大象传媒

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The following is a contemporary report on one girls work in the bunker written by Florrie Cowley, a Ministry of Home Security teleprinter operator.

'I remember the bunker consisting of one very large room several large rooms and some smaller ones. In one of the large rooms there were 10 girls sitting at telephones, each one was a direct link with one of the nine London groups.

At 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. we had to teleprint a complete list of incidents in London and everything that was being used. Nothing was ever sent over the bridges (over the Thames), everyone stayed on their own side.

We had two speakers on the wall one linked to Stanmore and the other to South London. Suddenly there was a crackle and we were off. The voice would say "London East Purple" or some other area, then the other speaker started "London North Purple", then we'd get "London West Red" and at the same time "London West Purple" and before we knew what was happening the speakers were both clearly giving out at the same time the area and colour. We had a red phone direct to Scotland Yard, this was a double check, they also had their own system. We repeated as received from the speakers and the warnings were sounded accordingly. Then the incidents were coming through, often before we had sent all the colours to the police or teleprinted the information to the Home Office. The incidents came in fast and furious, what they wanted, how many trapped etc.

Eventually the speaker would sound all clear in each area, the last incident was dealt with and all was quiet - that raid was over. The next would possibly come in a few hours but for the time peace and a feeling of how dreadfully tired we were.

No girl was allowed to leave the teleprinter room until her relief arrived. Consequently it was great to see one's partner. We worked in threes for three shifts, 7 a.m. - 3 p.m., 3 p.m. - 11.p.m. and 11 p.m. - 7 a.m., fifteen days without a break then four days off. If a member of the next shift was delayed for any reason we had to work her shift as well. The supervisor, who came on at 9 a.m., would work out a rota, sometimes taking a turn himself, if a girl was going to be away for more than a day. Often we left home during a terrible raid with a tin hat on and a special pass so that the wardens would let us through.

One of our other jobs was to send messages in code on a special teleprinter, these were brought down by a man in uniform. What they were and where they came from we never knew but we knew they were sent to the fighting forces. The messages didn't have a single vowel and were sent in blocks of five letters. We had to be very accurate, we dare not make a mistake with what to us was a jumble as it might have made the whole message read incorrectly.

After the European war was over, I was asked to transfer to the Ministry of Information as they thought I was one of their best teleprinter operators. The MOI occupied the University College Hospital training college. This work was also interesting as we sent Churchill's speeches before he ever made them. We sent them in different languages to other countries. I found Polish rather weary with lots of 'Z's, my littler finger was nearly worn out!'

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