they were landing on the beaches. and i could hear it, i could hear it all. you suddenly thought... this is a war! i really had the war in my ears. we had responsiblejobs at a very young age — like 19, 18 years old. and we did feel good about the fact we could contribute. civilians and service people got together, helped one another. you couldn't look far _ into the future, you might only have had a fortnight's leave and then he might be killedi at the end of it. you had no idea whati was going to happen, so you just put up with it. the advertisement said join the wrens so that you could free a sailor to go to sea, meaning that obvioiusly a lot of the work that men did could be done by girls, so that was how it started. when i got to belfast, i found that our headquarters was in the belfast castle, above the river, and we could see ships coming in and out. and sometimes they sent ships who had been in the atlantic to be repaired in the dockyard. meanwhile, we wrens ran the plot up in belfast and had the whole of the west coast and particularly the whole atlantic in a plot on the wall. one day, i was watching the ships come in from our castle office, and i saw a ship, a destroyer coming in, hms oribi she was called, and she was involved in various battles in the atlantic and needed some repairs, so she had her repairs done in belfast. so the first opportunity, the first thing the wrens did on their arrival was to send a message to the ward room, asking us down to have a drink on board. they had their priorities obviously right. so half a dozen of us went down to have a drink on board and there i metjohn lamb, my future husband, and in ten days we decided to get married. the next morning they sailed off to join this convoy which was leaving just north of belfast. we were absolutely vital because at the moment we were unable to feed ourselves, we had the most terrible rationing. i mean, rationing — it wasn't bad for wrens because we have the naval stores, but for ordinary people, they would have one egg a fortnight. i mean, can you imagine anything more awful? so meat and everything was very, very difficult to get. the first bit of the atlantic was, we were able to give them air coverfrom our side, and then there was a huge gap before more air cover could be given from the canadian side. so as we approached the centre, the gap as it was called, there they had about a0 u—boats were waiting for them, to attack them. and they managed to sink about 12 of our ships before we got anything back. at this point hms oribi was part of the escort of this convoy, and the battle went on. we had signals which were repeated to us, and anything that told us what was going on, i knew that they were in this, involved in this terrible battle. and i had thought, having just managed to catch hold of this man, i'm now going to let him go! but of course no, actually we were plotting, we knew the battle was going on, we didn't have information as we would have liked it, but we had a certain amount of information that came in and told us what was going on. john had been in bed, lying in a place near the bridge. he was woken up by a terrific crash, which actually he didn't know what it meant, he got out of bed and rushed up to the bridge again, only to find that his ship, hms oribi, had rammed a u—boat. and they had actually, were now sort of riding on the side of the ship. it was the most extraordinary state to be in. of course it was terrible anxiety, and all my friends tried to persuade me to go back and not to pay attention, but i couldn't possibly leave the scene. it was a matter of complete life or death to me, and i stayed there waiting for information, hoping for information, and just waiting, hopefully — and luckily eventually we had more information to say that they had actually managed to sink this u—boat, and were on their way back. they were able to crawl back to canada this time, they were the other side of the atlantic, and so they managed to get back at about 12 knots, which is a safe speed they could go at. when eventually he arrived in canada, he was able to ring me up and say he had arrived safely. well, it was amazing of course, and you know, we just both felt, well, there's nothing you could say — just "thank goodness, thank goodness, "thank goodness. " you know, that's all you could do. you couldn't look far into the future, you might only have had a fortnight�*s leave and he may be killed at the end of it. you had no idea what was going to happen, so you just put up with it, and if something was there, the present, it was there, you did it. whatever. i grew up in the countryside, in lancashire, in my grandfather's house. he had a refugee cook from austria, and a refugee housemaid. and when they came, they didn't speak any english. he gave me a small german dictionary, so i used to spend my evenings as a schoolgirl sitting with mrs geltzel, it meant that we were talking more in german than english. i neverfound languages a problem — in fact german turned out to be a rather useful language to have during the war. we trained at mill hill, and wimbledon, and then we were sent to little coastal listening stations. my first station was on the yorkshire coast, at a place called withernsea, because we had very good reception from the baltic. and the german naval ships used to talk coming out of the baltic or leaving their bases in the baltic. and at withernsea we used to search their wavelengths, write down everything we heard — they kept radio silence most of the time, but we were searching up and down their radio frequencies in our little secret stations. and i think we probably got a fair amount of useful information. and we passed the coded messages to bletchley park, and the plain language messages to the nearest naval intelligence centre. they would sometimes have a bit of chat, you know, "did you know so—and—so's boat "are all going on leave next week?". and the one that picked it up said, speaks german, "0h, they're all going to make babies". and we all wrote it down, because the rule was that everything you heard, you logged. and it might be useful for our side to know that these crews were going on leave, these boats would not be operating. even bits of gossip like that could come in useful, so we wrote everything down. i was transferred to a station between dover and folkestone, where we could hear, very loud and clear, german naval ships warming up in the harbours opposite, or going down the channel. we worked what we called watches, which would be called shifts, so many hours on, four hours on, eight hours off, that sort of thing. i had been on watch overnight, i came out in the morning, about eight o'clock, and there was a party of people coming up the path towards our cliff. and i recognised in the middle of this group, winston churchill and general eisenhower, and they were with a group of officers. and you were supposed to salute people of that rank, but as i had been on duty all night and was just informally dressed, all i could do was wave and say "good morning!" and so they all waved back and said "good morning", and they went on their way to the edge of our cliff. and in fact much later on, i heard that churchill wanted it to be reported back that he and eisenhower had been down on the kent coast, to deceive the germans into thinking that landings were going to be in kent, into the calais area, whereas of course we were going to land much further west in normandy. that ploy worked. i went in in early �*41. i went to devizes, to learn gunnery as it was called. i was a height finder, plotter. when the german aircraft came across, now the height finder was nine foot long, about that fat round, and it was on a plinth. which, you moved it around. you followed the aircraft. and i had, one like that, very similar. that had... cutouts for my four fingers. and i looked into two strong scopes. metal round there, and magnifiers in there. i could use that eye, that eye, or both. the girl that was next to me, who became my mate, she turned a wheel, and she looked into one scope, and she had to get any part of the aircraft as fast as she could onto that line, and keep it there. whereas i had two aircraft to align, one right way up, one wrong way up. and as soon as you got them level, whatever part you was on, whether it was tailfin, tail plane... nose, whatever. you had to work fast, and then you called to the number one, "on target", and she would read out the figures. so i was doing height, the other girl was doing range. she was calling out figures. that went to the guns in big pipes. so remember, we are walking over them pipes — not treading on them, walking over them. sometimes almost falling over. that was ourjob. so, i applied tojoin the wrens in march 1944. and when i told them that i was a gpo—trained switchboard operator, i could tell more or less that i'd be accepted. portsmouth in march—april 191m was a hive of activity. but the thing is, fort southwick, which was our working place, was a very secret communications centre deep — dug deep into tunnels in the cliffs overlooking portsmouth harbour. but to get down into the tunnels, we had to go down 350 steps! we had to sleep in the tunnels, eat in the tunnels, be on duty in the tunnels and, of course, chuckles, when we were coming off shift, we had to come up 350 steps, so it was a good thing we were young and fit. chuckles. the amount of activity in the tunnels — i mean, each tunnel contained a branch of communications. two months before d—day, i was given training on this vhf set, which was a small radio set. and i think vhf then was in its infancy. it was simple for us to operate. you mainly had to operate the levers up or down. as it was a one—way system, i would pass whatever messages i had to and then, they would lift their lever and pass their responses. and it was when they lifted their lever that i realised i was listening to warfare. because they were landing on the beaches, and i could hear it. i could hear it all — gunfire, machine—guns, cannon, screaming, men — men shouting, orders being shouted, all manner of things. you suddenly thought, "this is a war". i really had the war in my ears and it made me very much aware of what was at stake. so, you know, ithink it taught me a lesson about war — although i was a non—combatant, of course. nevertheless, i heard war at a very, very close source because not only did i have that experience on d—day, but i'd lived through the blitz as well. file: early in the enemy's intensified air attacks - on london, bombs were dropped on the dockland area. and i can vividly remember the night they blitzed the dock — the docks. the whole of dockland was alight and you could see from the sky, the whole sky was red. we had to go down to the tube station at clapham north because that was the only really effective shelter you could find. i think we all, really, were terrified. so, i knew what bombing was like — to be at the other end of the bombing, you know? the recipient of it. so, no, i — for me, war is something that should be avoided at all costs. we were told that there was going — that there would be an official photographer coming down to the tunnels, so i had a — somebody i knew in the tunnels, a young sailor, and i asked him if i could borrow his white top, you know, with the navy beading across. i'm now sure that if it were known by the officers that this is what i planned to do, it would have been frowned upon very definitely. but i went ahead — nobody knew — and so, my photograph exists of a wren hat in — at a rather perky angle and a white top that i shouldn't have been wearing. king george vi came down to visit us all in the fort. he toured a lot of the tunnels. i think there was a lift for vips — don't think he had to travel those 350 steps! however, on the parade ground, he took the salute and we all marched past and at the end, he thanked us all for our contribution to the effort — to the war effort. that was a moment of great pride. the wrens couldn't march wonderfully well because we weren't required to do so, so i only hope we kept in step! chuckles. when i heard that the war was over, we were all overjoyed. and for me, it meant demobilisation, so i came down to london and was demobbed in august 1946. so, it wasn't a long service but an eventful one and, for me, it was probably the most meaningful episode of my life. hello there. flaming june continued on sunday with temperatures in eastern parts of england over 30 degrees. not only was it hot, it was also very humid. but that heat and humidity is going to get pushed away by that weather front, which has brought some rain earlier on. and following on behind that, we're going to find cooler and fresher air coming in from the atlantic. now, on saturday night, temperatures in highland, scotland, fell no lower than 20 degrees and a minimum temperature at crosby in merseyside was 19 celsius. it will be much more comfortable as we head into early monday with temperatures perhaps down as low as single figures in scotland and northern ireland overnight. we start quite sunny on monday, but quickly the cloud will bubble up. we're going to find showers developing in scotland, northern ireland and northern england. chance of showers further south much reduced. temperatures could be as high as 22 or 23 degrees in the southeast, of course, a lot lower than it was on sunday. and further north, typically 18 to 20. a cooler, fresher westerly wind will be blowing. and all our weather is going to be coming in from the atlantic. more weather fronts coming our way as we move into tuesday. that's going to bring more cloud and it's going to bring some rain, mainly for northern and western areas. as you head further south there won't be much rain around at all, but there will be a lot of cloud and those temperatures around 19 to 22 degrees. now, we're going to be in a warm sector as we head overnight and it's going to be very warm actually, i think overnight into wednesday morning for south eastern parts of the uk. the warm sector is the area between two weather fronts. and so we're going to start with a lot of cloud around on wednesday. the second weather front, the cold front here, is this band of rain. that's going to clear away from scotland and northern ireland. sunshine and showers and cooler air following on behind. the rain band pushes into england and wales. dry until very late in the day across eastern england and those temperatures could be up as high as 25, maybe 26 degrees. that's probably going to be as warm as it's going to get over the week ahead. that weather front then moves away and we're all into cooler and fresher air as we move into thursday, once again. and that probably means some sunshine. the odd shower in the south east of england, but otherwise, most of the wet weather coming in from the atlantic, will be in the north west of scotland. for many, it's going to be a dry day on thursday. and those temperatures nearaverage, isuppose, for this time of the year, around 20, 22 degrees or so. as we head towards the end of the week, this is the weather pattern. low to the north, high to the south. and this is the jet stream which is going to pile in more weather fronts from off the atlantic. and that's going to bring more rain to northern and western areas of the uk, more cloud coming into england and wales. but the south east still looks dry and here temperatures will be up to around 23 degrees or so. but again, we're going to be struggling at around 18 in the rain in the central belt of scotland. now, it's worth looking at the rainfall accumulation over the next few days because whilst it's going to be unsettled, and there is rain in the forecast, as you can see, where we've got hosepipe bans in the southeast, there really isn't going to be any rain to speak of at all. it will be much wetter for the north and west. and that story is likely to continue as we look further ahead for the outlook. again, a low pressure to the north, high pressure to the south, but that low pressure isn't really going to go anywhere. it's just going to spiral around in the same sort of spot. it'll be accompanied by some brisk winds at times, and it will keep wetter weather across more northern and some western parts of the uk. but again, towards the southeast, it's not going to be very wet at all. there'll be some sunshine ,temperatures near average. the heat, the humidity is not set to return. live from london. live from london. this is bbc news this is bbc news 0ne one day on ourfirm of fighters shows cracks emerging one day on our firm of the been one day on ourfirm of the been by the widener group, the whereabouts of the russian president and yevgeny prigozhin are both unknown. amid speculation the russian president fled moscow during the crisis — america's diplomat says the attempted mutiny by wagner

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