100-year-old WW2 heroine Dorothea: 'As soon as the war finished we were told to go back to the kitchen'

Dorothea Barron is 100 years old. She turned 16 in October 1940, during World War II, while she was still attending school in Twickenham. After leaving school, she immediately joined the Wrens – the Women’s Royal Naval Service – to serve as a visual signaller, despite officially being too short to sign up. 

Dorothea served at the allied base at HMS Hopetoun in Port Edgar, Scotland, trained in communicating with naval vessels using Morse code and semaphore. The combined operations training centre on the Firth of Forth was also where British and allied navies carried out training in preparation for the D-Day landings. She is now one of the few surviving Wrens who fought in World War II. 

After the war, Dorothea married RAF navigator Andrew Barron, who flew more than 40 missions with the 223 Squadron. They were married from 1948 until Andrew’s death in 2021. They had two daughters, Fiona and Kati, and Dorothea now has four grandchildren and four great grandchildren.  

Dorothea has taught both art and yoga, which she still practices every day, and celebrated turning 100 last year with a ride in a Spitfire. She welcomed Big Issue to her home in Hertfordshire, where she has lived since 1957, for a special Letter to My Younger Self interview to mark 80 years since VE Day. 

We never had any money growing up. Nobody did. I grew up in Hampton, which is the village from which Hampton Court Palace is named. So Hampton Court Palace was where I walked with the dogs every morning before school. My childhood was very happy because of my wonderful grandmothers – one of whom was an absolute darling; the other preferred my sister because she had my grandfather’s nose – and my maiden aunts, who spoiled me terribly.  

I loved school and couldn’t wait to start. I was super intelligent for my age as a child, reading the newspaper at three. My father recognised I had this ability and when I started to learn Latin, he was over the moon. I won a scholarship to Twickenham County School. I was in every school sports team. Every Saturday morning I’d be on the train back to school to play tennis, rounders, hockey or netball.  

My father had lost his leg when he was a baby. He’d gone wandering in London and been hit by a tram. In those days, if your leg was crushed they just chopped it off. He was always bad tempered. He would hit us with a rolled-up newspaper. We got whacked regularly – there was always a cane on the table at mealtimes. If we giggled, we’d get whacked. And of course, children look at the cane, start giggling from nervousness. But they don’t realise things like that, these idiots of men who ruled supreme in those days.

My mother was very pretty. She had dimples and my sister Daphne took after her. My mother always told us to eat everything on our plates, because some poor sailor was risking his life to bring that food to us. Every mealtime we would hear it. She was a rotten cook, though. And why she put up with my father, I don’t know. But women did back then. I was sorry my father died in the war before I was 16 because I had promised myself he was never going to touch me again after I turned 16 – I had vowed to whack him right back and I would have threatened to take his stump away so he couldn’t walk. I would have done it, too, because I thought he was a bully. 

We were on tenterhooks before the war. I still remember the first time the siren went, because a plane was sighted and somebody panicked. I went belting upstairs to a cupboard which held our gas masks. We were all issued with these square boxes we had to carry everywhere. When war broke out in 1939, I was studying for my matric [matriculation exams]. It was frightfully important. You had to pass five compulsory subjects. If you failed even one, you had to take the whole lot again the next year. 

Sometimes I would not get to school until after lunch because of all the air raids. I used to get the 8:24 train and change at Teddington, then walk a mile to school. But the train lines were bombed. After that, I would cycle instead. But every time a siren went, wardens would come out and tell us to get into the nearest shelter. We’d dive in with our books then get back on our bikes and ride on until there was another air raid.  

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We didn’t have much sense of what might lie ahead. We just thought, oh well, it’s arrived at last. Because we were sick and tired of the Germans trying to push us around – and I think we were relieved we were going to get back at them. They tried to bomb London into submission. When London was set on fire by Nazi bombs, we were in Hampton, which is along the River Thames. We could see the sky glowing red. A crowd of us kids got on our bikes and thought we could cycle and get a closer look. After miles and miles, we didn’t seem to be getting any nearer. That’s when we realised it must be one hell of a fire.  

I used to sit and work by candlelight in the shelter I helped to dig in our garden. It had a corrugated iron roof and turf from the garden on top so it didn’t shine up in the moonlight. At first I’d work by torchlight, but then we couldn’t get batteries any more. But I still passed my matric. Being right by the Thames, the German bombers would follow the Thames all the way to London. It was lit up like a highway for them. 

We felt sorry for the German people. They were suffering even worse than we were with lack of food. So we had compassion for the German people, but not the Nazis. There was a difference. The Nazis were absolutely wicked. Everybody in the country was dedicated to keeping the Nazis out of England. They tried to bomb us into submission. But it didn’t work. We repelled them and we wanted to get rid of them out of Europe.  

I’d tell my younger self that life is a continual battle. You’ve just got to fight it, you won’t get anywhere if you succumb. That’s what life has taught me. I’m afraid you’ve got to have fighting spirit all your life. Never envy anyone, just stand up and make the best of what you have.  

I was dying to get involved but wasn’t tall enough to join the Wrens. We had to be 5ft 3in and I’m only 5ft 2in. So I cut cardboard and shoved it in the heels of my shoes to push my height up, and I had this great mop of hair that I brushed up high. They realised I wasn’t tall enough but could see how keen I was and took pity on me. I would have got in somehow. I’d have done anything to get in. We were so patriotic. It’s a thing people try to squash these days, but there’s no harm in wanting the best for your country.  

I went straight from my school uniform into my naval uniform. But all the naval uniforms were too big. We had lovely big WRNS raincoats but mine nearly touched the ground so they issued me with a sailor’s gilet which finished at my waist and had long sleeves. Whenever one of my fellow Wrens was going out with somebody at night, they would say, “Can I borrow your bum freezer?” It looked much smarter than the WRNS raincoats. We were so friendly together. There was no bitchiness. We were a group of girls who were desperate not to let the Nazis in. I was so enthusiastic. 

It was very fulfilling work. We felt we were contributing to the peace of the world. My day-to-day work was taking watch at the signal station, keeping an eye on ships coming into the harbour and signalling between them and the port authority in Morse code and semaphore. We also tried out the Mulberry Harbour, which was an artificial flooring designed for the Normandy landings so soldiers could jump out of the boats with all their munitions and wouldn’t sink into the loose sand. They were terribly brave.  

VE Day was absolutely overwhelming. We felt as though the whole country had come together to save us from the Nazis. We had fought back and made sure they hadn’t put a foot in England, the bastards. It was a feeling of overwhelming relief. We’d spent every ha’penny fighting.  

As soon as the war finished, we were told to go back to the kitchen. It was so demoralising. We were totally ignored and disregarded, treated as non-people after the war. The moment the war in Japan ended, they wanted mothers, typists, cooks. Keep your uniforms, here are a few clothing coupons, now off you go. I bought one tweed suit. That’s it. I had to make everything else – you could make two pairs of cami knickers from a yard of material if you cut it on the slant. We all became very good at dressmaking. 

I married Andrew in 1948 and we were married until he died in 2021. What’s the secret to a long marriage? You have got to learn to give and take – and find patience you never had before! I unknowingly first met Andrew at my sister’s wedding, because his family lived next door to the bridegroom. But my mother wouldn’t let me stay for the wedding party afterwards – I had to go home and wait on her and my grandmas and aunts and cook for them. Then, when Daphne and Victor’s first baby was born, Andrew was asked to be godfather and I was godmother. So that’s how we met properly.  

We went to Paris on our honeymoon. We stopped over for a night on the east coast of England – and when we were at the station getting on the train, we still had confetti on us. Andrew and I were sitting in a compartment on our own and suddenly a young child and his father opened the door – the father saw the confetti on us and dragged the child away. I can still remember the look of consternation on his face. I don’t know what he thought we were going to get up to… but we didn’t! 

We moved home 12 times in the first year we were married. We were travelling all over the country with Andrew in the RAF. I remember living in two rooms – a bedroom plus the use of a shared kitchen and bathroom when we first got married. In a place called Erdington in Birmingham. It was horrid. We went out and bought a caravan and parked it on the airfield. So our married life started in a caravan. We had an old Daimler car, which Andrew bought secondhand and had been kept in a garage through the war. It was in tatters, but he bought some army blankets and we re-lined it because it had been eaten by rats.

I wasn’t interested in kids – I was only a child myself. So I would have liked to have had more opportunity to live a bit more life away from my mother’s influence before the shackles of looking after a child. But now I have four grandchildren and four great grandchildren. I love it. 

If I could relive any day from my life it would be the day I had Kati, my second baby. Because I had lost so many babies in between. We didn’t discover why until years later. But Andrew was RhD positive and I was RhD negative and the babies probably developed rhesus disease. Every few months we would get the bad news from our doctor. So Kati was a little miracle.  

I missed the camaraderie of being in the Wrens. Although my mother was always good at finding jobs for me to do. So I worked at the Stock Exchange in London for a while, because I was so good at maths. Later, I blagged myself into a job as an art teacher. I told them I’d been to university when I hadn’t. I had enrolled, but of course I had never gone because of the war.

And I had gone to do art classes in the evenings when I wasn’t on duty. I would do still-life classes and painting. But I really wanted to teach art to children. I wanted to free people’s minds. I’m born in October, just like Picasso, so I felt an affinity to him and to his art. His cubist period was just brilliant. And I’ve been teaching yoga since I was 40, long before it was the fashion. I still do it every day.  

There still aren’t enough opportunities for women. Men still have the upper hand. And men still underestimate women, our abilities and courage. Women have to get on with things and look after the family. I admire women tremendously but most men are mollycoddled these days.  

We were up in London for Princess Elizabeth’s wedding [in 1947]. We were on London Bridge and I remember thinking the lucky buggers, they’ve got a choice of where they’re going to live. But there’s no hope in hell for us. But we’ve got to have a royal family, because, as Andrew always pointed out, otherwise we might get stuck with a president. 

I would tell my younger self that war is an absolute waste of everything – time, money, lives. It doesn’t improve anything. It just proves you’ve got some egotistical man trying to improve his status in life. I have nothing but contempt for people who are happy to risk other people’s lives for their own self-glorification. Because men start wars, women don’t. Women are much more sensible and have to pick up the pieces and make life happen again. So here’s to future generations – and I hope they all live in peace.  

Join the Wrens!

During World War II there were 75,000 members of the Women’s Royal Naval Service. 

The recruitment slogan was: “Join the Wrens and free a man for the fleet.” They carried out a wide range of essential roles, from air mechanics and radar operators to meteorologists and bomb-makers – and visual signallers like Dorothea – as well as being members of the Bletchley Park code-cracking crew. They were stationed both at home and overseas. 

The Wrens was originally established during the First World War and was restarted in 1939. Initially, 20,000 women volunteered, despite at the time there only being 1,500 available roles. This is partly due to the success of the recruitment poster that suggested women could take on Navy roles – but no women were allowed to serve on operational ships.

The general three-week training for new recruits covered five areas: writer, driver, cook, steward and communicator – alongside fitness regimes. The fetching uniform was widely considered the most stylish in the services; it was created by renowned fashion designer Edward Molyneux. 

During the war, 303 Wrens lost their lives in service. Their work continued after VE Day. The first women to serve on an operational warship were Wrens deployed on HMS Brilliant during the Gulf War in 1990. The branch was finally disbanded in 1993, when women were allowed to join the Navy. 

Matt Goss’s single Not Forgotten, commemorating VE and VJ Day in association with The Not Forgotten Charity, is out now. 

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