My month with the Wrens: A personal story about four women who helped win World War II

This isn’t really my story. It’s the story of four women who helped turn the tide of war.

Over the past few weeks, I had the privilege of interviewing Marie Scott, who is now 97, Dorothea Barron, 99, Pat Owtram, 100, and Christian Lamb, 103, all of whom served in the Women’s Royal Naval Service — the Wrens — during World War II.

My assignment was to find surviving D-Day veterans and tell their stories as part of The Associated Press’ coverage of the 80th anniversary of the Normandy landings that marked the beginning of the end of the Nazi grip on Europe. But as the number of living men who stormed the beaches has dwindled over the decades, the contributions of the women who helped make the campaign a success have come into sharper focus.

And so I got a chance to speak with Marie and Dorothea and Pat and Christian, four white-haired English ladies who welcomed an American reporter into their homes to share stories about the fall of France, the bombing of London and the real fear that Britain would be invaded. And how they, as teenagers, signed up to do whatever they could to help.

So each time videographer Kwiyeon Ha, photographer Kristy Wigglesworth and I showed up to meet one of these women, it was like opening a door straight back into a time when you couldn’t be sure whether your friends would survive the next bombing raid, your fiancé would return from convoy duty or you might wake up to find your country occupied and yourself or your neighbors being dragged off to gas chambers because of their faith.

Marie and Dorothea and Pat and Christian didn’t fight on the beaches — they weren’t allowed to. But they, and more than 600,000 women like them, joined the British military and did everything they could to defeat the enemy, despite a world that was designed to limit their horizons.

And don’t think they just made tea and answered the phones.

They intercepted signals from Nazi U-boats. They created maps for the D-Day landings. They kept watch over soldiers practicing to deploy the Mulberry Harbors that brought men and equipment to Normandy. And they relayed vital messages between Allied commanders in England and men on the beaches.

Now, the Wrens are the first people to honor the soldiers who put their boots on Normandy sand, with terrible consequences for so many. The men, they know, made great sacrifices.

But the whole time, and I mean the whole time, we were speaking to them, I couldn’t help but think that these women hadn’t received the recognition they deserved.

I mean, if you were practicing to deploy an untested portable harbor under enemy fire, wouldn’t you want someone watching out to make sure you didn’t drown during the drills? Thanks, Dorothea!

And if you landed at Sword Beach on June 6, 1944, wouldn’t you want the best intelligence possible? Thanks, Pat!

Wouldn’t you want a map that showed you exactly where you had landed and where you were going? Thanks, Christian!

And wouldn’t you want a communications specialist with nerves of steel on the other end of your transmission as you received orders and reported back to Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower’s staff. Thanks, Marie!

I went into this assignment thinking I was going to have to squint hard to imagine these women helping to saving the world. But it wasn’t so.

Through their words, I could see Dorothea standing in a watchtower on the Scottish coast waving her semaphore flags to alert the nearby ships whenever someone got into trouble in the surf below her.

I could look over the shoulder of Pat as she jotted down coded signals and rushed them to the mathematicians and cryptographers at Bletchley Park to help crack the secrets of Germany’s Enigma machine and unlock a flood of crucial intelligence.

I could feel the strain as Christian worked against the clock to create maps that would guide landing craft pilots safely to their assigned spots on the beaches.

And I could listen in as Marie heard the sounds of gunfire and artillery shells exploding around the courageous radioman she was talking to on the Normandy coast.

Neither Kirsty nor Kwiyeon had any trouble with this either. Throughout the interviews, I had the sense that we were some kind of strange three-headed being, each with her own task to perform but all of us rowing in the same direction.

“I’m right over your shoulder,’’ Kirsty once whispered as she moved to snap a picture. Which was a good thing because I hadn’t even noticed she was there.

Such things happened often. I don’t know whether the dynamics would have been different with other personnel, but we were an all-woman team covering a group of women we could all relate to.

The Wrens didn’t expect much thanks for their service. They were just doing their bit in a time of crisis. It was about helping the country. It was about the team.

But in doing what they did to help win the war, they also helped show the world what women could do. And that helped lay the foundations for women like us to have a go at doing whatever we wanted to do with our lives.

So we just wanted to say we noticed you, Marie, Pat, Dorothea and Christian, right there over our shoulders.

You were there all along.