VE Day 80: War veteran Ruth Barnwell recalls love, loss and why we must never forget

Recalling the moment she learned of VE Day, Mrs Barnwell told the PA news agency: “We were serving lunch and there was a noise out in the galley. So, we looked and this was my friend Pauline coming out of the stockroom, and she said ‘everyone in the world is celebrating my birthday!’

“So, we said ‘what do you mean, Pauline?’ She says ‘listen! I said it’s my birthday, the war is over!’ And that’s how we knew.”

Mrs Barnwell grew up in Ipswich. Her father was a cooper who made beer barrels and her older brother Raymond joined the navy when he was 15. She signed up to the Wrens after her childhood friend Ted was killed onboard HMS Hood.

“I went down to Oxford where there was a recruiting place. I went in and signed up, and I said ‘well, they’ve taken Ted so I might as well go and win the war’,” she told PA.

After enlisting, Mrs Barnwell was sent to Mill Hill, north-west London, for six weeks of training, which involved mostly steward work, looking after officers and “seeing if you could do the housework”.

She was then sent to Glasgow and Helensburgh, Argyll and Bute, before moving to HMS Quebec, a combined operations centre on the remote shores of Loch Fyne in Inveraray, Argyll and Bute. She spent the next four years there as a Wren and her main duties involved looking after the captain of the ship, Captain Argyll.

Describing her daily routine, she said: “We started at eight in the morning and one o’clock after lunch. Every other day we had the afternoon off. The other day we served afternoon tea and dinner at night.

“I was supposed to wake up and be down by eight. I would leave it until the last minute and the old PO [Petty Officer] from up the other end of the hut would come through to the washroom, and shout: ‘Ruth, Reenie get up!’ But when she came back she pulled the sheets off of us, we still weren’t up.”

Mrs Barnwell slept on the top of a bunk bed in an eight-bed dorm.

She said: “It was nice, I made friends. We would sit round the fire and chat. We had one of those chimney pots as a fire and would sit around there. We would have games, we’d play different types of games. There was always someone who had something new to tell us.

“We did our work and then we had our amusements, the dances. The dances were good. In the end, my young man didn’t dance, so he sent one of his mates to see who I danced with.”

Mrs Barnwell continued to keep in contact with all of her Wren friends until they died and she now writes to their grandchildren.

On the banks of Loch Fyne, HMS Quebec was isolated, with no access to radio or TV. This meant news of what was happening in the war rarely reached them.

Mrs Barnwell said: “We heard when the ships were bombed but we never knew how bad London got hit until we were on leave.”

This meant that when D-Day happened, she had no idea.

“We went off duty at night as normal but when we went on duty the next morning, half the officers had gone and half the camp had gone,” she said. “They left the skeleton workers and that was it. They told us that they’d gone overseas, that’s all they said. I didn’t know it was D-Day until it was all over.”

She said eventually learning of the “terrible” destruction caused by the war was scary.

Despite the immense relief of VE Day, Mrs Barnwell said: “We didn’t have any celebrations there at all. Well, we did in our own way, I suppose, but we never had any drink or anything like that.”

It is why she thinks it is important to commemorate VE Day. “On VE Day this year, we are celebrating and I’m going to the (Royal) Albert Hall. We are doing it to remember everybody,” she said. “We didn’t really celebrate when we were up in camp, we just had to get on with our work really, we didn’t know what was really going on, so this is our celebration.”

Speaking about the importance of remembering the war, she said: “It’s important to remember VE Day because they gave their lives for all of the people to live a better life.

“It’s important we continue to remember the war because we lost so many. We don’t want to forget them and we won’t forget them because they gave our lives for freedom for us. It’s nice to remember them. I mean, I quite often think of all the people that I knew that went. I lost quite a few really.”

It was at HMS Quebec where Mrs Barnwell also met her future husband, Ronald Henry Barnwell, who was working as an electrical wireman. She recalls the first time meeting him, at Mrs George’s cafe five miles from base, where two Wrens and two sailors were invited for Hogmanay.

She said: “So, from there on Ron and I went out together. On dates we used to walk miles. There’s lots of places around Inveraray where you could walk.”

Telling the story of their engagement, she said: “We were out for a walk and it was just about getting dark, and that’s when he proposed. Well, I accepted. I went back and told the girls, ‘Ron’s just asked me to marry him’, so they all played up.

“They used to try and make me up, I never wore make-up and they used to say ‘Ruth let me make you up’, but I thought, no, it was horrible.”

Ruth and Ronald were apart for two years during the war, as he was posted to India.

The couple got married in Ipswich on April 26 1947. They have three children – Marie, Andrew and Elaine – and now have three grandchildren and three great grandchildren. Mrs Barnwell said going through the war together made them appreciate each other more.

“We must have been made for each other,” she added. Ronald died in May 2018, after being married to Ruth for 71 years.

Displaying her veteran badges, Ruth says that being in the Wrens changed her life.

Talking about the wars going on in modern society, Ruth says she does not watch the news as she finds it too difficult.

“It upsets me because it just brings back all the other things that have gone on,” she says.

Asked about her message to those remembering the war and reading her story, Ruth said: “I think they all should know about the war and know how many people got lost, and they should remember because things have changed so much.”

Ruth Barnwell will appear as a special guest in VE Day 80: The Party at the Royal Albert Hall on May 8.