This treasure trove of hundreds of letters, along with scrapbooks and memorabilia, some of which are reproduced here, was discovered in bin liners shortly after Sheila died. Her daughter, Vicky, has pieced together a fascinating and unusual record of the Second World War from a woman’s perspective.

Love and War in the WRNS

Love and War in the WRNS PDF Author: Vicky Unwin
Publisher: The History Press
ISBN: 0750964677
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 415

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Book Description
Sheila Mills's story is a unique perspective of the Second World War. She is a clever, middle-class Norfolk girl with a yen for adventure and joins the WRNS in 1940 to escape the shackles of secretarial work in London, her unhappy childhood and her social-climbing mother. From a first posting in Scotland in 1940, she progresses through the ranks, first to Egypt and later to a vanquished Germany. Extraordinary and fascinating encounters and personalities are seen through the eyes of a young Wren officer: Admiral Ramsay, the Invasion of Sicily and Operation Mincemeat that triggered it, The Flap, the sinking of the Medway, the surrender of the Italian fleet and the Belsen Trials. These observations are peppered with humorous insights into the humdrum preoccupations of a typical Wren – boys, appearance and having fun, while worrying about home and family. This treasure trove of hundreds of letters, along with scrapbooks and memorabilia, some of which are reproduced here, was discovered in bin liners shortly after Sheila died. Her daughter, Vicky, has pieced together a fascinating and unusual record of the Second World War from a woman's perspective.

The Wrens of World War II

The Wrens of World War II PDF Author: Peter Hore
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 192248864X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 375

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Book Description
The World War II codebreaking station at Bletchley is well known and its activities documented in detail. Its decryption capabilities were vital to the war effort, significantly aiding Allied victory. But where did the messages being deciphered come from in the first place? This is the extraordinary untold story of the Y service, a secret even more closely guarded than Bletchley Park. The Y service was the code for the chain of wireless intercept stations around Britain and all over the world. Hundreds of wireless operators, many of them who were civilians, listened to German, Italian and Japanese radio networks and meticulously logged everything they heard. Some messages were then used tactically but most were sent on to Station X – Bletchley Park – where they were deciphered, translated and consolidated to build a comprehensive overview of the enemy’s movements and intentions. Peter Hore delves into the fascinating history of the Y service, with particular reference to the girls of the Women’s Royal Naval Service: Wrens who escaped from Singapore to Colombo as the war raged, only to be torpedoed in the Atlantic on their way back to Britain; the woman who had a devastatingly true premonition that disaster would strike on her way to Gibraltar; the Australian who went from being captain of the English Women’s Cricket team to a WWII Wren to the head of Abbotleigh girls school in Sydney; how the Y service helped to hunt the German battleship Bismarck in the North Atlantic, and how it helped to torpedo a Japanese cruiser in the Indian Ocean. Together, these incredible stories build a picture of World War II as it has never been viewed before.

Love and War in the WRNS

Love and War in the WRNS PDF Author: Vicky Unwin
Publisher: The History Press
ISBN: 0750964677
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 415

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Book Description
Sheila Mills's story is a unique perspective of the Second World War. She is a clever, middle-class Norfolk girl with a yen for adventure and joins the WRNS in 1940 to escape the shackles of secretarial work in London, her unhappy childhood and her social-climbing mother. From a first posting in Scotland in 1940, she progresses through the ranks, first to Egypt and later to a vanquished Germany. Extraordinary and fascinating encounters and personalities are seen through the eyes of a young Wren officer: Admiral Ramsay, the Invasion of Sicily and Operation Mincemeat that triggered it, The Flap, the sinking of the Medway, the surrender of the Italian fleet and the Belsen Trials. These observations are peppered with humorous insights into the humdrum preoccupations of a typical Wren – boys, appearance and having fun, while worrying about home and family. This treasure trove of hundreds of letters, along with scrapbooks and memorabilia, some of which are reproduced here, was discovered in bin liners shortly after Sheila died. Her daughter, Vicky, has pieced together a fascinating and unusual record of the Second World War from a woman's perspective.

Women in Allied Naval Intelligence in the Second World War

Women in Allied Naval Intelligence in the Second World War PDF Author: Sarah-Louise Miller
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350402249
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 183

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Book Description
Closely examining the work of women in the US and British naval services towards Allied naval intelligence during the Second World War, this book focuses on their contributions during the Battle of the Atlantic and Pacific Naval War, in order to shed new light on arenas of war from which women's narratives are almost always absent. Including personal testimonies from those involved, and surveying a wide cross-section of different roles, Sarah-Louise Miller analyses the work of women at every level and rank in the US and British naval services, and offers a much wider picture of how they assisted the Allied forces behind closed doors. With exploration of the work of the WRNS and WAVES on developing naval intelligence, this book argues that they played a crucial role in the British and American SIGINT systems, and within programs such as those at Bletchley Park and OP-20-G – therefore directly impacting the organisation and outcome of Anglo-American naval efforts. Including analysis of the development of the modern 'kill-chain', Miller also re-evaluates the effect of the 'combat taboo', to demonstrate that the WRNS and WAVES were in fact at the cutting edge of the emergence of modern warfare.

The Boy from Boskovice

The Boy from Boskovice PDF Author: Vicky Unwin
Publisher: Unbound Publishing
ISBN: 1783529075
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 316

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Book Description
Vicky Unwin had always known her father – an erstwhile intelligence officer and respected United Nations diplomat – was Czech, but it was not until a stranger turned up on her doorstep that she discovered he was also Jewish. So began a quest to discover the truth about his past – one that perhaps would help answer the niggling doubts she had always had about her ‘perfect’ father. Finally persuading him to allow her to open a closely guarded cache of family books and papers, Vicky discovered the identity of her grandfather: the tormented author and diplomat Hermann Ungar, hugely controversial in both life and in death, who was a protégé and possible lover of Thomas Mann, and a friend of Berthold Brecht and Stefan Zweig. How much of her father’s child was Vicky – and how much of his father’s child was he? As Vicky worked to uncover deeply buried family secrets, she would find herself slowly unpicking the lingering power of ‘survivors’ guilt’ on the generations that followed the Holocaust, and would learn, via a deathbed confession, of the existence of a previously unknown sister. Together, the sisters attempted to come to terms with what had made their father into the deeply flawed, complex, yet charismatic man he has always been, journeying together through grief and heartache towards forgiveness.

For the Love of the Navy

For the Love of the Navy PDF Author: Ray Hamilton
Publisher: Summersdale
ISBN: 1786854473
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 146

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Book Description
From magnificent vessels like the Tudor warship Mary Rose and the aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth, to the naval heroes and dramatic sea battles that make up the British Navy’s illustrious history, and looking at the remarkable people who serve in her ranks today, this fascinating miscellany celebrates the oldest of the UK’s armed services.

A Game of Birds and Wolves

A Game of Birds and Wolves PDF Author: Simon Parkin
Publisher: Little, Brown
ISBN: 0316492086
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 395

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Book Description
As heard on the New Yorker Radio Hour: The triumphant and "engaging history" (The New Yorker) of the young women who devised a winning strategy that defeated Nazi U-boats and delivered a decisive victory in the Battle of the Atlantic. By 1941, Winston Churchill had come to believe that the outcome of World War II rested on the battle for the Atlantic. A grand strategy game was devised by Captain Gilbert Roberts and a group of ten Wrens (members of the Women's Royal Naval Service) assigned to his team in an attempt to reveal the tactics behind the vicious success of the German U-boats. Played on a linoleum floor divided into painted squares, it required model ships to be moved across a make-believe ocean in a manner reminiscent of the childhood game, Battleship. Through play, the designers developed "Operation Raspberry," a counter-maneuver that helped turn the tide of World War II. Combining vibrant novelistic storytelling with extensive research, interviews, and previously unpublished accounts, Simon Parkin describes for the first time the role that women played in developing the Allied strategy that, in the words of one admiral, "contributed in no small measure to the final defeat of Germany." Rich with unforgettable cinematic detail and larger-than-life characters, A Game of Birds and Wolves is a heart-wrenching tale of ingenuity, dedication, perseverance, and love, bringing to life the imagination and sacrifice required to defeat the Nazis at sea.

Morse Code Wrens of Station X

Morse Code Wrens of Station X PDF Author: Anne Glyn-Jones
Publisher: Andrews UK Limited
ISBN: 1845409329
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 164

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Book Description
Anne Glyn-Jones opens up the secret world of the interceptors of German Morse Code signals during World War II. Leaving her girls' boarding school with romantic ideas about joining the navy as a Wren, Anne had no idea that she would be working for the mysterious 'Station X', which we now know to be Bletchley Park. Round the clock shifts, bed bugs, rats and poor diet took its toll, as well as the ongoing lack of recognition from the Navy hierarchy. Morse Code Wrens of Station X is a very personal memoir of a young woman's experiences of war time service, as well as providing fascinating insights into the daily realities of the battle for military intelligence superiority.

In Love and War

In Love and War PDF Author: Barbara Ker Wilson
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : War
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description