WREN OFFICER TO RETIRE

Press, Volume XCVI, Issue 28435, 15 November 1957, Page 2

WREN OFFICER TO RETIRE

Superintendent Of Service

“The Press” Special Service

AUCKLAND, November 14.

Second-Officer Mary Morton, superintendent of the Women’s Royal New Zealand Naval Service, H.M.N.Z.S. Philomel, for the last eight years, will retire from her position early next month. Miss Morton has had a long career in the Wrens and has, she says, enjoyed every minute of it. She joined the service in August, 1942, as a cook in Wellington, and was transferred to H.M.N.Z.S. Philomel in December as a Leading Wren. Her job was catering for the officers in the wardroom in Philomel until 1944. when she was appointed as quarters officer “in the so-called hostel, a collection of Army huts on Mt. Victoria,” as Miss Morton described it. In 1946 Miss Morton relieved Miss Joyce Duthie, the war-time superintendent of Wrens al Philomel base, finishing in the same year when the service dis banded as a war-time unit.

Although she returned to her home in Christchurch and settled down in a job, Miss Morton was anxious to return to the service and in 1949 came back as Wren divisional officer at Philomel. She was later quarters officer of the new Wren hostel, Elizabeth House, and in 1953 became superintendent of the Wrens. Later that year she was promoted to secondofficer. “It is an excellent life in the Navy,’’ said Miss Morton yesterday. “Jobs have far more interest than those outside. That of writer, for instance, the naval equivalent of secretary, has much more variety than its civilian counterpart. And in cooking lhe i girls have their full training here, and can cook for dinner parties for the hospital, or for the Wren hostel in a wide variety of different types of cooking.” Miss Morton will return to Christchurch early in December, just 15 years after first joining the service.

Miss Morton’s place will be taken by Second-Officer Marion McFarland, of Napier. SecondOfficer McFarland joined the service as a writer and is quarters officer at Elizabeth House.