大象传媒

In 1970, I was 15 years old. For quite some time I'd had a feeling that there were things that were not being said in my family. I had no idea what was behind these feelings; all I knew was that whenever anyone asked my father 'what he did in the war', his answer was quite vague.

'This and that', he'd say; or 'I was a Sapper for a bit; then I did other things.'

When you're 15... well, you're 15. I guess that most of you have been there yourself (either that, or you're an especially persistent pre-GCSE student). So you know that 15-year-olds are a bit paranoid, and often quite obnoxious with it. I did my best; I kept quiet for as long as I could; but one day in the middle of the summer of 1970, I couldn't stand it any more.

What was the family secret?

I stood with my mother in the garden of our house, near the rockery and the cider-apple tree. It was a beautiful, sunny September day. The cat looked on; the expression on his face seemed to be one of disbelief. He always was gifted among cats; in this case perhaps he revealed himself as a genius with psychic powers. He stalked off as if in disgust. And I turned to my mother and said:

'Mum? Can I ask you something?'

Of course she said yes. My beautiful, gentle mother.

'I feel. I've always felt as though we had a secret. This family. Some dreadful secret that you haven't told me. I don't know if you realised it, but I've known it for a long time. Please tell me what it is.'

My mother blinked, and then she stared. It was obvious even to me that she had no idea what I was talking about.

'What? No. There's no secret,' she said.

It was several years before I realised that she was wrong; and realised also that she hadn't lied. Back then, nobody knew about it, except for those that were there; and they didn't talk. There was a secret; there always had been; but my mother, though married to my father for 17 years at that point, didn't know it. Like every other spouse of every other Bletchley veteran, she didn't know it.

The secret is out

In 1978, RV Jones published 'Most Secret War', and the secret was finally blown. Many Bletchley people found it hard to accept what he'd done, just because they'd always taken their promise of secrecy so seriously that they'd never told their spouses, let alone their children. Finally, at the age of 22, I learned what the dreaded 'family secret' really was: that yes, it was about the war; that no, it wasn't 'dreadful' at all - just very, very secret.

To place things in context: my father died in January 2003. He was 82 years old. Until the end of his life, he maintained that he could remember little to nothing about his life at Bletchley Park; perhaps because, like many of his colleagues, at the behest of the War Office he'd made every effort to forget what he'd done; to preserve 'Britain's best kept secret'. From his fragmentary memories, and from the information now available, I've determined that he wasn't a codebreaker; he was primarily a linguist, skilled in Russian and German as well as his first loves of classical Latin and Greek.

He was initially called up into the Royal Engineers (the part about being a Sapper wasn't a lie exactly) but then someone noticed that he'd been in his second year of a Cambridge degree in Classics, and also the recipient of a State scholarship to Jesus College; and therefore, supposedly, ideal Intelligence Corps material.

My father spent the war years collating and translating Enigma decrypts; and later, when things turned a touch ambiguous, he turned his talents to our Allies, and did a fair amount of spying on our friends, the Russians.

In memory of my father

My father's obituary in the Jesus College yearbook mentioned his war service; the first time this was acknowledged in public. But I would like this page to be read, and to form a more public memorial. Many pages have been written on the more glamorous codebreakers; Alan Turing and his team are rightly given credit for shortening the war. But there were many, many brilliant and gifted individuals who served in that great effort in less obvious ways, and who are seldom given the credit they deserve.

I've never seen my father's name in a Bletchley Park book; even though the kind of work he did was absolutely vital to the war effort, and even though his wartime work went on to affect his entire life, including his relationship with his wife - my mother - and his children. Like the women, many very talented, who served in menial capacities at Bletchley, the male officers and NCOs who spent the war there, yet were not directly involved in the pivotal task of codebreaking, are acknowledged too seldom. My father's war service and its after-effects have coloured my entire existence, and I believe that men like him should be recognised for their contribution, alongside their more famous colleagues.

Nobody, by the way, has ever been able to explain to me just how it was that I 'knew' all this, years before any of it was made public. There are plenty of people out there who believe that if you don't talk about things in front of the children, don't show them on TV, don't allow the kids to watch films containing these subjects, then the children will somehow remain 'innocent', without any knowledge of anything save adult-approved subjects. My own experience demonstrates that this is a lie, and that children are not as stupid as the media would like to tell us. I knew there was a secret; even when my mother didn't.

And now we all know; the whole family knows. And it's something we can be proud of, because my father, however humble and overlooked his role, contributed to the defeat of an enemy that would have destroyed not merely Great Britain and the West, but the future of humanity upon this planet.

漏 Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.