大象传媒

This is the story of my small part in the greatest secret of World War Two 鈥� the breaking of the German enigma code.

The headquarters were at Bletchley Park and there were outstations of which Stanmore was one. There I worked for two and a half years on machines known as 鈥淏ombes鈥� and they unravelled the Enigma codes thought to be unbreakable by the Germans.

Stanmore

In 1942 I was seventeen and after a rather narrow middleclass childhood was contemplating with some excitement what part I would play in the war effort. Having discarded some ideas, I was floundering. When my mother and I went up to London and I saw a group of WRNS on the bus, I was transfixed with delight and knew that I wanted to be with them. Six months later and just eighteen I was in, and my family were grateful to see me depart because the poor things were bored to tears by my endless babbling about what I would do 鈥淲hen I am in the W.R.N.S.鈥�

After a tough but friendly fortnight at Mill Hill training station about twenty of us were herded into a room and told that we had been selected to do this special and highly secret work, and we had to decide now before we were told more. Rumours had reached us that the work was hard and boring but as I was completely unqualified for anything I thought I had better agree.

Instead of being sent to a naval station we were driven just a few miles to Stanmore, Middlesex, where we were housed in modern single story buildings. After we had settled in we were taken to the block where we were to work. This area was surrounded by high walls and barbed wire and guarded by Royal Marines. Once inside we had to sign the Official Secrets Act, then we were let into the big secret. To this day it amazes me that young na茂ve girls were privy to such knowledge and expected not to reveal it. In the beginning it was very hard. I thought I would burst with the enormity and excitement of such information but as time went on and after constant training about security it became easier, in fact we found we were able to block out thoughts of the work once we were out of the building. We had to learn how to parry awkward questions from friends and family either with jokes or lies. When F.W. Winterbotham鈥檚 book 鈥淭he Ultra Secret鈥� was published in 1974 and the story exploded on television and in the newspapers I found that I was unable to stop chattering about it for days. All this knowledge with which I had expected to go to the grave came bubbling up to the surface. I still feel sad that my mother died before I was able to tell her.

The feeling of camaraderie amongst us was strong, we felt very close in our shared secret and I made many lasting friendships. From what I have read later, life at Stanmore was far more disciplined than at the smaller stations. We always seemed to be marching somewhere, having squad drill and kit inspection. This was just what we needed after a long night on watch! It was unrewarding in that we never knew what we had achieved, but we were always delighted when we heard the words 鈥淛ob鈥檚 Up鈥� because we then knew that the message had been decoded and that was our purpose. I notice now that the substations are rarely or never mentioned which is a bit sad for us as there were about five hundred W.R.N.S at Stanmore, even more at Eastcote and many R.A.F technicians.

We were working with enormous metal machines called bombes. Each one was the size of three wardrobes, about 8ft high. They had rows of coloured discs, called drums, in the front; each one was quite heavy, with masses of wires inside, which had to be carefully adjusted with tweezers to make sure they didn鈥檛 鈥榮hort鈥�. The back of the machine was a mass of red wires, and looked terrifying, and there were letters. We would be given a 'menu', which was a wiring diagram of numbers and letters, from which we plugged up the machine at the back, and set the drums on the front. It was vital that this was done accurately, otherwise the machine stopped wrongly. It was also important to be fast 鈥� every message could be urgent.

When this was done, we pressed a button; the machine chugged for a while, then stopped. We took down the resultant reading, which was sent to Bletchley Park, probably by teleprinter. Meanwhile we carried on running the machine until such time as we heard 鈥楯ob鈥檚 up鈥�. We were then handed another menu and the whole process started again. All this went on day and night. The boffins at Bletchley were brilliant of course, but they also depended on the unremitting toil of two thousand WRNS.

Because the machines were so big, we all had to be reasonably tall and strong, and no doubt this had been taken into account in the selection process.

Sometimes the job was returned to us "wrong number", and we had to start all over again, making quite sure our settings were right, until the message 'Job's up!' came through. The jobs were sent thick and fast, over the 24 hours, and we worked round the clock. There were four watches, and we worked three watches each a day, having one day off each week. At the end of the fourth week we worked double watches, and thus earned four days off for the end of the month.

We have been told that the work we all did at Bletchley and Stanmore in breaking the Enigma Code shortened the war, and this makes us feel very proud. Of course, it was important that our leaders did not jump too quickly into counteracting the German manoeuvres, which had been learned about through reading their messages, because it was vital that they did not know we were able to read these, or they would have changed the code.

There is no doubt that it was a stressful job, the watch keeping hours changed every week and played havoc with our digestions and sleeping habits. What it did to our social lives was dire, one met a nice young man one week and when he wanted to see you again lo and behold it was the anti-social 4pm to 12pm watch. The food at Stanmore left much to be desired, having been at boarding school I wasn鈥檛 fussy, but I can still see the grisly pile of sad, burnt, cold and soggy slices of cheese on toast that we were expected to survive on in the small hours.

Stanmore was at the end of the Bakerloo Line so the West End was available to us and on our sleeping-out passes we would book into the YWCA which enabled us to stay out a bit later. Girls of our age today would not easily take to being back in quarters by 10.30 pm and, twice a week actually being allowed a late pass to 11.30 pm. We were usually able to get free theatre tickets from Forces canteens or we went to the Queensberry Club or Nuffield Centre, and saw many fine entertainers. Dancing was to be had in these clubs and at Covent Garden. Once a year each watch was allowed to hold a dance in quarters and invitations were sent to various service establishments in the district. We were sent invitations too, these were put on the notice board and we added our names if we wanted to go. There was always great competition to get to the American parties, the hospitality was wonderful and we always came away having had gorgeous food and free cigarettes. On one memorable occasion when all our hosts were drunk and even the band collapsed, I heard our chaperoning Wren officer telling the American colonel that she didn鈥檛 think we would be allowed to go there again but he was far too gone himself to take it in!

The worst of the bombing in London was over, but I do remember quite a few bombs; and then we had the unpleasant doodle bugs and rockets. Many is the time I have had to fling myself to the ground when the dreaded sound of the engine cutting out came, ruining my precious black silk stockings 鈥� a minor tragedy in those days of shortages and rationing. I don鈥檛 think we realised the strain of the bombs until it was all over and the relief from fear felt so wonderful.

In 1945 the war with Germany was declared over, suddenly we were redundant, watch keeping ceased and we were set to work dismantling the bombes. I recall sitting at trestle tables unscrewing the drums. Gradually we were dispersed to other categories and I was drafted to Plymouth, a port at last! My job was helping to demobilise sailors and I worked in the Royal Naval Barracks, Devonport.

I had become very thin and tired after two and a half years' watch keeping, but after a few weeks in Plymouth with the sea air, much better food and regular hours I felt re-born, and enjoyed my last year in the W.R.N.S hugely, and felt part of the Navy at last.

All the time, despite the awful hours, poor food, hard discipline and dreary work we were sustained by the knowledge that what we were doing really mattered and was going to help win the war - we were also young and free and enjoyed ourselves as much as we could.

How the bombes worked; a note from the editor:

We learn from the 大象传媒 WW2 Website story 'Wartime Code Breaking', No A5405339 how the bombes mentioned above were used in the code breaking process. In England the codes were taken down from German Morse Signals, and each day's code was different. The coded messages were broken into groups, and then tested on these large machines, to determine the correct setting of the German Enigma machine at which the original had been encoded, that is, the daily 'key'. When this key had been found, each message for that day could be read.

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