More than just a hat...
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HE title isn't a joke. Christian Lamb, who put together this very jolly book of Wrens' stories from the WW2 - I Only Joined for the Hat (Bene Factum, £9.99 ISBN 978-1-903071-15-1) really did choose the service for its splendid tricorne hat.
But the rather self-deprecating title sums up these women and the modest way they approached their war work. No matter what skills they acquired (some ended up training submariners on the Perisher course, for instance) or how crucial their jobs to the country's ultimate victory, there is very little sense of self-importance.
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Of course, expectations then were different; women were not brought up to boast about their careers. Most only wanted to "do their bit," whatever it entailed, and free a man for the Fleet.
All the same, many took on highly-challenging and difficult jobs, the most famous of course being the Bletchley Park women, whom Churchill famously called the geese who laid the golden egg without a cackle.
On that note, one can't help but smile at Daphne Baker's remark. A Wren who worked in intelligence, she recalls how off-putting she found pompous (male) naval officers at parties who would say grandly: "Don't ask me what I do."
What shines through this collection of memories and letters is the redoubtable spirit of these women, who braved all sorts of hardships with the greatest of good humour.
Many found themselves mixing with women from completely different backgrounds for the first time in their lives. The author was an admiral's daughter, and entered the Service with the help of a good reference from a colonel who played bridge with her grandmother.
Jane Fawcett, who was 19, had come to Bletchley from Sadler's Wells, where she trained as a ballet dancer under Ninette de Valois; Joy Hale, a particularly bright grammar school girl, applied herself to her Morse code and exams and became a CPO at the age of 20.
Most of the contributors are now in the late 80s and Lamb writes how bereft she felt when she tried to contact some of them, only to find they had died.