Dan Snow's History Hit - WW2 Heroine Christian Lamb Turns 100

Episode Date: November 1, 2020

Christian Lamb has had a remarkable life. The daughter of an admiral, she served in the navy during the war and went on to become an expert in horticultural history. Dan visited her the day after her 100th birthday to learn about her wartime experiences. Subscribe to History Hit and you'll get access to hundreds of history documentaries, as well as every single episode of this podcast from the beginning (400 extra episodes). We're running live podcasts on Zoom, we've got weekly quizzes where you can win prizes, and exclusive subscriber only articles. It's the ultimate history package. Just go to historyhit.tv to subscribe. Use code 'pod1' at checkout for your first month free and the following month for just £/€/$1.

Hello everyone, welcome to Dan Snow's History. You're going to love this podcast. This is an interview with the truly remarkable Christian Lamb. She turned 100 on the day that I interviewed her and she told me all about her experiences in the Second World War. She served in the Navy during the war. She married a naval officer. She worked in the plotting room in Belfast for the Navy as her husband's convoy was under vicious attack from wolf packs and news was coming in all the time about the ship that her husband was serving on in the wind-blasted North Atlantic. It's very, very dramatic. I learned all about her wartime experiences and got a few life lessons from her as well. A total legend, a huge honour to have her

on the pod and a very happy 100th birthday to the second world war heroine Christian Lamb. This interview with Christian Lamb will shortly be up on History Hit TV. We've got lots of history documentaries up there, many of them. If you head over and use the code POD1, P-O-D-1, you get a month for free and your second month just one euro, one dollar, one pound, simple as that. So head over to historyhit.tv, watch all of our wonderful history documentaries, listen to all the back episodes of this podcast, exclusively available there, and get ready because we've got some great content coming over the next few weeks. In the meantime, enjoy Christian Lamb.

I met Christian Lamb in her apartment in the middle of London a day after she'd turned 100. As a young woman, her father was an admiral and she had no doubt that she wanted to serve. I was born in Edinburgh. My father was in a ship called HMS Tiger at the time. Famous ship. Yes, famous ship. And then we moved about following the fleet always, so we were never really settled anywhere. And was your father at Jutland on Tiger? He was at Gallipoli. OK.

And he said he was sunk three times in one day without getting his feet wet. So that was rather good. So the naval tradition was strong in your family? Oh, very, yes. And then my husband, of course, was in the Navy, so father and husband. Otherwise, that's all, really. And did you ever imagine that you would join the Navy when you were growing up? No, I never heard of such a thing.

Christian was keen to join up. When I was 18, I left school and went to France for a year. When I came back, my father had ordered me to come back because of the war. I hadn't read a paper for weeks or months. And I got back at almost the last ferry across to England and went up to stay with my grandmother in Scotland and I hadn't heard about the Wrens I heard there was a war so I thought I'd better be a nurse so I did some first aid but when it came to bandaging stumps I realized it wasn't suitable for me couldn't possibly do it so then I decided I then heard about the Wrens and because my grandmother was teaching me to play bridge,

one of her neighbours was Colonel Lawton, who was the brother of Vera Lawton Matthews, who turned out to be the new head of the Wrens in London. So she restarted the Wrens, having been just old enough to serve in the First World War as a Wren officer. So she was a perfect person to start it up. Why were you so determined to serve? Because you didn't have to, did you?

Well, we all had to do our bit. I mean, it was obvious that I had been planning to go to Oxford, but I said, no, I can't do that until we won the war first. Did you do that because everyone else was doing it or because you were sort of passionately opposed to fascism and Hitler? I'm a very patriotic person anyway, and I suppose I was brought up in the Navy. I felt very strongly about the Germans.

And, you know, you can't exactly... I'll never forget the moment when we'd have... The whole of the coast opposite England was absolutely occupied by Germans from Norway to Spain. And you could see they were almost touchable across the channel. We all felt, and that was when Churchill was so good, because he said, you know, we'll fight on the beaches, we'll fight in the country, we'll never surrender. We were all like that. In 1939, I joined, and then there was a phony war took place

for the first few months after the war. The first thing that happened was they put the air raid warning on by mistake. Everybody was terrified and rushed to their shelters and so on. Then after that, the theatres all came back again. And we went to the theatre and, you know, great fun. Was it rather exciting? Was it fun being a Wren in the imperial capital during the war? I never seemed to expect to be bombed myself.

There were actually a row of houses, a wrenery where we lived, was in a place called Broadhurst Gardens, near Finchley Road, and that had a stick of bombs which fell on the other side of the road to us, luckily. We had two rows of houses like most London places do, and every third house disappeared.

It was amazing. We were in a semi-basement, sort of double bunks, sleeping in these basement flats, and the French window which opened up onto the garden blew open into it, and this awful smell of cordite and stuff came in. It was a very dramatic moment. Was that terrifying, or was it rather exciting to be in that? Well, I realised immediately I wasn't dead. I was quite lucky. And what was the spirit like for the wrens? I mean, you felt like you were in a war, presumably.

You were serving in uniform, and you were under enemy attack. Yes, and I can remember seeing dogfights over Trafalgar Square at lunchtime. You know, see these fighting up above there, it's extraordinary. I didn't feel the least, I don't know why the little bits of bomb stuff didn't come down on our heads. They didn't. And what about the Wrenss was it a bit of a rude awakening for someone who'd who'd um were you mixing with all sorts of different people from different places very interesting i like that and i shared a room with three people one girl who wore

her vest outside her bra the other way around the most peculiar way of doing it and i'm sorry to say she smelt drama you know one got used to these things. Was it nice to be mixing with different crowds? Oh, yes, very interesting. But I started there and I behaved rather badly. I was always late. I was supposed to be in by nine o'clock. You'd hardly got out by nine o'clock. Ridiculous.

So we had a dreadful time. I was constantly made to scrub the floor as a punishment. And then I escaped from this place and went to work at the Wren headquarters in Trafalgar Square, which were much better. Was the war a time of freedom compared to the life you might otherwise have had? Yes, indeed it was. We were absolutely free and that was unusual. I mean, I would have been sent to some awful place to learn how to iron and how to wash and cook and things, you know. Whereas when I came back from France, there I was free. It was great fun. We had a lovely time. Went to the theatre a great deal too. During the Blitz when they had a... you could hear the whistle

of the bombs coming nearer and nearer, and the whole audience would blinch like that and sort of lean over, then it would pass me, all right here now. Amazing. I had decided I didn't want to be a coder, which I had originally volunteered for, because I thought it sounded mysterious and interesting, but it was terribly boring,

and I discovered plotting was much more fun, so I volunteered for that, and after I got my commission, and discovered plotting was much more fun. So I volunteered for that. And after I got my commission, I was promoted to an officer, having been an ordinary Wren. Then I was a leading Wren as well before that. And I was sent down to do this amazing job at Coal House Fort,

which was degaussing. Do you know about degaussing? It's about mines and torpedoes and things, isn't it? It's about measuring the ships for their magnetic emission. And that was done by this range, which I now had to run the office. I was a leading ren age 20. It was really quite exciting. But after I was there for about a year, and then I went down to Plymouth,

and there I was plotting officer in Mount Wise, which was wonderful. So when you were with all the ren, did they bully you a bit because your dad was an admiral? No, they didn't. I didn't think I bothered to tell them. I didn't think they noticed much anyway. No, nobody bothered though at that. And what about when you were working alongside men? Did they respect you or did they think that you guys were all a bit lightweight? Well, they didn't.

No, when I was thinking particularly in the Wrens place in Belfast where we had watches, we worked in watches, and there was always an officer with us, a male officer, and he used to sleep underneath the desk during night. We had to wake him up one time to send a message, a signal to somebody who was too near the rocks or something. We did everything we could to wake him up, and we couldn't. So we had to send the signal anyway.

So you actually didn't need the officer after all? No. But on the whole, you found the men were very positive towards you ladies? They liked us. We took over some of their jobs, and they were delighted. Tell me what plotting involves. What plotting involves, we had a huge, big operations room in Plymouth, Mount Wise,

and it was divided into two. The RAF had one lot, Coastal Command had one side, and there they had four WAFs running their plot, which was a big flat table with a sort of wax top on it, and you could put all the aeroplanes on.

A big map. Yes. We had the same thing on our side, but the whole of the west coast of England and the whole of the Atlantic was on the wall opposite. It was very exciting. We had all the convoys, all the huge ships, the liners and things like that all going at about 26 knots

and convoys going at about three knots. Everything had to be kept up to date and which was very exciting but the plat the the flat um the radar plot because i'd never heard of radar when i went down in charge of this plot had to have it explained to me you know ridiculous anyway there it was radar plot there were four girls each side, on each side of the table with telephones and they were in communication with the radar stations around the coast and they took us to see a radar station so we had some idea what was going on which made it much more interesting and lucky. I should ask, was your dad rather proud of you serving in the Navy in his footsteps? I

don't really know, he used to take me out to lunch sometimes. I remember we went out to lunch. He always used to take me to a rather dreary place not far from Harrods. And I said to him one time, do we have to go to this place all with Dad? He said, where do you want to go, the Ritz? So I said, yes. So we went. Much better, yes. Plymouth was very badly bombed, so you must have been bombed there as well.

No, it was bombed before I got there I'm glad to say so when we got there it was more or less flattened but we made a lot of friends with submariners there there we did have a lot of boyfriends and parties and things

which was great fun Submariners must have been very brave they suffered terribly in the war didn't they and also parties in their ships were rather fun because the mess the officers' mess was so small. And I remember one time Eve and I, she was running with me, and we used to wear our evening dresses for weekend parties and things.

We only had two each, so we used to exchange them. And one time the officer said to us, why don't you wear our dinner jackets in exchange? We're so tired of your evening dresses. I can't remember whether we did or not. So that must have been great fun. It was great fun, yeah. And then you got posted up north, did you? Well, then the whole of Mount Wise,

the whole of the Western Approaches headquarters was moved up to Liverpool. And I moved on from various other places before I ended up in Belfast, which was another very interesting plot, because all the convoys would gather together and get mixed up and ready to sail from just north of Belfast in a place called Rockall, out of rock there, I think, which is a place they all gathered, and then they set off. And what was Belfast like during the war?

Well, Belfast was very good. There was no rationing, so we had masses of food there. Nevertheless, we went down to visit Dublin from time to time by train, and they always searched everything you bought on your way back. It was very difficult. While she was in Belfast, she met her future husband. His ship came in for repairs, and we were in Belfast Castle. We could see ships coming in and out all the time. But anyway, the officers of the ship had their, what do you call it? They were very well trained. And their first thing they did was to ring up the renner

and ask us all to have a drink. So we all went down and had a drink. You must have been having drinks every single night. I've got a very good head. I'm worried about your liver. You'll never make old bones. I've got a very good head. I'm worried about your liver. You'll never make old bones. I'm making old bones, aren't I now? So every night you're going down for a drink with some new ship that's in town. Well, only this particular ship I remember. They didn't come in very often for repairs,

but this one had had storm damage from the ghastly weather in the Atlantic. They came in and I suppose the ship had about, I don't know, half a dozen officers, but half a dozen of us. We all had the party, you know. And ten days later, we got engaged. So it was quite a surprise to everybody and ourselves. Love at first sight? More or less. more or less land a viking longship on island shores scramble over the dunes of ancient egypt and avoid the poisoner's cup in renaissance florence each week on echoes of history we

uncover the epic stories that inspire assassin's creed we're stepping into feudal japan in our special series chasing shadows Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week. But that was, you hear stories, was there something about the war? Was that normal in peacetime or was it something about the war everyone just wanted to get on with it?

Oh, people all did things in a hurry in the war, yes, definitely. You never knew when people would be there much more. They'd be dead or something, or move away, get sent to India or somewhere. It was always a perfectly good arrangement to do things in a hurry. And it worked out. I mean, nowadays, people don't get married until they're about 30. Then they live together for about 10 years, and then they start to fight. Whereas if they'd started to get to know each other, they wouldn't have got to know each other very well, but it would have been better. They'd stayed together and then they wouldn't get divorced. They wouldn't be lonely. And, you know, it's very sad nowadays. And so you were married for a long

time? Yes, we were married until John died, which was about 50 years. I don't know. I can't remember. You could have married the Polish guy. Why did you choose him? What was it about the cut of his jib? I don't know. I suppose it was something about him I liked. That's all I can tell you. And so you told everyone you were getting married. Yes. And then he disappeared off.

Well, then he had to take, he went to sail off to escort this convoy, O-N-S-5, which was going from Rockall, just above Belfast, Well, then he had to sail off to escort this convoy, ONS 5, which was going from Rockall, just above Belfast, into the Atlantic. And we were plotting it, of course, across the Atlantic. And they could go so far with air escort. After that, there was a great gap, and the Canadians couldn't start from the other side. There was this, what was called a gap or something.

And so when they got to that, the U-boats thought that was the best place to attack. And of course, there was this huge and dreadful climate all the time. There was a moment when the ONS-5 scattered. They all had to be rounded up again and brought back to, and then their speed was terribly slow.

They were the perfect target for the U-boats. But apparently, I forget exactly the numbers, the ships, I think they lost 12 ships out of the convoy, but they also managed to sink eight U-boats, I think, and damage a whole lot more. And George John's ship, the Oroby, rammed one, which was very exciting. That's why they lost their bow, you know.

So you were plotting, you were moving the little marks on this big map, and it was your husband's ship that you were plotting? Yes, and we were receiving signals all the time. It wasn't like if we had television, we'd be able to see the battle. Otherwise, we'd be just waiting for signals all the time to hear what was going on. And the news from each... It was just luck being able to pick up the news from various places but

yes I was plotting the battle and my friends all tried to make me go home but I couldn't I had to stay there and then when they'd rammed it and so on they could only go off at I think they had the speed of 12 knots which they could just about do to get to the other side and have a new bow fitted. So you were in the plotting room when the message came through, Oribi has rammed a U-boat? Well, exactly. Maybe it wasn't quite put like that, but whatever happened, yes. So you were aware of everything that was going on? Pretty well, pretty well, yes.

Was that terrifying? Yes, it must have been. And I had him just secured as man. We're'm going to lose him again it's been it's been a very bad arrangement and did getting married change anything did you you suddenly didn't affect your employment with the with the with the wrens well um it only only i didn't get married until 1940 um 43 i think it was. We were married in December of 43. And then I had this baby in 44,

so I came out of the rooms then. And then it must have been rather emotional seeing your husband again after the... Yes, we managed to see each other's parents somehow too. They didn't like each other much either, which was quite funny. But my mother did very well. She arranged for me to have the church she arranged in London for the 15th of December,

because John said he had a boiler clean at that moment and he'd probably get a week's leave. So she said, right, that's the date. And she booked the church, and then she bought a second... Everything was rationed, you see. Clothes, everything like that to do with weddings so she bought me a second hand velvet white wedding dress no way of trying it on i wasn't anywhere near so um bought that i think it cost her seven pounds which is very good value

she sold it on again immediately after the wedding it It's all right. And lots of women that you served, it wouldn't have been as lucky. I mean, you must have had friends that lost husbands and boyfriends at sea. I had one friend who was bombed and killed. She was my great friend. It was horrid. It was very horrid.

She was bombed. Then in the inheritance, imagine, killed, just that. It was extraordinary. And so you always felt that you were up at the sharp end of the war. It never felt the war was distant and something apart from you.

No, and what's more, I did a job which I enjoyed and which was useful, I felt. It was useful doing the degaussing. It saved people's lives from being blown up by magnetic mines. And plotting was interesting because if you saw a radar blip, which might have been a submarine or

a motorboat from Germany on the southwest coast you know then you would send the motorboat out to investigate so it always felt useful. And then speaking of useful you so you helped win the Battle of the Atlantic then you helped victory at D-Day as well. Well that was very exciting because I was working on the actual maps of the landings there were five landings as you probably know, all those places on the Normandy coast and of course they had

to be deadly secret because we were trying to persuade the Germans that we were going to use the Pas-de-Calais and not the Normandy coast and so everything had to be very, very secret. So I had my own little office in the basement and nobody else was in it but me. And the whole of the walls were covered

in those huge ordnance survey maps of France. And I had to draw a map of every compass bearing like that of every from each landing place to see what people would be able to see like a new um in a motorway or a train service or a chateau or something like that on every all over france so it's quite an interesting job and i hoped it was i don't know whether they were used by maps, but there they were. So these are maps that when the men landed on the beaches, they could sort of orientate themselves. When the ship arrived in the place where it was the actual landing place, they would look at my maps in theory and be able to identify where they were.

That was the plan. Was that rather a lonely job or was it a good team working on it? It was quite interesting because I was in this place which was opposite the horse guards in Whitehall and Churchill was working in the top of this enormous building and we could sometimes see him going up and down stairs which was very exciting. But otherwise it was just the most amazing place where they had these extraordinary

inventions for everything. They invented these wonderful harbours which they made and took over. There were hundreds and hundreds of pieces of them. Each piece had to be made in Bombay, a different harbour, and sunk below the wall so it couldn't be seen from the air. And then eventually it all had to be put together. Extraordinary behaviour. Did people chat in the War Office? Did you hear about the Mulberry Harbours and things like that? Or did everyone keep very stum and... Absolutely stum. Everybody. Nobody. We never spoke to each other. I never mentioned. I

didn't tell John until years after. Ridiculous. I don't suppose he would have noticed anyway. I didn't sort of talk about it. I didn't. And what was it like seeing Churchill? What do you remember about watching him? Just admiration and excitement, you know. He was much too busy to talk to anybody, rushing up and downstairs. But I'm sure he was busy talking to all the important people. But we were just noticing, you know. Do you feel that the women who worked in those buildings and worked everywhere,

do you think the women have been sort of a bit overlooked when we talk about the war, commemorate the war? It's difficult to tell because an awful lot of them did the most boring jobs, like looking after the rennery and cooking and boiling water, that sort of thing, you know. But I think, I mean, when you think of the job that they did with the perisher's course, which was the biggest training, the most sophisticated training for captains of submarines, it was called the Perisher's Course,

and the man who ran it was a distinguished submariner captain, DSO, DSC, everything you can think of. He ran it, and he ran it with half a dozen sailors normally to help him with the course and all the equipment and so on. And he decided one day he could perhaps replace them with Wrens. And I found one of the first Wrens who'd done it with him was a girl who lived in Cornwall and I met her and got her to write in the description of how she'd done it all. So I put it in my book. So lots of Wrens and WAFs did all sorts of interesting jobs. Exactly. Amazing jobs in cleaning torpedoes.

I mean, they did all sorts of jobs like that. And servicing machinery. They were all trained to do it. And they loved being given these interesting jobs to do. But after the war, all the men would go down to the British Legion and have a few beers. Did the women meet up as well, do you think? No, that was a very bad period for women, because they were all left behind, rather fed up, you know. And some of them had got married and forgotten what their house had looked like, you know, by the time they came back. It was like

someone knew all over again. I mean, it was a problem, I think. And did your husband talk to you much about what it was like on the grey North Atlantic, the giant waves? Yes, he had, his first command was rather exciting. He had one of those, the American Lentus 50 battered old sort of destroyers. He had one of those as his first command. And he used to go out from Edinburgh. He was actually in the fourth and we had a house that overlooked the river. And so when he went out every day to patrol the... I don't mean parole, I mean... Patrol. Patrol, the North Sea.

He would come in again in the evening and he would hoist up something onto the mast to tell me what time he'd be back for dinner. So that was quite fun. Not a bad posting. Her husband had one very dramatic moment in the war when his ship actually rammed a German U-boat. They'd been at sea constantly and so they'd given half an hour or an hour to rest and he was resting below the bridge and his ship at that moment rammed this other this this u-boat and he tried to get out

of bed but found that his feet were on the wall and where all the bottles were so he had vanished within a few seconds he was on his feet and up on the bridge and there they um he describes how the extraordinary the ship the the u-boat seemed to be on top of his ship almost and somehow managed to slide it off somehow and it sank eventually but um it was it was a very dramatic moment for him i can't exactly use his words to describe it but he wrote he wrote quite a few things about his experience how he got his dsc and all that sort of thing now that you're 100 what advice have you got for people that seek to have a life of adventure like you've had?

Plenty to drink, to start. And what else would I say? I think keep busy, keep enjoying yourself, find something to do. I mean, the moment I've taken up painting, which I love, I've got a really lovely Russian girl who gives me lessons every week. That's fun. And all sorts of things are fun. Play bridge. I mean, not necessarily bridge, but something that you enjoy. I don't know.

I find I'm always busy doing something. And that's so important. Otherwise, I would fall to bits, I think. Wonderful. Very nice. Thank you very much. It's very nice of you. We must take on what your book is called.

I only joined for that. And where can people get it? At the website. www.christianlam.co.uk There you are. www.christianlam.co.uk Brilliant. Thank you very much. Well, very nice to see you.

Christian is still looking for a publisher. Hi everybody, just a quick message at the end of this podcast. I'm currently sheltering in a small windswept building on a piece of rock in the Bristol channel called Landy. I'm here to make a podcast. I'm here enduring weather that frankly is apocalyptic because I want to get some great podcast material for you guys. In return, I've got a little tiny favour to ask.

If you could go to wherever you get your podcasts, if you could give it a five-star rating, if you could share it, if you could give it a review, I'd really appreciate that. Then from the comfort of your own homes, you'll be doing me a massive favour. Then more people will listen to the podcast, we can do more and more ambitious things, and I can spend more of my time getting pummeled. Thank you.