Ann Driver - WRNS

I volunteered to join the WRNS at Harwich in May 1941 to be a plotter. It was all very secret work, and I discovered it was connected with Radar. I was on duty when the German battleships, “Scharnhorst” and “Gneisenau” escaped south and did battle with destroyers from Harwich. Our main job was plotting convoys down the East Coast and warning of E-Boat attacks. Promoted to Petty Officer in 1942 and stationed at Dover, I worked in the cliff tunnels built by French POWs in the Napoleonic Wars - now Hellfire Corner, open to the public. Working in the plotting room was exciting. We had visitors, including Churchill, Eisenhower and many others planning the D-Day invasion. Peter Scott was stationed at Dover on a steam gun-boat and frequently came to watch the plot if there was E-Boat activity. He would ‘doodle’ on signal pads and I still regret not recovering these when he left.
While at Dover, I was billeted at Dover College which was shelled and we were moved out to a village. On a clear day from the Admiral's Balcony on the cliff face you could see the German guns in the Pas de Calais, and if they elevated you knew you could expect shelling and would have to stay on duty until it stopped.
Early in 1944 I was promoted to 3/0 and moved to Great Yarmouth in Norfolk where we plotted the Mulberry Harbour down the East Coast to be assembled on the South Coast.
Soon after D-Day I volunteered to go to Alexandria in Egypt. We sailed from Liverpool in convoy and had several alarms of U-boat activity before reaching the Med. Malta was now safe and there was very little enemy activity. “Alex” was a super posting; very busy as there was still war in Greece. As well as hard work there was plenty of social life, sailing, parties on warships, desert beach picnics and trips to Cairo and down the Suez Canal. The war in Europe was over but it still raged in the Far East and ships were going through the Canal.
In November 1945 it was time to go home to demobilise and I went, with others, to Port Said to join the troopship “S.S.Georgic”. On board was a young district commissioner on his first leave from the Sudan. He was David, who I married four years later.