Patricia Owtram – My Secret War – A WW2 Wren remembers – book signing & talk

We are proud to host Patricia Owtram, a remarkable woman who served with the WRNS during WWII. Patricia used her skills with the German language to intercept top secret German messages for decoding at Bletchley Park.

Come and listen to Patricia’s story in her own words and get your book signed!

A unique opportunity to hear one of last Special Duties Y service Wrens in Conversation at the Wren Museum/Western Approaches Museum 

Raised in a Lancashire country house in the 1920s, by the late 1930s her family took in two Austrian Jewish refugees and the sisters quickly become fluent in German – which would go on to shape their lives forever.

When war broke out in 1939, Patricia was keen to leave school and join the war effort, arriving in London in time for Blitz, following her 18th birthday she was snapped up by the Wrens in Liverpool at the Liver building and posted to top-secret listening stations along the British coastline.  As a young Petty Officer Secretly Intercepting German shipping radio to supply Bletchley Park with the Enigma code it so desperately needed and any plain language heard to the Royal Navy. 

Her sister, Jean’s quick brain for crossword solving landed her a secretive role as Code & Cipher Officer in the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry. At just 18 years of age, she was posted to Cairo, before moving on to Italy to support allied agents and aid Partisan efforts against the Nazis.

With their father Colonel Owtram captured and held in a POW camp in Thailand, the severe lack of communication with the girls heightened their anxiety, never truly certain if he was still alive.

As the sisters continued to demonstrate their outstanding intelligence and resilience, the tide of war gradually began to turn in Britain’s favour.

Drawing on their diaries and letters of the time Patricia and Jean have pieced together the story of their secret war, a story of persistence, comradeship and fighting spirit shown by the everyday British people fiercely determined to bring down the Nazis.

“We are both delighted and surprised that after all these years the story of our secret war is to be published, our hope is that this book will go some way in further commemorating the essential and active contributions made by women during the Second World War.” 

Patricia and Jean Owtram.