大象传媒

I was born into an army family in 1925, and in 1939 was saying goodbye to my father who was to serve overseas. We were living in Stirling, Scotland, which had been his last posting before the outbreak of war. For the next three years school and Pathe Gazette News reels of the war at the local cinema determined my life. Older male school friends left to train in branches of the three armed forces, and my thoughts turned ro service life in khaki to emulate my father, who was by this time in the Middle East. So at seventeen and a half,with parental consent, I joined the ATS. Three weeks on the parade ground, and army food slimmed away my puppy fat, and I was about to sit the tests that would establish my career. It appeared I was not mechanically minded, or inclined towards mathematics. However I had an ear for musical notes, and was of a patient nature,and so I was to be a wireless operator in Y Signals. The next few months were to be spent in the Isle of Man, learning morse--to receive but not to send. We went from our training centre in Dalkeith to Fleetwood, and after a night spent in a transit camp, we embarked on a sorry looking ship to cross the Irish Sea. Most of the Isle of Man ships had been lost or battered in the Dunkirk evacuation. The skies that had been blue in the early morning had our spirits high, and we were hustled on board with wishes of good luck and gifts of chocolate bars (rationed at the time), from the WVS and the Salvation Army. We were soon to regret gobbling this delicious chocolate for the skies turned grey, and the waves tumultuous. Cheerful excited chatter turned to whimpers and moans of "I want to die" as uniformed girls gave up their chocolate whilst clinging to the rails of the ship. Seven hours later, instead of the usual four, a bedraggled squad of girls from various training camps in the UK, trailed not marched along Douglas Promenade, to the requisitioned hotels and boarding houses that were to be our homes and classrooms. Soon we were into a routine of breakfast, morning parade, and into class rooms by 9am, to learn the morse code alphabet, the Q code, and to me the dullness of lectures on magnetism and electricity. This went on till 5pm, with a brief break for lunch. We had no idea what this learning was for, and the drill parades and physical training periods were welcome activities. At some point we learnt we were to intercept German messages that would be in code, and on no account were we to speak of this to anyone, not even our nearest and dearest. In a funny way this was put to the test, when we were to be inspected by an important visitor, the Princess Royal, sister of King George V1. She proceeded slowly down the line, and stopped in front of me. "What do you do Private?" she asked. I floundered, saying in my mind "You can't tell her" --"We march and play games, Ma'am" I said. She must have thought I was a waste of space, not knowing that the game was a form of bingo, the letters on our cards being sent in morse. Gradually we became adept at reading the dots and dashes, and my first Christmas away from home was upon us,
and we had a short respite from the classrooms. It was strange not to see my younger brothers opening their stockings. All of us had our private thoughts and memories, and our camaraderie made things easier. In the new year we were told which Listening Stations we were to report to on the mainland. They were Beaumanor in Leicestershire, Kedlestone Hall in Derbyshire, and Forest Moor in Yorkshire, the latter some miles from Harrogate. Most of my friends from the Edinburgh training camp were to join ne at Harrogate and Forest Moor. This time the crossing was quieter, though cold and damp. Our billet was to be in a girl's boarding school, outside the town--Queen Ethelburga's, now sadly demo;ished. There were nissen huts in the grounds, and as we to join four watches, we were divided into two watches in the school, and the other two in the huts. After six months there was a turn about to make way for fairness. In the first eight weeks we worked to get used to real German traffic, and the shifts, especially the night shift. The wireless station was up on the moors, and we travelled in large troop carriers in convoy, taking about thirty minutes to get there. The shifts were hard to train our minds and bodies to, being a cycle of 1pm - 7pm; 7am - 1pm; midnight - 7am; and 7pm to midnight. Next day was a day off, and the following a morning of chores before starting the cycle again. We sat in a set room tuned in to our allotted frequencies, taking down messages in blocks of five letters, adjusting our sets and head phones to the many outside aerials. These messages were whisked away and sent to what we knew only as Station X. Where that was, and what was done to them we did not know, other than what we were doing was TOP SECRET and important. The worst shifts were when we searched the bands for our individual group, waiting for a well known call sign, sent in the familiar dots and dashes. We prayed for them to "come up" and relieve the long hours of monotony. Other times our head phones crackled with the rapid signals. and we came off duty with the morse code repeating in oour heads, and a friend's cough or a dripping tap in the ablutions translated into a morse code letter. This was more apparent when all home leave was cancelled in the months leading up to D Day. Our days off were precious and longed for, and we were off to Harrogate where there were good musical concerts, and a thriving repertory theatre. Having volunteered straight from school and college, I was at a disadvantage, for the girls who had been conscripted from certain jobs had their pay made up, so I had to ration my visits to the aforesaid delights! However the Yorkshire dales were a bus ride away, and to stride under blue skies and scudding clouds, with wild flowere under foot and skylarks not sending morse was bliss! Another interest for me was amateur dramatics. I had been involved in these since schooldays. Jane Dandridge, another wireless operator, started a play reading group, and we progressed to acting, and Jane producing "Ladies in Retirement" and "Quiet Wedding". In the latter I wore a wedding dress that someone had borrowed, and to dress up was out of this world.
So the months passed, making lasting friendships, and like the rest of the country longing for the war to end.
The wireless station on the moor was surrounded by a high wire fence, and when the night shifts were exchanged all was in darkness. Came the day in May 1945, we had been on the midnight to 7am shift, and the sets had been very quiet, with very little morse, and some messages in German language coming through. Wearily we rode back to our huts to sleep. It was a lovely day and sleep deserted us for we knew something important was to be announced. We sat outside the hut on the grass,, in our blue and white pyjamas, and eventually we heard --- THE WAR WAS OVER!-- Half the shift, me included, had to go on the 7pm to midnight shift. We sat twiddling the knobs on our sets with nothing coming through, and those five hours passed slowly, but enlivened with soup plates of raisins (luxury) put by our wireless receivers to nibble the boredom away! Come midnight, and we were relieved by the incoming laughing and happy shift, telling us we would need dark glasses. Puzzled we went through the open doors to find the whole station ablaze with light. The blackout was over! In the grounds was a large static water tank to be used in the caSE OF Fire. The whole watch spontaneously made a circle around it, joining hands and singing "There'll always be an England", and the Scottish girls adding "As long as Scotland's there"! So ended my war, but not my service life. After VE Day we were at some point moved further up Penny Pot Lane to a camp that had been a hospital for American servicemen. From there we still went up to Forest Moor, but intercepted traffic that was not German. Then some months later I was posted to Beaumanor, another listening post near Loughborough,where we continued to intercept. This was the station featured in the film Enigma, based on Richard Harriss's book. Being an "Army Girl" all my life, I applied for a commission, having been encouraged by my father, now home from the Middle East. In October 1946, I became a Subaltern, and was posted to Folkestone. This was a requisitioned hotel being used as a transit camp for wives and children about to join their husbands and fathers in Europe. Eventually it was for families returning from India, after Independence. They stayed sometimes for weeks until quarters could be found for them. My job was Messing Officer, and I found this more stressful than intercepting--coping with rations and complaints! From there I was posted to Chatham, HQ of the Royal Engineers, to be in charge of the ATS personnel there. A position of some authority, but I was terrified of the RE RSM. A happy stroke of fate was I met my husband-to-be there, a Lieutenant Sam Humble. By this time I was serving in the WRAC, and my final posting was to the Drivers and Clerks Training Centre at Gresford North Wales, where I was a lecturer. I stayed there until June 1950 when I left to be married.. During all these years I never breathed a word to anyone, including my father and my fiance, of those early days in the ATS. They all knew I was in Y Signals, but not what that meant. When the Enigma Machine became news and the mysterious Station X was revealed as Bletchley Park, I wondered what had happened to Sally Taylor, Maisie Craig, Bobbie Fell, Christine McGill and Sheila Clark and many other names in my autograph book. Edna Simpson (nee Graham) and I Cynthia Humble (nee Grossman) are still in touch. The others are vivid and very much alive in my memories. One thing that will keep us alive is aphotograph of our watch in Bletchley Park ----we are all museum pieces!

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