ON FURLOUGH

Evening Post, Volume CXXXIX, Issue 63, 15 March 1945, Page 10

ON FURLOUGH

AUCKLANDER AN ENGLISH

WREN OFFICER

After an absence of more than six years in England, Second Officer E. C. M. Calvert, W.R.N.S., has arrived in Auckland on six weeks' furlough prior to taking up a staff appointment as air engineer officer in Sydney. Travelling by way of America and Hawaii, she was actually several weeks in Sydney before coming to spend home leave with her mother, Mrs. C. Gilbert, of Omahu Road, Remuera, and her sister in Hastings.

It was in 1938 that Second Officer Calvert v \vent to England in the hope of joining her husband, who was a C.P.O. telegraphist. On the outbreak of war she first worked as a V.A. and then 1 went into an aircraft factory, where she qualified as an inspector. Joining the Wrens in 1941, she was first engaged on a secret job, but when her . aircraft factory experience became known she was transferred to the Fleet Air Arm to train Wrens in aircraft checking duties. She received her commission as an aircraft engineer officer in April, 1943, and worked for' three months as a divisional and entertainment officer at a newly-opened air mechanics establishment for Wrens. HEALTH AFFECTED BY BLAST. The final transfer in England was to the Admiralty as technical. officer in the shipping section of the Fleet Air Arm. Her duties frequently took her to various ports to meet ships bringing in American aircraft, and she did a great. deal of travelling about England, besides meeting many inter-: estmg people. It was not until her health was badly affected, as the result of blast from a flying bomb which landed outside her window, that she was forced to give up her work and. after being under medical care for some time, left England in November. Like so many other New Zealanders. Second Officer Calvert received a warn) welcome from Miss Nola Luxford and her Anzac Club in New York, where she spent ten days on her journey home. Her trim navy uniform as an English Wren officer, with its saxe blue braiding-, smart tricorne hat and badge, attracted a great deal of interest in New York, where she was amused on one occasion to hear herself described as "a Salvation Army lass." "But it was my thin black stockings that aroused the greatest envy and admiration," smiled Second Officer Calvert. "It was so long since anything like them had been seen."