The Secret Life of Bletchley Park (19 page)
Read The Secret Life of Bletchley Park Online
Authors: Sinclair McKay
The activity prior to this great triumph had been similarly intense in Hut 4. One veteran recalls cots, or small camp beds, being moved in so that the personnel concerned would never be
far from developments. One codebreaker, Walter Ettinghausen, spent forty-eight hours in the hut; he eventually emerged, ‘unkempt and unshaven’, and announced to his colleagues that ‘the
Bismarck
had finally been chased down’.
Perhaps appropriately, given the centrality of the conflict at sea, there was now a distinctly naval flavour to the personnel at Bletchley Park. This chiefly took the form of the Women’s Royal Navy volunteers, the first of whom were just starting to arrive. Ruth Bourne was such a young woman, although pleasingly, she was a little less impressed with the central notion of Bletchley than her commanding officers seemed to be.
‘When we were called up, we had to go to training camp,’ she says. ‘And even though I lived and volunteered in Birmingham, we were sent all the way up to a castle called Balloch, outside of Glasgow. And there was what had been a farm called Tallyhewen and this farm was turned into a Wrens’ training camp.
‘And that’s where we spent the first three weeks doing naval training – salutes, square bashing, cleaning out the ablutions. Organising concert parties, whatever you wanted to do in your leisure. Then at the end of that period, there was a mustering process and people were told what they were going to do.
‘A group of us were told we were going to do SDX – and that was connected to joining a ‘ship’ called HMS
Pembroke
5, which was later on shortened to P5. Anyone who was P5 was doing bombe operating and codebreaking and so on. But we didn’t know that then.
‘Eventually when we were brought in to see the Petty Officer, we were told that this was highly secret work – if we entered into it, we would not be able to leave it.’
There was that one tiny opportunity to back out if the idea seemed utterly uncongenial. ‘At that stage, we could have opted out, but no one ever did,’ says Ruth. ‘And then when we’d been told that, we were taken somewhere else and asked to sign the Official Secrets Act and then we were taken into what was known as B-Block,
which was a huge block eventually where we finished up. My strongest memory is of the Chief Petty Officer saying “We are breaking German codes” with a kind of triumphant smile.’
As Diane Payne recalled in an essay, it was often difficult to explain to loved ones exactly why one wasn’t on board a ship, as one had signed up to be:
My pay amounted to thirty shillings a week as an ordinary Wren, rising to £4 10s when I later became a Petty Officer. We had no category badges, and were supposed to say, if asked, that we were just ‘writers’. Sometimes it was very difficult having so little to say about one’s life, and this explanation did not always satisfy relatives and friends, so my wartime activities were considered unimportant and something of a failure.
By now, the numbers working at the Park were expanding as the decrypting grew steadily more successful and reliable. As historian and codebreaker Asa Briggs succinctly put it: ‘I’d never seen so many women in my life!’
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Often, when looking out from her office on the first floor of the house, over the lawn and the lake, recalls Mimi Gallilee, one could see, at shift changeover time, ‘a great sea of bodies. All these people going to and from the coaches that would ferry them to their billets in the outlying villages. Countless people, all milling about – it was a magnificent sight.’
Around this time, Bletchley was using so-called ‘Hollerith Machines’, mighty efforts that processed punch-cards, another logic-based means into some of the codes. And it was obvious that it would be better to have these machines operated by people who knew how they worked. One such group were very loosely termed ‘The Lewis Ladies’.
The Park authorities had, in their search for Hollerith personnel, turned to the retail firm John Lewis; it used similar punch-card machines, and had women specially trained to use them. Making a plea via the Ministry for Labour and National Service, the Park
interviewed fifty of these young women, and selected ten. To the fury of the Park authorities, the Ministry suddenly withdrew the offer and allocated the John Lewis women to land work instead. Vinegary memos passed back and forth. One read: ‘The John Lewis episode is a disgrace.’
The fight between Bletchley Park and the monolithic bureaucracy grew so rancorous that eventually Churchill got to hear of it. As recorded in one Park memo, ‘the shortage of personnel reached the ears of the PM who directed Ismay to render an immediate report on the shortage of female personnel.’
It was a significant problem, as another memo from September 1941 makes clear: ‘We have had some very considerable difficulty in recruitment, especially women clerks, and we are now considerably underborne with the result that some very important jobs are being held up.’
Some women – even if headhunted for positions – seemed most reluctant to do their bit. This letter, from a Whitehall acquaintance of Denniston’s, concerning a potential female recruit, illustrated the problem vividly: ‘the lady didn’t want to go to BP as she thought the specialised work there would not fit her, particularly for administrative work after the war … Waterfield [the recruiter] is in a rage and is apparently calling for the lady again to tell her it must be BP or nothing.’
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The lady concerned might have had a point. Some of the females who did make it to Bletchley seem to have initially regretted doing so. Certainly, the massive influx of Wrens into the town created an enormous amount of strain. One Superintendent E. Blagrove wrote: ‘There were many difficulties in the early days in the struggle to live. Ration cards failed to appear, the bath and laundry situation caused many headaches, medical and dental arrangements had to be organised and the problem of billets was always cropping up.’
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The conditions of the work could seem at first rather heart-sinking too. Codebreaker Diana Plowman recalled: ‘The Hut next to
mine was flanked on each side by great flanks of teleprinters manned by Wrens. Tho’ I wasn’t supposed to see. Security was so great we might have been in a prison camp.’
However, as Superintendent Blagrove reported, a rather more positive frame of mind began to become apparent among the girls: ‘There was a magnificent spirit among these pioneers and wherever they turned they found great co-operation and many helping hands. The stimulation was the knowledge of the essential work on which they were employed.
‘Their keenness to do well and their enthusiasm was the inspiration for all who came later. These ratings were destined to be the future officers and chief wrens of their section.’
Food, Booze and Too Much Tea
If an army marches on its stomach, then it would also seem to be the case that the most absent-minded and eccentric of boffins and linguists decrypted on theirs. One of the subjects that seems to cause the sharpest polarisation in views of Bletchley Park is neither the pressure of the work, nor the tension of keeping it secret – but the quality of the food (and indeed of the drink) that was on offer.
And this is perhaps not surprising. In a time of severe rationing, it was only natural that young appetites would be sharpened. And the taste, smell and texture of food is one of those things, like scents, that have the power to bring old memories sharply into focus. Just as Evelyn Waugh’s son Auberon recalled that an intense feature of his post-wartime childhood was the very occasional manifestation of bananas, so Bletchley Park veterans now find themselves amused to think back to the food that they were served up on both day and night shifts. One might think that in such a rarefied, cerebral atmosphere, that food would be low on the list of daily concerns. But it wasn’t.
‘The food was
disgusting
,’ declares Sarah Baring. She elaborated vividly in her personal memoir of life at the Park:
We thought a lot about food. Night watches were especially vulnerable to rumbling tummies and usually forced us to go down to the canteen at 3 a.m., where the food was indescribably awful. It is a well-known fact that to cater for so many people is difficult, and particularly in wartime … but our canteen outshone any sleazy restaurant in producing sludge and the smell of watery cabbage and stale fat regularly afflicted the nostrils to the point of nausea.
One night I found a cooked cockroach nestling in my meat, if you can dignify it by that name, the meat not the beetle. I was about to return it to the catering manageress when my friend Osla, who had the appetite of a lioness with cubs, snatched the plate and said: ‘What a waste – I’ll eat it!’ How she managed to eat so much – minus the insect – and stay so slim I never knew, because any leftovers on any nearby plate were gobbled up by her in a flash.
Oliver Lawn recalls differently, though his endorsement does not quite add up to faint praise: ‘Andrew Hodges, in his biography of Turing, talks about the “poor food” at Bletchley Park. Which I didn’t agree with. I thought it was all right: wartime food, rationing, all the rest of it. But it wasn’t as bad as he has painted it.’ Another veteran said: ‘A lot of people complained about the meals but I thought they were wonderful.’
When the war began in 1939, meals were taken in the house itself; the then head of SIS, Admiral Hugh Sinclair, arranged stylishly for a professional chef to be brought in from the Ritz, and there was waitress service at the tables, as Mimi Gallilee remembers well, since for a short time her own mother was one such waitress.
Even then, however, there was no such thing as a free luncheon. In October 1939, the first of many nit-picking internal memos concerning catering arrangements and tea breaks was circulated to staff. ‘There is no obligation for anyone to take lunch at the war
site,’ the management memo stated. ‘But those who do must understand that the rates charged apply for the whole month.’ Furthermore, ‘all GC and CS personnel are requested to pay their lunch money to Miss Reid, room 38.’
And that unusual and generous bonus of exquisitely prepared food was not sustainable. In the first place, the Ritz chef in question was a troubled soul who tried to commit suicide. He did not last long at Bletchley Park. Second, as numbers at the Park steadily grew, this method of catering was less and less practical; although another Bletchley veteran, Jean Valentine, recalls that the ground floor was used for quite a while for ‘self-service cafeteria’ purposes – quite a novelty to a young Scots girl unacquainted with such modern ways. Later there was to follow a large purpose-built canteen, the wares of which were to divide opinion sharply.
Given the shortages of meat, of butter, of sugar, of practically everything, it would have been a tall order to expect the canteen staff to produce works of culinary genius. But reactions might also have had a little to do with one’s upbringing: for instance, if one hailed from the north of Scotland, where the food tended towards the plain and hearty and filling, then there may have been some comfort to draw from the Bletchley efforts.
For instance, one wartime dish, Woolton Pie – named after its inventor, Lord Woolton, and involving substantial amounts of potatoes, turnips and other bland vegetables – was rather popular with some of the Bletchley Park veterans. It might have been plain and tending towards the tasteless, but it was also gratifyingly filling.
One Scottish lady who was not so impressed was Irene Young, who recorded these views in her memoirs: ‘The food was not particularly appetising – I remember with especial distaste the packeted pastry fruit pies which we called “cardboard tarts” – but then, few expected delectable food in wartime.’
Just because it tasted of nothing didn’t lessen demand, however, as she wrote: ‘Some people, though, were very hungry, and second helpings were not allowed. I recollect one girl putting on dark
glasses as a disguise in the hope that she would be luckier than Oliver Twist. She was similarly rebuffed.’
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An admonishing official memo from the Park authorities to all personnel put the issue in sharp relief. ‘Everyone should collect their own helpings from the counter, one course at a time. No second helpings can be given,’ it declared, going on to explain the parameters of what constituted a helping. ‘A Welsh rarebit or cheese dish with vegetables or salad is classed as a main dish.’
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And yet it wasn’t all cheese dishes and cardboard tarts. Bletchley Park did have more access to meat – local, it has been suggested – than many other establishments. The same was true of vegetables – even though, as one memo from Alistair Denniston pointed out plaintively, ‘competition from the railways and the factories has increased our difficulties’ in terms of getting fresh produce. Jean Valentine recalls: ‘The food was great at BP. I am open to correction. But I think there was a vegetable garden just over the stone wall. Whether they still grew vegetables there I don’t know, but that is certainly what happened when the Leons owned the house.’
And Sheila Lawn found herself comparing it favourably with the competition on offer in the town: ‘One day, I went to see a film, and then, I was hungry, so I went into what was called the British Restaurant. And I thought: “This isn’t half as good as our canteen.” I thought it was a terribly dull meal.’ But one might also see that a week of working night shifts would turn tastes, as well as sleep patterns, upside down.
The canteen itself is remembered by many for its egalitarian atmosphere. Diana Plowman observed: ‘There was a huge cafeteria where one could eat breakfast (exhausted) with an Admiral on one side and an American Colonel on the other.’
There was a lounge area within the house in which anyone could take a quick break of tea or coffee. Happily there were fewer complaints about authenticity on this front. One veteran said: ‘We got real coffee – it came in those sealed tins. Lyons, I think.’ Yet the subject of tea, and tea breaks – those perennial marker buoys of all
things British – proved a reliable source of controversy at the Park. Quite early on, a peevish memo was sent out to all personnel: ‘It is regretted that owing to losses, it is no longer possible to provide service crockery for morning and afternoon teas … those wanting tea must provide their own gear … all service cups, saucers and spoons are to be returned to the kitchen by Tuesday 13th Feb.’
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