AA - absolutely, but they were specially trained to carry it off: woe betide you if you even thought of saying anything. You have just given me a terrible shock as I recognise this particular intake of WRENOs.
Fierce and fearless to all rates and ranks (and with a withering look that disarmed Flag officers at ten paces), they used to punch above
their supposed equivalent rank and were not subject to the Naval Discipline Act but to their own very scary Commandant.
Among the recollections passing the censor is a particular memory of the second on the left second row during an assessed serial giving one of her instructing officers an A1 telling off for unofficerlike language.
P G Wodehouse has a marvellous description of flummoxedness - he said that he had once seen a woman deterring an attacking dog by opening a parasol in its face. The instructing officer's reaction was just like that dog's.
It would be inconceivable that any of them would have graduated like their foreign counterparts - they never slung their handbags from the shoulder but carried them like HM. However on the positive side, stockings were uniform; tights were infra dig.
And yet a strange transformation used to come over them after mess dinners when it was time for mess games...
And my goodness me...[edited for adult content]
We lost something special when we lost the WRNS.