19 The End and the Beginning
It was too soon for elation. In the Far East, the Japanese forces were proving utterly intractable. Elsewhere, life in bases such as HMS Anderson continued to offer consolation for the wearying slog of the shift system – daubs of colour and brilliance from luminous nocturnal insects to lizards on the football pitches.
Back in England, such everyday escapism was harder to find; and for the expert wireless operators at Beaumanor, the frictions of enforced communal life occasionally broke out into open hostility over minor irritations. ‘Tolerance and thoughtfulness are two good virtues but very hard to acquire,’ wrote Privates Peggy Doherty, Peggie Moran, Peggy Evans, Alice Cooke and Lynda Courtnage in an indignant letter to the staff magazine. ‘In little things, however, tolerance should be easy to exercise. Sad to say, some people who frequent the canteen are lacking in it.’ The root of the ladies’ complaint? A battle over the new sound of popular culture.
‘A short time ago, a swing programme was being appreciated by several ATS who, being young and vital, enjoy these lively tunes,’ wrote the women collectively. ‘In the middle of our favourite, a gentleman – ??? [sic] – rushed to the radio and without further ado, switched off. I don’t blame this personage for disliking such “music”,’ the letter went on, a little disingenuously. ‘His taste probably lies somewhere in the higher regions but if he is an admirer of Grieg, it still doesn’t give him the priority for use of the wireless set.’
It is all too easy to envisage this standoff between a band of high-spirited girls and a crusty older man. In the Powell and Pressburger film A Matter of Life and Death, American swing music is played at the Heavenly Court to terrific comic effect, causing various angelic hosts to wince. Such music, though, was a foretaste of the more Americanised world to come.
So indeed were some of the romantic arrangements at Beaumanor. Just after D-Day in 1944, the staff magazine had a happy announcement to make:
To Sgt Betty Coombs, ‘A’ Watch, no 1 Wing, whose wedding is to take place in Surrey on July 24th. The bridegroom is a Private Quick of the U.S. Army, and judging by the comparatively short time that the Yanks have been in the district, it seems that he is appropriately named. Good luck, Betty: may you never have any leisure.
Betty Coombs was not a lone case. Also receiving congratulations in the same issue was ‘Private Helen Brown of “B” Watch, no 1 Wing, who is to marry Sgt Mulligan of the U.S. Army towards the end of September.’
The advent of the Americans was not, however, a source of universal jubilation. An anonymous contributor to Beaumanor’s scandal sheet recounted the day when ‘the Yanks came to our village.’ The young women were advised to stay indoors and keep away from them. The young women did no such thing. Meanwhile, some of the older male villagers in the area were furiously resentful of the invasion, and of the way that local women viewed the exotic newcomers. One such man, Steve, was so disgruntled to hear of his daughters attending American dances that, one evening, he ‘flung’ himself off to the pub and didn’t return for some time. When he did, extremely well refreshed, he was in the company of a couple of US servicemen and a ‘huge tin of preserved chicken’ – unimaginable luxury in those days of rationing.
Transferred from Egypt to Sardinia, young Special Operator Bob Hughes was taking the war with a certain insouciance, even though it had brought adventures a very long way from his former life working for the Post Office. ‘Sardinia was quite an experience, in a way,’ he says with a chuckle. ‘Very rugged country, bandit country. We got there and the first thing we did was get into the regulating office. The sergeant there immediately said: “Any of you lads play football?” So we thought, well, he’s pretty good . . .
‘We were there for some time, well after D-Day. We were there for straightforward direction finding. When we had to do this in Alexandria, it was easier because three-quarters of the area range was land. On an island, you had to cover 360 degrees of water. That was difficult but you obviously did your best. You’d get a very narrow window.’
Every day in Sardinia, Mr Hughes says, ‘We were driven out to our little unit, built out of packing cases. Couldn’t swing a cat in there, it was so narrow.’ But beyond work, the possibilities of the island were rather more varied than those he had found in Alexandria. ‘We got in with the transport people, and when we were off, we’d drift round and say, “You going out anywhere today?” That’s how we got round the island, bunging lifts.’
In Sardinia he found the local people perfectly affable. But there was one serious – and occasionally terrifying – hazard that he and his fellows had to face on lonely night shifts in tiny listening stations up in the hills. For the small cabins in which the radio equipment was installed were not as secure as they might be.
‘Of all the experiences I had during the war – and this includes all the bombing of London,’ says Mr Hughes, ‘the nearest I got to death was in Sardinia. They used to drive us out for our shifts from the airfield, about three or four miles, and there were little farmhouses dotted about. I call them farmhouses. Apparently the people were so poor there they paid one lira a year as rent just to say they weren’t slaves. They produced food for the government. The farmhouses always had a dog chained up and these dogs used to run in semi-circles. And sometimes the dogs got loose.’
So it was that Mr Hughes was taken to the cabin for his night shift. ‘The authorities used to give us a tin of sardines or something.’ This was intended as a snack to keep the operator going. ‘But this particular night they gave me a bone with meat on it – probably lamb. I can remember now starting the shift in this very tiny hut. It was very hot. And because Sardinia was a nasty place for malaria, you had to wear battle dress right up to the neck.
‘It was so hot, I left the door open. Occasionally, you know, you would nod off in the small hours with the heat.’ Mr Hughes did so. And when he awoke, he gradually realised he was not alone. ‘There was this huge bloody German shepherd dog and it had its feet planted on the entrance to the door, just standing there looking. He was obviously aware of the meat in the corner – which I didn’t want anyway. We had a Sten gun, which was on the wall opposite, and I couldn’t – I wouldn’t have shot the dog anyway. He’s looking at me and I’m looking at him. And I jumped up and screamed and threw my hands in the air and he ran. Now if he’d jumped at me, I would have been gone. But it was pure instinct. And did I shut that door fast.’
In the midst of the sweltering Sardinian climate, Mr Hughes’s passion for football led him and his fellow Y Service colleagues into a couple of unpredictable matches with Sardinia’s finest. ‘On one occasion, we raised a football match with the local people. So we played a few games and obviously settled in with them. Now, we played one particular game against the local football team, which actually had a big stadium. We played this first match and we were winning one-nil. Nothing happened much – just a bit of kicking here and there.
‘But with ten minutes to go, the ball got kicked into the crowd, and suddenly it was thrown back and someone had put a knife in it. So that was that. Game over.
‘There was another match,’ adds Mr Hughes, laughing. ‘The stadium was bursting with local people – they didn’t have any entertainment otherwise so it was a big event. It started off and immediately the referee began to give fouls to the local team. And then he gave a penalty which wasn’t a penalty. Then there were a few fists raised, and it got a bit heated – and then on strode the sergeant from the carabinieri with the leather boots, the red stripes and everything.’
There was a moment or two of freezing tension, before the sergeant ‘got hold of the referee, took his whistle from him and ordered him off. The sergeant took over the match. And we won that match and when we were coming away, the crowds were gathering round and I was the only one on the back of the Bedford van wearing my matelots – white. Because I stood out, they shouted “Marine, marine, you cheated, you’re cheating!” and chased us as we drove off.’
A
fter the surrender of Italy, the focus of the war had shifted away from the Mediterranean. There were fewer enemy transmissions to listen for, and the listening stations began to be wound down. With less to concentrate on, Mr Hughes had time to admire how the entire operation had been carried out. ‘The logistics were amazing. There was the American air force there, a small Free French unit – anti-shipping wing – and the RAF. There were all these aircraft – they told us there was an underground reservoir filled with aircraft oil.’
There were also signs that a semblance of normal life was returning. ‘In the local town, suddenly the bus company started to operate again. A proper, regular bus service. We investigated. It turned out they were running the bus on aircraft high-octane.’
And what of the listeners, who were finding that suddenly the signals that they had been intercepting were no longer being sent?
‘We didn’t do a lot. One time, we were in Sassari and we went to get our ride back and there was a surrendered Italian officer there. The driver at that time happened to be a man we called Smithy. Smithy had been through the desert with the Eighth Army and,’ adds Mr Hughes, chuckling, ‘he used to sip aircraft octane.
‘An officer asked if Smithy would take this Italian officer back. He said “I’m not taking no so-and-so-and-so Italian. Tell him to p*** off.”
‘It all got a bit heated. But the officer said, “No, you’ve got to take him.”
‘My friend Eric and I got into the back – you couldn’t be with the driver, the vehicle was divided. Anyway, we’d had quite a few drinks, and there was this Italian officer there with us in the back. And at the front, Smithy did it purposely.’ That is, he drove like an utter maniac on the hazardously narrow mountain roads. ‘How Smithy took those bends I don’t know. But the Italian officer was literally screaming. He was shouting, “Stop, stop.” Eric and I were completely oblivious, laughing at him. But we could all have gone over the side of the mountain anytime. However, we got to Alghero safely, after all these miles of very dusty roads, and the officer got out. He brushed himself and there were clouds of dust. We stood and laughed and laughed. I’ll bet he’ll remember that day too.’
Because of the way that we mark significant dates, there is still a subconscious general assumption that, for everyone involved, the war ended in August 1945. Certainly hostilities ceased; but for many thousands of young people, the everyday life – the uniform, the drill, the duties – continued until the vast and logistically complex operation of bringing all the soldiers home, and filtering them back into the lives from which they had been taken, could be completed. Servicemen in the Far East – particularly those who had been prisoners of war in the unimaginably barbaric camps – were among the top priorities. Even before VJ Day, there was an ever-mounting sense of impatience to have it all done, especially among the families back home wanting to see their children return. Jean Valentine recalls that her mother wrote to her in Ceylon from Scotland in May 1945, just after VE Day, wanting to know when precisely her daughter would be home. Jean had to patiently reply that just because the war was over in Europe, that didn’t mean it was over everywhere else.
Nonetheless, some would affectionately recall that VE Day brought at least a foretaste of freedom. At Forest Moor near Harrogate, for instance, the news of the German capitulation, though hardly unexpected, instantly changed the atmosphere of the place. ‘The wireless station on the moor was surrounded by a high wire fence, and when the night shifts were exchanged all was in darkness,’ Y Service operative Cynthia Humble recalled:
Came the day in May 1945, we had been on the midnight to 7 a.m. 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 7 p.m. 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 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’!1
Across the world, however, for the thousands of wireless operators and interceptors who had spent years hunched over headsets, the signals did not simply come to an end. In fact, it is just as well in some cases that they didn’t. For a number of codebreakers and wireless operators, the glimpse that they had been afforded of a new, colourful, exotic world brought about philosophical as well as practical changes.
For Jean Valentine, it was a case of not being in a particular rush to get back to Britain, despite her mother’s anxieties. The war had opened up wide vistas that the young woman had never before considered. In Colombo, she had met the man she was going to marry. And their immediate post-war lives would be spent a great distance from the miseries of rationing, scarce fuel and housing shortages that marked the landscape of late 1940s Britain.
‘When I got back to Britain, I was demobbed right away,’ says Jean. ‘And my husband was still in the Navy, so I joined him. He was at an airfield down in Somerset. We had digs – or a couple of rooms in a house – down there. And eventually he was demobbed, some months later. Then he applied to join [airline] BOAC, and while he was waiting to get a job, he took a job in the City as a clerk with a shipping company and I went to work in Selfridges. I think we both earned something like £5 a week each. But it was enough to pay the rent and we had a car – somehow we managed.’ But the drabness of British life suited neither of them. ‘Then his appointment to BOAC came through, so that’s what we did – his first posting was to Rangoon in Burma.’
In other words, war work had given the couple a tremendous advantage; these young people were already citizens of the world, enthusiastic about moving into unfamiliar, exotic territory. Even if that exotic element had the odd moment of pure fright. ‘I remember going into my bedroom one evening and between the bathroom and the dressing room, there was a snake coiled up,’ says Jean. ‘So I yelled for the boy to come and deal with it – which he did – and then when I went off to bed, I found its mate coiled up in the dressing room.’
‘We went from there to Karachi in 1947,’ says Jean. They were there in time to witness an extraordinary moment. ‘Partition actually happened when we were between Calcutta and Karachi.’
They stayed in Karachi for a while: ‘After this, we went to Bombay, and we were there for about a year.’ Here, they lived a life that would have been quite inconceivable back in England – to say nothing of Jean’s native Perth.
‘We had four or five servants,’ she says brightly. ‘I had had my eldest daughter, Stephanie, by then.’ Little Stephanie had a nanny. Meanwhile, there was ‘a bloke who called himself a butler – which was polishing his ego a bit. He was the number one boy, and then there was his assistant, and the cook, and the driver. Five servants in Bombay. In a flat.’
For Robert Hughes, who had been moved from Sardinia to direction finding in Malta, the process was protracted – not least because of some unexpected health issues. ‘In Malta at that time, bubonic plague broke out,’ he says, shaking his head at the memory. (Malta was not alone in this; there had been similar cases in the Middle East.) ‘That obviously was very serious, and we were all scared in case we had to have the injection, which we were told – whether this rumour was true or not – put you out for forty-eight hours.
‘And it was just at this time that I was getting ready to come home. Anyway, I boarde
d the ship [out] and the first morning I got up to wash, I went bang, straight out, fainted. I came round – thought, bloody hell – walked a few paces – and then bang! – went out again. It happened four times. Someone took me round to the sick bay. There were quite a few laid out there, picking up troops along the way. I had a very high temperature. But by the time we got to Marseilles, I had more or less recovered.
‘So I didn’t know until I got home. It was malaria. Now, my father [a ship’s stoker] had also got malaria, when he was in Freetown. For him, the malaria only ever got repeated at Christmas, when he drank. There was some reason why the alcohol stirred it up. Anyway, the same thing happened to me. I was never a drinker, but when I had a drink with the lads, I got ill.’
Eventually Mr Hughes’s malaria petered out; tropical diseases aside, he recalls the moment in August 1945 when the news of Japan’s capitulation came through. It was during his voyage home, between fainting bouts: ‘It came over the ship’s tannoy that Japan had surrendered. You can imagine the cheer that went up. Because at that point, all of us on board simply expected to have six weeks’ leave and then out again. That was the rumour that had been going round.’
His military duties, however, were not quite over – there was a short and claustrophobic spell yet to come at Chatham docks on the austere north Kent coast – rather a comedown from the glamour of Sardinia and Malta.
‘There was a big drafting office in one of the old Chatham tunnels – it was a honeycomb,’ Mr Hughes says. ‘It was a big area where they had thirty Wrens, and they decided that this had to be manned twenty-four hours. So we got bunged down this drafting office and had to take it in turns to sleep down there.’ During the year of heavy night-time bombardment, those old tunnels in the Kent cliffs must, to some, have been a comfort; in the aftermath of VJ Day, however, the dark passages took on a more oppressive aspect. Not that young Mr Hughes was as worried as some of his comrades. Indeed, as his friends fretted about sinister old legends, Mr Hughes was beset by quite another apprehension. ‘You took your hammock down. And what used to worry me was that I was a very heavy sleeper. Imagine sleeping in total darkness in these tunnels. You’d get in your hammock, and I used to dread being still there, sleeping, when all these Wrens came to work in the morning.
The Secret Listeners Page 32