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The Birds That Wouldn’t Sing: Remembering the D-Day Wrens - cover image

Copyright

Justin Smith

Published On

2024-12-19

ISBN

Paperback978-1-80511-419-2
Hardback978-1-80511-420-8
PDF978-1-80511-421-5
HTML978-1-80511-423-9
EPUB978-1-80511-422-2

Language

  • English

Print Length

562 pages (xxii+540)

Dimensions

Paperback156 x 39 x 234 mm(6.14" x 1.54" x 9.21")
Hardback156 x 43 x 234 mm(6.14" x 1.69" x 9.21")

Weight

Paperback1055g (37.21oz)
Hardback1242g (43.81oz)

Media

Illustrations117

OCLC Number

1482161652

LCCN

2023513462

THEMA

  • NHWR7
  • NHW
  • 1DDU
  • DNBH

BISAC

  • HIS027000
  • HIS027090
  • HIS058000
  • BIO008000
  • HIS015070

LCC

  • D810.W7

Keywords

  • Wrens
  • D-Day
  • Archival History
  • Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay
  • Operation Overlord
  • Women's Military Service
  • World War II
  • Women's Royal Naval Service
  • Family History
  • Letters
  • Memoir

The Birds That Wouldn’t Sing

Remembering the D-Day Wrens

This compelling book offers a unique perspective on D-Day and its aftermath through the personal testimonies of the Wrens who worked for Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay during Operation Overlord. Drawing on public and private archives, it reveals the untold stories of the women serving in the Women’s Royal Naval Service (WRNS), balancing their wartime contributions with the strictures of secrecy and censorship. The narrative is framed by letters from these Wrens, which provide intimate glimpses into both the personal and professional challenges they faced during World War II.

The book captures the atmosphere of war as experienced by British auxiliaries. It highlights the Wrens' vital but often overlooked role in the D-Day planning effort and beyond, revealing the surreal coexistence of the ordinary and extraordinary in wartime. Focusing in particular on the wartime archive of one of the Wrens, Joan Prior, the author brings to life the contribution of these women to the war effort, while also offering insights into British, French, and German morale and culture. This thoughtful and moving account adds depth to the broader historical narrative of World War II, making it a valuable addition for both the general reader and the professional historian.

Endorsements

A thoroughly engaging and moving read with a powerful and beautifully curated narrative - through the voices of the Wrens - that provides new insights into the workings and war experience of the ANCXF and their interactions with the communities they lived and worked in.

Dr Hannah West

Centre for Military Women’s Research, Anglia Ruskin University

Contributors

Justin Smith

(author)
Professor of Cinema and Television History at De Montfort University
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4141-9150

Justin Smith is Professor of Cinema and Television History at De Montfort University Leicester, where he is Director of the Research and Innovation Institute in Arts, Design and Performance. Since 2010 he has been Principal Investigator on the AHRC-funded projects Channel 4 and British Film Culture (2010-14), Fifty Years of British Music Video (2015-2018), Transforming Middlemarch (2022-3) and Adapting Jane Austen for Educational and Public Engagement (2024-5). He is the author of Withnail and Us: Cult Film and Film Cults in British Cinema (I.B. Tauris, 2010), and co-author (with Sue Harper) of British Film Culture in the 1970s: The Boundaries of Pleasure (EUP, 2012). With Karen Savage, he is the co-author of ‘Deference, Deferred: Rejourn as Practice in Familial War Commemoration’, in Pinchbeck, M. and Westerside, A. (eds) (2018), Staging Loss. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97970-0_3 . Smith’s interest in digital innovations in the archive is illustrated by https://middlemarch.dmu.ac.uk/ (2023) which is considered to be the first digital genetic edition of a screen adaptation of 19th Century literature. Smith is an archival historian with special interests in post-war British cinema, television and popular music, exploring issues of cultural identity, popular memory and family history. https://www.dmu.ac.uk/about-dmu/academic-staff/technology/justin-smith/justin-timothy-smith.aspx