Changing Course: A Wren’s experience of war, 1939-1945

Changing Course: The Wartime Experiences of a Member of the Women’s Royal Naval Service 1939–1945 by Roxane Houston is a personal and moving World War II memoir about service, courage, change, and resilience. After witnessing the exhausted survivors of Dunkirk in 1940, Houston was determined to “do her bit” and volunteered for the WRNS, beginning a life-changing journey through six years of war.

Her story takes readers from the Royal Naval Air Station at St Merryn near Padstow, under the threat of Luftwaffe attacks, to Machrihanish in Scotland, Combined Operations preparations at Largs and Greenock before D-Day, and later to Kandy and Colombo in Ceylon. Along the way, she recalls danger, friendship, loss, humour, proposals of marriage, and the reshaping of her own outlook.

A strong choice for readers of women’s wartime memoirs, naval history, World War II biography, and personal accounts of life as a Wren.

Hardcover, Very Good. Does have The Bookstore stamp on first inside page.