Themes
Priscilla Fuller
The Overseas Wren
Portrait of Priscilla Fuller (RNM)
Mary Priscilla Fuller volunteered for the Women's Royal Naval Service (WRNS) in 1941. She lived in London at the time and reported to the Royal Naval College at Greenwich in order to train as a Teleprinter Operator.
She received a few weeks of training in the use of a teleprinter as well as various lectures on the Royal Navy. She began work at the Fleet Air Arm station at St Merryn. She received a posting to Falmouth after a few weeks and then moved to the small communications centre at Plymouth. The Wrens worked eight hours on duty, in shifts from 8am until 8pm, or 8pm until 8am, with a day off in between. The other Wrens on her watch were immobile and lived at home. Fuller was mobile and stayed in the WRNS Quarters, known as the Wrennery, where the women lived four to a cabin. Her next move was back to Falmouth.
There was a need for volunteers to serve overseas service at this time and Fuller jumped at the chance. She had a short period of leave, before sailing on the troopship SS Tamoroa in July 1942, accompanied by a hundred other Wrens, as well as Army and RAF personnel. The trip took five weeks and during the voyage, the Wrens slept fully clothed wearing life jackets, clutching tin hats and gasmasks. The service personnel ran concert parties onboard, and wore their life jackets even whilst rehearsing. The ship finally reached Durban in South Africa, where the Wrens disembarked.
Printed Shaw Savill Line menu card from SS Tamoroa (RNM)
Inside of Shaw Savill Line menu card from SS Tamoroa (RNM)
Priscilla Fuller recalls:
'At last we reached Durban and were housed in a hotel. We spent a further five weeks there and there were very strict rules. No Wren was permitted to leave the hotel on her own, she had to have four companions! In the evenings boy friends had to sign a book stating their rank, regiment, ship etc. Word got around amongst the lonely servicemen that they could go to the hotel and sign a book and be given a dancing partner for the evening. The Officer in charge soon let them know this was not true.'
Eight Wren Teleprinter Operators, including Fuller, were detached from the main group and informed that they were going to Basra. They sailed in a Dutch ship along with troops destined for Bombay and the Far East. Concert parties and games again helped to fill the time until reaching Bombay. Fuller and the other Wrens stayed for two weeks in the comparative luxury of the United Services Club. She remembers that 'many of the men who had been on the troop ship were at a transit Camp nearby so we never lacked escorts and were taken swimming at the local Club and to dinner at the Taj Mahal Hotel.'
The Wrens then sailed onboard a rather dirty, hot British India ship. Fuller remembers:
'Mice, beetles and other unwelcome creatures were already in residence in the cabins allocated to us - all eight in one cabin. Finally we arrived in Basra to be greeted by the Iraqi Army playing extracts from Rose Marie on the quay side'.
