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Patricia Bridgen Farley was a Wren (Womens Royal Naval Service) stationed at Portkil, Near Kilcreggan, Scotland during World War II, living in a house affectionately known to the group of Wrens that were based there as 'The Barn'. The Wrens came to be known as the 'Barnites'.
The U.S naval hospital was a 600-bed operation, also located in Quonset huts. The hotel itself was home for the doctors commissioned as naval officers for the duration of the war, and their administrative staff. Hospital corpsmen slept and ate in some of the steel huts.
Patients were sent from Rosneath. They also treated sailors from ships anchored in the Clyde and, at times, even looked after the Wrens, unofficially of course. The Wrens had a small infirmary over on the other side of the peninsula facing Helensburgh, but if the doctors could help us in minor treatments, they did it free and willingly.
Of course, there was a Navy regulation about no dating between American officers and Wrens, non-commissioned, that is. But no one ever enforced it, as far as I can remember!
We invited the very first group of medics who arrived at the Portkil hotel, to come on down to the Barn and meet our gang. From then on, invitations to drinks in the officer's mess would be offered to those of us who had attracted certain of the doctors.
At the first meeting of officers and Barnites, I was 'rushed' by a pompous and lecherous young medic. He edged himself up to me as I was changing a record. 'Do you ever get out by yourself?' he asked. 'Not really', I replied. 'We like to do things in a group.' End of chat. I heard afterwards that he tried his line on some of the other girls, with no success.
It was a different story with the corpsmen. We made lots of friends with them and took pleasure in asking them down for a 'cuppa' at the Barn. They loved to bring photos of their wives, families or girl friends. We began dating some of them, but it was mostly light-hearted relationships to deflect the boredom and sadness of being away from home.
For some of these young men, it was the first time they had ever left the States, in fact, the first time some had even wandered away from their own state. I'll always remember a sweet, open-faced lad from Minnesota, who loved to dance. He fancied himself to be the next Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly. He often came down to the house after his shift. He would tap dance along the hallway and delight us with his dexterity.
Sad to say, he lost his innocence early on, and soon stopped popping down to see us. We soon found out why. He had gone along with some of the older, but not necessarily wiser, sailors to Glasgow one weekend. He found out about the fleshpots in that city and was never the same again!
I remember a handsome Texan with some Cherokee blood, which gave him lustrous heavy black hair and a smooth olive complexion. Tall and slim with legs slightly bowed, we always imagined he had ridden horses as a cowboy. Our friend loved to whittle and whenever he had a spare moment, you would see him sitting on the wall by the beach, fashioning something out of a piece of driftwood.
There was the lad from Boston with the most expressive blue eyes and dark brown curly hair. He was a great dancer and fancied a Wren called Diana. He tried to teach her the new jitterbug routines, and I can see them both now on the path by the Nissan hut, swinging around until they were both dizzy.
I liked the Americans and found them easy to talk to. Because of the prevalent co-ed education in the States, they had gone to school with girls all their lives, and were used to working and playing with them.
There were two types of Englishmen in the service. The upper class set with rather frightful 'la-de-da accents', and not particularly comfortable with women themselves, having gone to all male prep schools and colleges.
The other kind, the common man, spoke differently than I did and did not smell that pleasant! Those heavy serge uniforms the poor Tommies had to wear reeked of tobacco and sweat and weren't conducive to thoughts of romance.
One of the reasons that the Yanks were so appealing to British women was their lovely aroma of shaving lotion and cleanliness. It wasn't the 'overpaid' 'overfed' and 'oversexed' strangers that attracted us, it was the lack of body odour that turned us on!
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