大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People鈥檚 War site by Sarah Housden of Norfolk Adult Education鈥檚 reminiscence team on behalf of Hilda Hale and has been added to the site with her permission. The author fully understands the site鈥檚 terms and conditions.

I had done quite well at German at school, and had also been to stay in Germany with a family, just as war was about to break out so I had had a chance to practice it. I had a happy holiday staying with this family and things didn鈥檛 seem that bad. I had a happy holiday, but there were two things which struck me as out of the ordinary. The first was that when I went into Germany they took away my Daily Express; the other was when I went to a place where there was bathing there was a notice on the entrance gate which said: 鈥淛ews are Unwelcome鈥�. But that was all I saw really, everything else seemed very ordinary, staying with ordinary people. I didn鈥檛 see any troop movements or anything like that, but I was bundled home in a hurry because the people I was staying with were hearing their news and they thought it was getting serious and that I ought to get home while the going was good.

In 1940 I was just at the age of leaving school. I went into the Wrens. Now everybody鈥檚 heard of Bletchley Park and the work they did breaking secret codes, but what they didn鈥檛 tell you was where they got the signals from to decode 鈥� and I was in that department. There was a little organisation in the Navy, which was called the Y Service, and we listened in to all the signals that the Germans were making and disposed of them according to what was going to happen. The ones which were in code went to Bletchley Park for decoding, and the signals which were in plain German were sent down Harwich , or wherever, and they sent out ships to deal with situations as they arose.

The places we did this were not famous places; we weren鈥檛 famous people. It was done in very small stations all down the coast, mostly on the edges of cliffs. Places that you wouldn鈥檛 suspect like Sheringham, Trimmingham, Hemsby, Southwold, Gorleston, Felixstowe, and then all round the South Coast as well. We listened all day and all night and recorded these signals which were dealt with according to what was going on. There were big things which were dealt with, but also small things like e-boat traffic. These were little German motor torpedo boats which were a bit of a nuisance because they would come and beat up the convoys if they could get away with it and lay mines on the convoy routes. Those of us who were German speakers would listen in to their signals, hear what they were saying, and try to stop them doing whatever it was they had in mind.

Some of the small stations we worked in were in houses. There were perhaps 12 to 20 girls in each of them, and we were doing shift work all through the day and night, so there weren鈥檛 very many of us about at any one time. We didn鈥檛 see very much of the Navy proper, because we were in these isolated places and we didn鈥檛 often go into the ports. But they were all girls of good education, the able sort, and we made our own entertainment. Sometimes we would get invited out to army camps for a dance with transport provided, so we had a good life but not a hectic one. The living conditions were good because they were private houses that had been requisitioned. Sometimes washing was a bit difficult as these were houses that had been built for a family of four or five and there were sometimes twenty of us, so we had to have a rota of baths. We got on alright, and sometimes you would get invited out for tea and a bath. I met some people at church and they invited me out like that. You could have a luxury bath and not worry about the water being cold.

After the war I worked in Hamburg in the reconstruction of the country. It was my job to go through the forms which people had to fill in to say whether they had been involved with the Nazis or not. From these forms it was decided whether people were Nazi sympathisers and whether they should be arrested or not. We kept things going in Hamburg which was a total mess 鈥� much worse than London 鈥� there were acres and acres of damage.

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