大象传媒

I volunteered for the A.T.S. in June 1940 following the then Princess Royal's impassioned broadcast - "Your King and country need you - join the A.T.S."
The Army sent me to Durham for three weeks' basic training (one week under canvas - and it rained!) then on to London to be trained as a teleprinter operator. When we were bombed out of the Central Telegraph Office, I was drafted to the War Office and shortly afterwards, we heard that three A.T.S. teleprinter operators had been killed by a stray enemy bomb whilst coming off duty and that replacements were needed.
It was stressed that they MUST be volunteers, as it was a very hush-hush job, that we'd have to be cleared by MI5, sign the Official Secrets Act, and that we would not be allowed to tell anyone what we were doing. Being young and enthusiastic, I put my hand up and thus became a part of the "Enigma Operation", which we are now told helped to shorten the war by anything up to two years.
Although the decoders at Bletchley Park have had most of the publicity (and a wonderful job they did too), they would have had nothing to decode had it not been for us - the "Y" Service (Wireless Intelligence). We were the virtually unknown "other half."
When war broke out, it had been decided that, for security reasons, it would be safer to have the Interception and Decoding sections in separate locations - no visible connection, although there were comings and goings between the two. So it was that I was in the Intercept side and for five years, I proudly wore the Royal Signals "Jimmy" on my uniform as part of the War Office Y Group, firstly at Chatham, then we were evacuated to Chicksands and finally at Beaumanor Park(Leicestershire).
The intercepted messages emanating from Nazi Germany, all in blocks of five-letter code, were rushed over to the Teleprinter Room to be transmitted to Station X (Bletchley Park) for the cryptographers to decode. We did 8-hour shifts all round the clock. It was frustrating at times not to know what we were passing on, particularly when 'traffic' was unusually heavy, but we were assured that our work was of the utmost importance. Rarely did we get anything in plain language except when the enemy troops were in panic-stricken retreat and we realised - or hoped! - that the end was in sight.
On VE Day, having come off duty, a party of us dashed up to London and joined the crowd outside Buckingham Palace, chanting, "We want the King! We want the King!" It was a great thrill when the royal family (Princess Elizabeth in A.T.S. uniform) came out onto the balcony with Churchill between them. The crowd roared!

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