Alison Robins
Wren who listened out for the enemy in the secret ‘Y-service’
ALISON ROBINS, who has died aged 97, was a Wren in the highly secret wartime directionfinding and listening service known as the “Y-service”.
She was born Alison Gerrish on March 3 1920 in Fleet, Hampshire; her father was a servant who married a daughter of the house, and Alison’s broken education was spread between several schools. By November 1938 she had obtained a certificate as a riding instructor from the Pony Club, and when war broke out, after a false start as a land girl, she volunteered for the WRNS in June 1940.
She was trained as a WRNS stewardess at the Royal Naval College, Greenwich, under Superintendent “Aunt Elsie” French and the formidable Chief Officer Hilda Buckmaster.
When she learnt that other girls were practising Morse code, she joined their evening classes, some of which were held in the college cellars during air raids. Confusingly, there were often two classes in close proximity, with buzzers going at different speeds, but when she was able to read Morse at the required 23 words per minute, she mustered her courage to ask Hilda Buckmaster for a change of category, and within a few weeks she became a (very young) Chief Petty Officer WRNS (Wireless Telegraphist).
In January 1941 she was drafted to the Y-service station at Scarborough, which had been in continuous operation since the previous war. Her first job was to search the wireless frequencies for German transmissions, and, when these were heard, to shout “Ship!”, to alert other direction-finding stations around Britain in order to fix the enemy’s position.
In May 1941 the station at Scarborough played a role in the hunt for the battleship Bismarck. In November Alison Gerrish moved to another listening post at Withernsea, also on the Yorkshire coast, and then to Felixstowe. There her search was for German E-boats in the North Sea using both wireless and radio (ie voice) telegraphy to coordinate their attacks on East Coast convoys.
She wrote: “We used to consume large slices of toast saturated with dripping and Bovril and endless cups of coffee on night watch in order to keep us awake. I have to say that it is untrue that coffee prevents sleep. It is very difficult conscientiously to keep awake and searching back and forth over a limited span of frequencies for hours at a time without slacking off. Many nights there would be no traffic – but there was always the thought that men’s lives were in our hands and if a ship went down through our negligence, it would be a terrible thing.”
Occasionally, the listening posts were bombed or strafed, and the Wrens were issued with revolvers in case of attack by land. There was fun too, as when cases of sherry were washed ashore from a shipwreck and the bottles had to be shuffled around the building to keep them hidden from inspecting officers. On another occasion she was reduced to hysterics, just before an inspection by Princess Marina, “by some wag chanting ‘Here’s to the Navy, a fine body of men, up with the lark and to bed with a Wren.’”
Alison Gerrish began to teach herself German using Hugo’s Teach Yourself German in Three Months. She also listened daily to the German high command’s war reports, which – conveniently for her – were broadcast at dictation speed.
Further drafts were to Trimingham and to Sheringham in Norfolk, St Davids in Wales, and Torquay. Her last draft, in August 1944, was to SHAEF’S rear echelon in London, where her task was to search captured documents for names and evidence of war crimes.
After five years in the WRNS, Alison Gerrish left to marry Maurice Robins in September 1945. Post-war, she became a grammar school laboratory assistant.
Her husband died in 1987, and she is survived by their three daughters.
Alison Robins, born March 3 1920, died October 15 2017