conservative party members are arriving in manchester for the annual party conference. it comes as railway unions stage strikes across the uk over pay and conditions. police in the uk have named 15—year—old jessica baker and coach driver stephen shrimpton as the two people killed in a crash yesterday. they both died when the school bus overturned on the m53 in the wirral. the us government edges towards shutdown after members of congress fail to reach an agreement on spending. government agencies will begin shutting down unless a deal is reached by the end of saturday. now on bbc news — we were there: episode two.

they were landing on the beaches. and i could hear it, i could hear it all. you suddenly thought... this is a war! i really had the war in my ears. we had responsiblejobs at a very young age — like 19, 18 years old. and we did feel good about the fact we could contribute. civilians and service people got together, helped one another. you couldn't look far _ into the future, you might only have had a fortnight's leave and then he might be killedi at the end of it. you had no idea whati was going to happen, so you just put up with it.

the advertisement said join the wrens so that you could free a sailor to go to sea, meaning that obvioiusly to sea, meaning that obviously you could free a sailor to go to sea, meaning that obviously a lot of the work that men did could be done by girls, so that was how it started. when i got to belfast, i found that our headquarters was in the belfast castle, above the river, and we could see ships coming in and out. and sometimes they sent ships who had been in the atlantic to be repaired in the dockyard. meanwhile, we wrens ran the plot up in belfast and had

the whole of the west coast and particularly the whole atlantic in a plot on the wall. one day, i was watching the ships come in from our castle office, and i saw a ship, a destroyer coming in, hms oribi she was called, and she was involved in various battles in the atlantic and needed some repairs, so she had her repairs done in belfast. so the first opportunity, the first thing the wrens did on their arrival was to send a message to the ward room, asking us down to have a drink on board. they had their priorities obviously right. so half a dozen of us went down to have a drink on board and there i metjohn lamb, my future husband, and in ten days we decided to get married.

the next morning they sailed off to join this convoy which was leaving just north of belfast. we were absolutely vital because at the moment we were unable to feed ourselves, we had the most terrible rationing. i mean, rationing — it wasn't bad for wrens because we have the naval stores, but for ordinary people, they would have one egg a fortnight. i mean, can you imagine anything more awful? so meat and everything was very, very difficult to get. the first bit of the atlantic was, we were able to give them air coverfrom our side, and then there was a huge gap before more air cover could be given from the canadian side. so as we approached the centre, the gap as it was called, there they had about a0 u—boats were waiting for them, to attack them.

and they managed to sink about 12 of our ships before we got anything back. at this point hms oribi was part of the escort of this convoy, and the battle went on. we had signals which were repeated to us, and anything that told us what was going on, i knew that they were in this, involved in this terrible battle. and i had thought, having just managed to catch hold of this man, i'm now going to let him go! but of course no, actually we were plotting, we knew the battle was going on, we didn't have information as we would have liked it, but we had a certain amount of information that came in and told us what was going on. john had been in bed, lying in a place near the bridge. he was woken up by a terrific crash, which actually he didn't know what it meant, he got out of bed and rushed up

to the bridge again, only to find that his ship, hms oribi, had rammed a u—boat. and they had actually, were now sort of riding on the side of the ship. it was the most extraordinary state to be in. of course it was terrible anxiety, and all my friends tried to persuade me to go back and not to pay attention, but i couldn't possibly leave the scene. it was a matter of complete life or death to me, and i stayed there waiting for information, hoping for information, and just waiting, hopefully — and luckily eventually we had more information to say that they had actually managed to sink this u—boat, and were on their way back. they were able to crawl back to canada this time, they were the other side of the atlantic, and so they managed to get back at about 12 knots, which is a safe speed they could go at.

when eventually he arrived in canada, he was able to ring me up and say he had arrived safely. well, it was amazing of course, and you know, we just both felt, well, there's nothing you could say — just "thank goodness, thank goodness, "thank goodness. " you know, that's all you could do. you couldn't look far into the future, you might only have had a fortnight�*s leave and he may be killed at the end of it. you had no idea what was going to happen, so you just put up with it, and if something was there, the present, it was there, you did it. whatever. i grew up in the countryside, in lancashire, in my grandfather's house. he had a refugee cook from austria, and a refugee housemaid. and when they came, they didn't speak any english.

he gave me a small german dictionary, so i used to spend my evenings as a schoolgirl sitting with mrs geltzel, it meant that we were talking more in german than english. i neverfound languages a problem — in fact german turned out to be a rather useful language to have during the war. we trained at mill hill, and wimbledon, and then we were sent to little coastal listening stations. my first station was on the yorkshire coast, at a place called withernsea, because we had very good reception from the baltic. and the german naval ships

used to talk coming out of the baltic or leaving their bases in the baltic. and at withernsea we used to search their wavelengths, write down everything we heard — they kept radio silence most of the time, but we were searching up and down their radio frequencies in our little secret stations. and i think we probably got a fair amount of useful information. and we passed the coded messages to bletchley park, and the plain language messages to the nearest naval intelligence centre. they would sometimes have a bit of chat, you know, "did you know so—and—so's boat "are all going on leave next week?". and the one that picked it up said: speaks german,

"0h, they're all going to make babies". and we all wrote it down, because the rule was that everything you heard, you logged. and it might be useful for our side to know that these crews were going on leave, these boats would not be operating. even bits of gossip like that could come in useful, so we wrote everything down. i was transferred to a station between dover and folkestone, where we could hear, very loud and clear, german naval ships warming up in the harbours opposite, or going down the channel. we worked what we called watches, which would be called shifts, so many hours on, four hours on, eight hours off, that sort of thing. i had been on watch overnight, i came out in the morning,

about eight o'clock, and there was a party of people coming up the path towards our cliff. and i recognised in the middle of this group, winston churchill and general eisenhower, and they were with a group of officers. and you were supposed to salute people of that rank, but as i had been on duty all night and was just informally dressed, all i could do was wave and say, "good morning!" and so they all waved back and said "good morning", and they went on their way to the edge of our cliff. and in fact much later on, i heard that churchill wanted it to be reported back that he and eisenhower had been down on the kent coast, to deceive the germans

into thinking that landings were going to be in kent, into the calais area, whereas of course we were going to land much further west in normandy. that ploy worked. i went in in early �*41. i went to devices, to learn gunnery as it was called. i was a height finder, plotter. when the german aircraft came across, now the height finder was nine foot long, about that fat round,

and it was on a plinth. which, you moved it around. you followed the aircraft. and i had, one like that, very similar. that had... ..cutouts for my four fingers. and i looked into two strong scopes. metal round there, and magnifiers in there. i could use that eye, that eye, or both. the girl that was next to me, who became my mate,

she turned a wheel, and she looked into one scope, and she had to get any part of the aircraft as fast as she could onto that line, and keep it there. whereas i had two aircraft to align, one right way up, one wrong way up. and as soon as you got them level, whatever part you was on, whether it was tailfin, tail plane... ..nose, whatever. you had to work fast, and then you called to the number one, "on target", and she would read out the figures. so i was doing height, the other girl was doing range.

she was calling out figures. that went to the guns in big pipes. so remember, we are walking over them pipes — not treading on them, walking over them. sometimes almost falling over. that was ourjob. so, i applied tojoin the wrens in march 1944. and when i told them that i was a gpo—trained switchboard operator, i could tell more or less that i'd be accepted.

portsmouth in march—april 191m was a hive of activity. but the thing is fort southwick, which was our working place, was a very secret communications centre deep — dug deep into tunnels in the cliffs overlooking portsmouth harbour. but to get down into the tunnels, we had to go down 350 steps! we had to sleep in the tunnels, eat in the tunnels, be on duty in the tunnels and, of course... chuckles ..when we were coming off shift, we had to come up 350 steps, so it was a good thing we were young and fit.

chuckles the amount of activity in the tunnels — i mean, each tunnel contained a branch of communications. two months before d—day, i was given training on this vhf set, which was a small radio set. and i think vhf then was in its infancy. it was simple for us to operate. you merely had to operate the levers up or down. as it was a one—way system, i would pass whatever messages i had to and then, they would lift their lever and pass their responses. and it was when they lifted their lever that i realised i was listening to warfare.

because they were landing on the beaches, and i could hear it. i could hear it all — gunfire, machine—guns, cannon, screaming, men — men shouting, orders being shouted, all manner of things. you suddenly thought, "this is a war". i really had the war in my ears and it made me very much aware of what was at stake. so, you know, ithink it taught me a lesson about war — although i was a non—combatant, of course. nevertheless, i heard war at a very, very close source because not only did i have that experience on d—day,

but i'd lived through the blitz as well. file: early in the enemy's intensified air attacks - on london, bombs were dropped on the dockland area. and i can vividly remember the night they blitzed the dock — the docks. the whole of dockland was alight and you could see from the sky, the whole sky was red. we had to go down to the tube station at clapham north because that was the only really effective shelter you could find. i think we all, really, were terrified. so, i knew what bombing was like — to be at the other

end of the bombing, you know? the recipient of it. so, no, i — for me, war is something that should be avoided at all costs. we were told that there was going — that there would be an official photographer coming down to the tunnels, so i had a — somebody i knew in the tunnels, a young sailor, and i asked him if i could borrow his white top, you know, with the navy beading across. i'm now sure that if it were known by the officers that this is what i planned to do, it would have been frowned upon very definitely. but i went ahead —

nobody knew — and so, my photograph exists of a wren hat in — at a rather perky angle and a white top that i shouldn't have been wearing. king george vi came down to visit us all in the fort. he toured a lot of the tunnels. i think there was a lift for vips — don't think he had to travel those 350 steps! however, on the parade ground, he took the salute and we all marched past and at the end, he thanked us all for our contribution to the effort — to the war effort. that was a moment of great pride. the wrens couldn't march wonderfully well because we

weren't required to do so, so i only hope we kept in step! chuckles when i heard that the war was over, we were all overjoyed. and for me, it meant demobilisation, so i came down to london and was demobbed in august 1946. so, it wasn't a long service but an eventful one and, for me, it was probably the most meaningful episode of my life.

hello there. it looks like this will end up being one of the two warmest septembers on record, according to the met office. and as i'll show you in a moment, some of that warmth looks set to continue into october, but that's not the whole story. looks quite unsettled, too, with the jet stream driving further weather systems in our direction, these various areas of cloud. this one here is saturday's weather maker.

it is going to bring some cloud, it is going to bring some outbreaks of heavy rain. but the day starts under the influence of this ridge of high pressure. so through the morning, yes, some spells of sunshine. but as this weather system approaches, we'll see more in the way of high cloud, turning that sunshine hazy and then thicker cloud will bring rain across northern ireland, parts of north and west wales, north—west england, southern and central parts of scotland. as we go through the afternoon, turning quite windy through the irish sea as well. temperatures north to south, 12—20 degrees. now, we will continue to see outbreaks of rain as we head through saturday night and into the first part of sunday morning. but by this stage, we will be drawing some very warm and humid air up from the south. these are the starting temperatures for sunday, 12—17 degrees. that is, of course, the start of october, a very mild start to the new month. this weather system still bringing cloud and some showery rain across parts of england and wales. in fact, we could see the odd

heavy burst at times. now, depending on how much sunshine we see down towards the south—east corner, it could turn really very warm indeed, with highs of around 2a degrees. even further north, 20 there for liverpool, 18 for aberdeen. so broadly speaking, sunday is going to be a warm day for the time of year. through sunday night and into monday, it looks like this weather front will tend to move its way back northwards again. it will take some outbreaks of rain with it. certainly a lot of cloud drifting its way northwards. best chance of sunshine, i think for northern ireland and scotland, albeit with a scattering of hefty showers. still warm, particularly down towards the south with highs of around 23 degrees. now, moving out of monday into tuesday, it's quite a complex weather chart, but various weather features moving across the uk will bring showers or longer spells of rain. slight change in the wind direction, more of a west or north westerly wind. so it will feel a little bit fresher, i think, on tuesday. temperatures of 13 for stornoway, 17 for cardiff, maybe 19

degrees there in london. by wednesday, there's a bit of uncertainty by this stage, but it looks like we'll see cloud and rain pushing in from the north—west with our next frontal system. the winds picking up as well. and temperatures north to south, 12 to 20 degrees. as we head towards the end of the week and into the following weekend, well, we see high pressure trying to build from the south. the big uncertainty is about how long this area of high pressure will hang about. it looks like the jet stream will start to bring unsettled weather back in from the west. but this dip in the jet stream here may also have the effect of feeding some really rather warm air northwards across our shores once again. so let me show you the forecast for the end of next week and into the following weekend, because as you can see, there are hints that it's actually going to turn warmer again. we get deeper into october, but still that potential for temperatures into the middle—20 celsius further north and west, a greater chance of seeing cloud and outbreaks of rain at times.

bye for now.

live from london, this is bbc news. more than 100,000 ethnic armenians have now fled nagorno—karabakh since azerbaijan's offensive on the region began earlier this month.

conservative party members are arriving in manchester for the annual party conference. it comes as railway unions stage strikes across the uk over pay and conditions. police in the uk have named 15—year—old jessica baker, and coach driver stephen shrimpton, as the two people killed in a bus crash in the wirral yesterday. the threat of a us government shutdown inches closer, after members of congress fail to reach an agreement on spending. hello, i'm celia hatton. armenia's government says more than 100,000 ethnic armenians have now fled nagorno— karabakh. that's after azerbaijan took control of the disputed enclave after a lightning military campaign earlier this month. nagorno—karabakh was controlled by armenian separatists for decades,