Christian Lamb

Christian Lamb (born 1920; née Oldham) is a British World War II veteran who helped to plan the D-Day landings in Normandy. She is a lecturer on the history of plants and the author of five books, including her war-time memoir, Beyond the Sea. As of 2022, at the age of 102, she is one of the last surviving officers of the Wrens, the Women's Royal Naval Service, to have served throughout the war. Early life and education Christian Oldham was born in 1920. Her father was Rear-Admiral Ronald Wolseley Oldham OBE, a veteran of the First World War. At the age of 18, she left school and went to France to live with a family and improve her French ahead of entering university. In 1939, she received a telegram from her father that war was imminent and to return home to London at once. Upon returning to the UK, she enrolled in first-aid classes, intending to become a nurse in the Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD). Military career Oldham joined the Wrens, the Women's Royal Navy Service, after an interview at their headquarters next to Admiralty Arch in Trafalgar Square. In January 1940, she started basic training at the HMS Pembroke training facility at Campden Hill Road, Kensington. She then apprenticed at HMS President, the headquarters of the WRNS, doing clerical work. At the start of the Blitz, she and her colleagues were sent home before dark to their billets in North London. After a year at Wrens HQ, she was promoted to Leading Wren, and led a unit of twelve Wrens at the degaussing range at Coalhouse Fort, East Tilbury, where they made ships less magnetic to avoid mines.