Pamela Milligan's WRNS Records

Six weeks ago, I saw a very long and effusive obituary of someone called Fanny Hugill (nee Gore Brown). Hugill was a Wren in the women's navy in Eisenhower's headquarters unit for D-Day. In this obituary, there was a resume of what Hugill had done around D Day and thereafter. Amazingly, Hugill was probably the senior officer of my mother, Pamella Milligan, who was in Eisenhower's HQ unit in the run up to D-Day. Shortly after D-Day, my mother crossed the channel and followed the unit through France and into Germany. My mother was the secretary to a Royal Navy officer who dealt with the liaison between the US Navy and the British Navy for D-Day operations and subsequent resupply for fight in Europe.

Pamela's obituary followed my knowledge of what my mother did! I dug out my mother's photograph album that tells this story. My mother's war story started in Southwick House, a country mansion overlooking Portsmouth, where Eisenhower set up his HQ. The people that worked there were incarcerated! It was so secret, I remember my mother saying, there was no communication outside the HQ. They couldn't go in or out, write or send letters. They were hermetically sealed. Mother told me of some documents she was never allowed to let out of her sight night or day - coordinating US and British navy ships to avoid them running into each other.