Christian Oldham watched as, once again, the same row of well-to-do Marylebone houses wheeled past the car window. It was the day of her wedding and next to her in the back seat of the chauffeured Rolls Royce sat her father, wearing a grave expression.
‘Are you quite sure?’ he said.1
It was the third time that the admiral and his daughter had circumnavigated the tree-muffled Manchester Square, just north of Oxford Street in central London.
‘If you have any doubts at all,’ he continued, ‘don’t do it.’
After limping into St John’s after the Battle of Birds and Wolves, HMS Oribi underwent repairs and, a few weeks later, returned to sea. The U-boats may have retreated, but for twenty-three-year-old Oldham, the worrying threat they represented had been replaced by a generalised anxiety of often having no clue where in the world her fiancé had got to. Other than the remote possibility that HMS Oribi would drift again onto the wall plot at Belfast Castle, Oldham’s best hope for locating Lamb was to check the pink list, which kept an imperfect, often out-of-date record of the whereabouts of every vessel in the British fleet.
Letters went some way to salving the lovelorn, anxiety-pressed heart, and the pair wrote weekly (‘all the usual idiotic things’ young lovers say to one another, she later recalled). But there was no telling how long a letter might take to wend its way through the labyrinthine naval mail system before it landed, miraculously, on the mat of its moving target. By the time a response arrived, weeks had passed.
All of this made planning for a wedding difficult. Still, Oldham’s mother had taken a bold decision. Working from the estimated date of the Oribi’s next boiler clean, she had booked a church for a Wednesday in December. She had also bought her daughter, for £6, a white, velvet, second-hand wedding dress from an advertisement posted in Country Gentleman’s Association Magazine.
After waving him off from the ramparts of Belfast Castle in May, Oldham had reunited with Lamb just once, a few days before today, the day of their wedding. The reunion had been much longed for, but Lamb’s excitement was tempered by the intimidating presence of his future mother-in-law, who had accompanied her daughter to size up the young lieutenant. Lamb was, Oldham later recalled, ‘much daunted by the whole thing’, and in his rush to get the encounter over with as quickly as possible, failed to make a glowing impression. After perilous months at sea, ramming U-boats and enduring the raillery of his fellow sailors, Lamb could be forgiven for failing to adapt to such a delicate social situation. As Oldham later put it, the meeting ‘was not a great success’.
Still, it had done nothing to dampen the young Wren officer’s determination. In the back seat of the wedding car, she checked the knot of the cord that gathered the waist of her simple dress.
‘I have no doubts,’ she replied, after a moment, to her father’s question.
The car pulled toward Spanish Place and, just before two o’clock in the afternoon of 15th December 1943, Oldham walked in silver slippers through the doors of St James’s Church. The congregation included the officers of HMS Oribi. They grinned at their lieutenant as he stood at the altar. As she continued up the aisle, Oldham’s feelings for the submariner Lennox Napier were gone. In the months since Oldham’s engagement, Napier had begun to date her friend, Eve Lindsay, whom he would eventually marry. No animosity passed between the women, then or now.
When she reached the altar, Oldham turned to face the man whom, for a week in May, she had fretfully watched cross the Atlantic Ocean. Seeing the nest of U-boats Lamb’s ship faced, she had been unsure if they would meet again. Yet here they were, about to have a wartime wedding which, in the aftermath of that great battle, felt somehow closer to peace than ever before.
At the reception at Dartmouth House in Mayfair, the guests were met with the sight of a towering Christmas cake, baked by Searcys of Sloane Street. Rationing was still an imposition, but the effects of the victory over the U-boats could already be seen on dinner tables across the country. The percentage of imports lost to sinkings had now fallen to less than one per cent, and the Ministry of Food had built up stocks of more than six million tons of food.2 Thanks in no small part to the Oribi’s efforts, food was, once again, flowing freely into Britain and, that day, the bride, groom and their guests benefitted.*
Less than a mile away, in the Operations Room at the Admiralty, the wall chart showing the number of convoy ship sinkings, week by week, painted a reassuring picture. Once, at the most desperate point of the Battle of the Atlantic, the graph had nudged the red line that marked the level at which Britain would starve. Now there was a generous buffer between the current losses and the threshold of disaster.
‘The Battle of the Atlantic has taken a definite turn in our favour,’ wrote Admiral Sir Max Horton in a message dispatched to all Allied units under his command, including the staff at WATU, two weeks after the conclusion of the Battle of Birds and Wolves. ‘The returns show an ever-increasing toll of U-boats and decreasing losses of merchant ships in convoy… The tide of battle has been checked, if not turned.’ The success was, Horton continued, the outcome of ‘hard work’, ‘training’ and ‘efficiency’, much of which was down to the efforts of the men and women of WATU.
Now is the time, Horton urged, ‘to strike and strike hard’.3
There would be little opportunity for the escort ships to act upon Horton’s command. U-boats had become scarce. While this caused some frustration and boredom for captains like Gretton, Macintyre and Walker*, for the merchant ships and the British people who, finally, saw their supplies of food, vegetables, heating oil and fuel increase, it was life-changing.
In the seventeen weeks that followed 17th May 1943, the Allies sailed sixty-two east- and westbound convoys along the North Atlantic routes without losing a single ship to a U-boat. More than 12 million tons of food and supplies arrived unimpeded into Britain from eastbound convoys. Seizing the opportunity, senior officers at the Admiralty increased the size of convoys, which in June 1943 averaged sixty-two merchant ships, compared to just forty-three the previous month.4
Two secondary factors contributed to the change in U-boat fortunes. In America on 1st May, while the Battle of Birds and Wolves was still being fought, US Navy commander-in-chief Admiral Ernest King created a strategic group in his Washington HQ specifically to combat the German U-boats. By the end of the month the US 10th Fleet, as this new group was known, was coordinating with Derby House in training US escorts, while simultaneously gathering its own intelligence to aid the US Navy’s war against the U-boats.
Then in late May the Allies also confirmed that BdU had cracked the British naval cypher, and had been intercepting communications with convoys at sea for months. This had enabled Doenitz and his men to intelligently guide the wolfpacks toward convoys. Realising the exposure, the US and British navies switched to a newer code, known as Naval Cypher No. 5–once again blinding Doenitz and the U-boats.
On 21st September 1943, Prime Minister Churchill addressed the House of Commons to perform a victory lap.
I have repeatedly stated in this House that our greatest danger in this war… is the U-boat attack upon our sea communications and upon Allied shipping all over the world… The great victory which was won by our North Atlantic convoys and their escorts in May was followed by a magnificent diminution in sinkings… For the four months which ended on 18th September, no merchant vessel was sunk by enemy action in the North Atlantic… During the first fortnight in this September no Allied ships were sunk by U-boat action in any part of the world. This is altogether unprecedented in the whole history of the U-boat struggle, either in this war or in the last.
‘The high percentage of killings has certainly affected the morale of the U-boat crews, and many of the most experienced U-boat captains have been drowned or are now prisoners,’ Churchill continued. ‘The House will also realise that we have taken full advantage of the lull in the U-boat attack to bring the largest possible convoys, and that we have replenished the reserves in these islands of all essential commodities, especially fuel oil, which is almost at its highest level since the outbreak of the war.’5
Members of the Cabinet and of Parliament on both sides of the House stood and erupted in a prolonged display of cheering and applause.
And a few weeks after Churchill’s pronouncement, feeling grateful and well-fed, John and Christian Lamb’s guests watched as the newlyweds climbed into a squat green Austin Seven, and drove away to their honeymoon.
In the dying days of 1943, Jean Laidlaw was poring over papers in one of WATU’s top-floor offices when Captain Roberts appeared at the glass window of her door. There had been many staff changes at WATU in the previous few months. A Norwegian lieutenant, Per Lure, had joined the team to become controller of one of the five games that were played simultaneously each week (this appointment eventually led to the creation of a table dedicated entirely to Norwegian naval officers, around a hundred of whom passed through the school before the end of the war).6
Liz Drake, one of WATU’s founding officers, had joined Roberts’ staff on 15th March 1942. The year that followed had been eventful for the twenty-one-year-old. After earning a promotion to second officer on 19th April 1943, Drake had met and fallen in love with the Australian officer Fred Osborne, brother of Nancy Osborne, the senior Wren who had hand-picked the women of WATU. Then Drake’s father, her only living parent, had died. She fell ill and took some time off her duties. When she returned, Fred had left WATU’s staff to return to sea, and Drake was told to prepare to leave WATU for a new appointment in Belfast, as duty staff officer.7
Drake wasn’t the only founding member of WATU to be moved on: a few weeks earlier the glamorous Bobby Howes had left for Gibraltar, where she was to work as chief plotting officer.8 The skills that the women had learned while working on the game had made them some of the most highly valued Wrens in the service, ideal individuals for Laughton Mathews to dispatch to new roles of senior responsibility as they arose.
For every Wren who left, two took her place. Howes was replaced by Pauline Preston, who was made a third officer in May 1943 and later married Lieutenant Ivan Ewart, a lieutenant RNNR torpedo boat captain. Elizabeth ‘Bunch’ Hackney, who later married another of WATU’s staff members, William Tooley-Hawkins, joined alongside Margaret Richards, Mary Dakin and Doris Lawford, a graduate of King’s College London whose sister also worked at Derby House as a signal officer, and whose father had come out of retirement to work as an escort commander with Arctic convoys.
Janet Okell had recently been promoted to leading Wren, while June Duncan continued to cope with the rigours of war by spending her evenings rehearsing for and starring in local plays. The ever-faithful Laidlaw, however, remained unmoved from her position as Roberts’ right-hand woman. She would stay, as he put it, ‘my No. 1 for the whole war’9–the ‘invalided’ captain and the young lesbian, running the show.
Despite frequent staff changes, business at WATU was exceptionally brisk, with more officers taking the six-day course than ever before. In order to prevent his courses from becoming ‘tired and stale’, as Roberts put it, he and Laidlaw constantly freshened the game scenarios, often adapting story and tactics to reflect developments in the war at sea. In one game, officers had to counter-attack Japanese heavy submarines; in another, German torpedo boats. Fears that the course might become routine or rote gave Roberts ‘constant anxiety’, he wrote.
As Roberts opened the office door, a letter in his hand, Laidlaw smiled expectantly. He slid the paper across the desk and she immediately saw that it was an official document. Laidlaw read the contents in delight. In recognition of his work at WATU, Roberts was to be made an ‘Additional’ Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in the New Year’s Honours List. For a man who, just a few years earlier, had been rejected by the navy and, through illness, disqualified from service, it was a healing recompense. Roberts, Laidlaw and the other Wrens had fought tenaciously, not only against the U-boat threat, but also against the scepticism of those who doubted the usefulness of game-playing in wartime.
For Laidlaw and the other staff of WATU this had, at times, made him a challenging man to work for.
‘Roberts had the difficulties of personality that very sick people often have,’ wrote Fred Osborne, who worked at WATU throughout 1943. ‘He was difficult to serve under, very jealous of the position and reputation of the school, and he did not brook disagreement.’10 Audrey Pitt, a Wren who worked at Derby House from 1942 through to the end of the war was fond of saying: ‘If you can cope with Gilbert Roberts, you can cope with anyone.’11 George Phillips peppered his eulogy for Roberts, under whom he served, with unflinching descriptions such as ‘stubborn and forceful’, ‘tough and aggressive’ and known to ‘bring frustration upon his staff by his steamroller tactics.’12 Nevertheless, ‘we respected and loved him’, Phillips added.
If Roberts fought for the position and reputation of the school, he did so not only for his own glory, but also that of the Wrens with whom he worked–even if he occasionally had to be reminded to share the recognition. Roberts had arrived at Laidlaw’s door at the urging of his wife Alice, who had suggested that he ask the woman who had been so instrumental to WATU’s success to accompany him to the Palace for the ceremony. Alice and Roberts’ relationship was entering its final months (a marriage of which not only did Roberts write nothing in his diaries, but which he also actively sought to conceal following his divorce), but he nevertheless heeded his wife’s advice.*
‘Will you come?’ he asked Laidlaw.
Age, rank, but most of all gender meant that Laidlaw would never be recognised in such a way; if she felt a throb of envy, she kept it to herself. On 15th February 1944 she and a Wrens rating accompanied Roberts to Buckingham Palace† to applaud their captain as he received an award that they would have to share, like so much of the substance of this war, from a distance. ‘I took them’, Roberts wrote, ‘as an honour to themselves, for without them, what could have been done?’
As soon as Roberts’ name was made public, there was interest in and speculation about what precisely this unknown and retired captain had done to earn such a prestigious honour at such a crucial moment in the war. From the unit’s formation through to this moment, WATU’s work had been kept secret, not least because of its situation in Derby House, a place whose location needed to be concealed. With the U-boats in retreat, however, the decision was made to make Roberts’ and the Wrens’ work public, not only through the Honours List, but also in the press.
In early January 1944, the journalist A. J. Whinnie arrived at WATU to watch a group of officers play the game, see the Wrens at work and to interview Roberts, who was still devising new tactics to confound the latest German invention, an acoustic torpedo called the Zaunkönig (‘Wren’)* that could redirect itself toward the supersonic sound made by a ship’s propellers in the water.
Whinnie, who wrote up the story of what he saw for numerous publications, was accompanied by the photographer Reuben Saidman, often employed by the Daily Herald. The Wrens were used to having official photographers from the Admiralty around, documenting their work.† On one occasion Laidlaw had even been made to pose in front of the WATU badge on the unit’s front door. In the shot, she smiles serenely while staring at the chessboard on the badge, as if enjoying the afterglow of victory. These photographs were not intended for the public eye, but for record-keeping.
Saidman, by contrast, was a newspaperman whose father and three brothers were also professional photographers. Saidman’s dramatic pictures appeared not only in the Daily Herald, but also alongside a sparkling article in the glossy and, at the time, widely popular Illustrated magazine, under the headline ‘Behind the Atlantic Battle: A school where they devise new tactics to beat the U-boats’.
‘Go to sea with Britain’s anti-submarine groups,’ Whinnie wrote in his Illustrated article, ‘and you will hear references to “the game” and “two-minute moves”. They are referring to the Western Approaches Tactical school.’
And with that, knowledge of WATU’s work spread from the decks and hulls of the Allied warships to the dining rooms and sofas of British homes. WATU was no longer, as one newspaper article put it, ‘Hush-Hush’.13 For a moment, albeit fleeting, WATU was, as one Wren, put it, ‘famous’.14