It must also have taken some practise to learn how to operate with any confidence. Some Wrens recalled how there was almost a school-like induction for a couple of weeks beforehand: lessons involving desks and blackboards, and the principles of binary mathematics. But together with the difficulties, there was also a tremendous sense of pride among these young women. On any shift, it would tend to be one Wren looking after a Colossus machine while elsewhere in the room were codebreakers, usually mathematicians, foraging through the results. So while the work was hard, it was also absorbing. And even though the Wrens were not told the provenance of the information that their machines were decoding, it was none the less obvious that it was vital. The war gave women opportunities in the workplace previously denied to them. The Newmanry and the Colossus was a step into one of the ultimate male-dominated inner sanctums: the world of technology.
ABOVE AND BELOW Tending the Colossus: using revolutionary valve technology, this machine enabled the cryptologists to read the messages being sent out by German High Command. The machines required much more interaction from intensely trained Wren operators.
Built at the GPO Research Centre in London, the original Colossus was in some ways improvised, and parts of the appartus involved telephone exchange components.
What was little known at the time was that Tommy Flowers had been so determined that his ideas would work that he dipped into his own pocket in order to ensure that the machine was constructed. The effort, plus the financial sacrifice, paid off somewhat triumphantly. The first of these machines was such a success that eight others were ordered, as quickly as Flowers and his team could make them.
Even the highest technology was reliant upon more everyday spare parts.
Dr Tommy Flowers of the GPO – a belatedly recognised engineering genius. There is now a road named after him in north-west London. After the war, he helped create the premium bond machine ERNIE.
The reason the Colossus wasn’t a computer was that it didn’t have an internally stored program – each time it was set up, it had to be set up afresh. But these machines – soon there was an improved Mark II – were extremely fast and effective and the mere fact that this marvel of electronics worked at all is tribute to the engineering genius of Tommy Flowers. He demonstrated clearly that a computing age was within near reach; Professor Newman was inspired directly after the war to continue this line of research in Manchester.
It is generally thought that after 1945, just two Colossus machines survived, transplanted to the new GCHQ base in Cheltenham. Then even these were destroyed. This was keenly felt by Dr Flowers, who had to consign his own files, notes and blueprints to a bonfire for security reasons – even if the original machines no longer existed, it was felt that even the design of them had to stay a strictly buried secret. Despite the fact that he had been awarded an MBE and £1,000 (a considerable sum back then), neither could make up for the aching sense of absence he felt as these machines – the most secret of all Bletchley’s achievements – were reduced to their base components. Dr Flowers spent the rest of his career with the Post Office, and it was his belief that the complete cloak of secrecy around the Colossus actually held back any putative British computer industry just at the point that the Americans were starting to seize the initiative. Indeed, on the other side of the Atlantic, the Americans quite swiftly declassified the wartime research that they had done, leading to a boom in this new branch of computer science.
Recently, thanks to the late computer engineer Tony Sale, a dedicated team of volunteers at Bletchley Park have pulled off the quite extraordinary feat of constructing a replica working Colossus machine. It is a source of wonder to visitors – particularly the younger visitors – for it is in this machine that we see the true birth of the computer (despite competing claims from the US). It is easy to imagine this beast clattering and chattering in the concrete blocks throughout the silence of the night, the small lights winking white and red in mesmerising and seemingly random patterns, the tape spooling round in seemingly endless loops. It is also worth bearing in mind that in 1945, as the Park’s activities were being wound down, Professor Newman told his young colleagues: ‘We are losing the most interesting job that we ever had.’
Chapter Six
OFF-DUTY HOURS AND THE PRESSURE VALVES
Glenn Miller and his band perform in an English meadow; the occasion of his July 1944 concert in Bedford caused huge excitement among Bletchley Wrens – American swing was quite the thing.
The huts might have been freezing in winter but in the early years of the war, the harsh cold at least brought a frosty wonderland feel to Bletchley.
There are some Bletchley veterans who get a little annoyed when any mention is made of their off-duty hours. They were there to play their part in defeating Hitler, after all; not to put on cabarets. Captain Jerry Roberts, MBE, remembers that even if he had wanted to join any of the multiplicity of societies that Bletchley Park had to offer, he was simply billeted too far away, and there was too little time.
Others, though, remembered that Bletchley Park had an extraordinarily rich cultural life. Of course, yes, the work was hard. And that is the point: it was so intense and so exhausting that the codebreakers and everyone else needed some inventive and involving ways to unwind. Given that some of the finest minds of a generation were gathered here, it is perhaps not surprising that their leisure hours were more highbrow than those of others.
Even from the earliest years, for instance, there were Christmas and midsummer revues – composed of comic sketches and songs – which were staged rather elaborately, with costumes and sets. The younger codebreakers would write amusing songs to do with their working conditions and the insanity of life at the Park. The sketches were more broadly satirical, aimed at enemies and Allies alike. In 1945, the revue was called ‘It’s The End, Let’s Face It’, and featured jokes to do with Ibsen and Purcell. In a revue a few years previously, senior codebreaker Josh Cooper had taken part, dressed up in desert fatigues because, as his son later pointed out, he had been in Palestine in the 1920s and had the ‘costume’ handy. The audiences were always enthusiastic. As a teenager, messenger Mimi Galilee attended these shows and looked on with wonder at these ‘amazing beings’. It is not difficult to detect potential influences; drawn from Oxford and particularly Cambridge, had the war not broken out these clever young men (and they were mostly the men) might very well have auditioned for Footlights, or similar revue societies. The Bletchley revues also had the effect of making operatives laugh affectionately and fondly at the institution in which they worked.
Captain Jerry Roberts MBE – an officer who found that his work was too absorbing to join in with Bletchley’s clubs and societies. But this was rare.
There were those who wanted something a little more nutritious from a night out at the theatre, and Bletchley’s actors – some of whom were indeed actually actors in the outside world – staged commendably inventive productions of Much Ado About Nothing, Gaslight, They Came to a City and French Without Tears, among others.
For the carefully-built sets, and the elaborate costumes, they often had help with materials from sources such as the Bletchley Co-Operative Society. Sometimes, unlikely stars were born; Ann Dent recalled Jeanne Cammaerts, ‘a big and imposing girl’ who showed ‘considerable talent’ as Eliza Doolittle in a production of Pygmalion that featured a colleague from the Sergeants’ Mess as Professor Higgins.
Another point about these productions, which were taken out to halls and auditoriums around the county, was that they raised money for various military benevolent funds. The audiences who came from villages and towns thereabouts would have had no idea what these young people on stage were doing in the way of war work; but judging by local newspapers from 1945, after the war ended, one of the regrets was that the area was losing such a fascinating theatrical troupe. ‘We don’t know what they did at the Park,’ wrote the correspondent, ‘but their productions were much admired.’ Some of Bletchley’s proper pr
ofessional actors – notably Dorothy Hyson – maintained a little of that limelight glamour even during their daytime duties in the huts. Hyson, a great West End theatrical name, not to mention an erstwhile co-star to the phenomenally popular George Formby – was noted particularly for her white chinchilla coats, which made many other women almost literally groan with envy. At that stage, Hyson, who was married, was conducting an affair with her future husband, the Special Operations Executive (SOE) agent (and fellow actor) Anthony Quayle, who on rare occasions would come to visit her in Bletchley.
There was a lot of acting talent – professional and amateur – at Bletchley.
Sgt Jeanne Cammaerts is a formidable Eliza Doolitle. These shows also raised money for charitable concerns.
It wasn’t all Shakespeare, Austen and JB Priestley: the codebreakers also had a gift for comedy and music. Amusingly prominent in many programme notes is Brin Newton-John – codebreaker and father of singer Olivia.
The Park’s greatest theatrical talent happened to be one of its most experienced codebreakers, with World War One cryptology successes under his belt. Frank Birch, who as mentioned elsewhere had essayed a successful Widow Twankey, had, earlier in his career, been a history don at Cambridge. He had given that up in 1928 to be a theatrical producer and director, and had staged warmly reviewed productions at the Cambridge Festival Theatre. One of his young company then was Jessica Tandy, later to find Hollywood fame. He also produced an English version of Goldoni’s comedy, The Servant of Two Masters, in 1932. This was rather less rapturously received than its 21st-century smash-hit incarnation, better known as One Man, Two Guvnors.
After the war, Birch became better known as a regular BBC broadcaster, and was a contributor to the popular radio show, The Brains Trust. Oddly, at Bletchley, Birch was actually known less for theatricals than for his unyielding style of man management. He was one of the few in the hierarchy who seriously attempted to impose proper discipline on the intellects working for him, and was occasionally resented for it.
One of the curiosities of Bletchley Park was that it was filled not just with mathematicians, but talented musicians too. The two sometimes crossed over, but this also meant that codebreakers and Wrens had a feast of musical opportunities. The Park authorities managed to secure visits from famous artistes such as the tenor Peter Pears (lover of Benjamin Britten) and the pianist Myra Hess. In part, this was due to Sergeant Herbert Murrill who, as mentioned in Chapter Four, was the BBC’s director of music, and therefore fantastically well connected. Piano chords could be heard all over the Park; many of the young codebreakers in the Huts were rather fine performers on the instrument. It was also the case – certainly in middle-class families – that youngsters would have been much more familiar with such instruments in the home than most of their age would be now.
The house itself was a focus for socialising; while the ballroom echoed to the sound of waltzes, the front lawn was sometimes used for the surreal spectacle of Highland dancing displays or simply tea breaks.
But it wasn’t all just Brahms, or the codebreakers’ madrigal society singing on the banks of the Grand Union Canal in the warm rosy sunset of a summer’s evening. Younger Bletchley-ites were finding that their musical tastes had more of an American swing. There was terrific excitement among the Wrens later in the war when Glenn Miller and his band played in nearby Bedford. This was largely for the benefit of US troops – but many young British women who went along to these shows, with their heady atmospheres, recalled them swooningly.
Cycling was hugely popular; many women had second-hand bikes and relished the chance – and the freedom – to take off into the country.
The codebreakers and the Wrens needed a great deal of physical exercise too. Since the work either involved being hunched over bigram tables or wrestling with the vast bombe machines, often late into the night, both fresh air and sunshine were clearly important. Many of the Bletchley recruits got hold of bicycles, and would take themselves off into the countryside on precious days off. Sometimes they would venture further, and take rowing boats down rivers. Oliver Lawn and Sheila MacKenzie did this while they were courting, taking a picnic with them. Unfortunately, they got caught in a monstrous deluge while in the middle of the river and far from cover. But not even that could spoil their day. Within the grounds of Bletchley Park itself, exercise was not neglected. Since the days of the former owners, the Leons, the estate boasted tennis courts, and the Bletchley Tennis Society was very popular. In the archives is a fascinating letter from the secretary to the Dunlop company, pleading (in those straitened, rationed times) for a new supply of balls. There is also a beseeching internal memo, asking that the members of the tennis club be allowed to use the Summer House as a changing room. Given the security around all areas of the Park, and the fact that there were rooms and buildings that it was forbidden for anyone to enter, the request is not so frivolous as it sounds.
After long shifts behind blackouts, it was genuinely important for codebreakers to soak up as much sun – and vitamin D – as they could in leisure hours. One hut had a solarium for gloomier weather.
In the earliest days, games of rounders had been played just in front of the house, with the teams stacked with dons and classicists, as witnessed by an incredulous Malcolm Muggeridge. On sunny days, the lake just a few yards down from the house was popular with the Wrens. They would row out into the middle of the water, come under attack from the perpetually furious geese, and then row back. That same lake froze over several times throughout the winters of the war, and when it did so, the codebreakers took to it with an almost childlike gusto. The American codebreakers were particularly envied for their skating skills. On warmer spring days, many Wrens remembered how they would sometimes simply flop by the water with a cup of coffee after a gruelling eight-hour shift, soaking up the welcome sun after work conducted in blackout conditions.
Physical fitness was a constant concern, as this memo concerning a Bletchley hockey team illustrates. Alan Turing went on prodigious long-distance runs, and could finish a marathon in two hours and forty minutes.
In deepest winter, when the lake froze over, there was a craze for skating which became seriously competitive; the Americans always seemed to have the better skates. Note the rather spirited accordion accompaniment. There was always some form of music in the air at Bletchley.
Distinguished visitors to the Park occasionally glimpsed the wonderful spectacle of Oxbridge dons playing rounders in the grounds.
On top of all this, there was perhaps the greatest obsession of all, and that was with dancing. Elsewhere, we have seen how Hugh Foss was the undisputed master of the Gay Gordons; but the Bletchley operatives were much more varied in their moves than that. One veteran recalled the noise like thunder as ballroom dancing classes were held in the main house’s ballroom and kitchen. Then there were the dances held at American bases across the county, for which there was a particular clamour among the Wrens to get to. One veteran Wren recalled the fun of those evenings, and the strategy that she employed to bat off any questions about her secret work: she told inquisitive American soldiers that it was her job ‘to scrape the barnacles off the bottoms of submarines’. Apparently no one questioned this any further. The Wren added that while the Americans were certainly generous with nylons and cigarettes, as per the old cliché, the cigarettes were Camels, they tasted horrible, and the tobacco kept falling out of them.
The Bletchley fencing society was a great hit; members managed to find a local tutor. Gentler pursuits included rambling and bird-watching. All these were crucial to help codebreakers shake off stress.
Wrens would be taken to these dances on buses; there were also occasions at Woburn when the men – be they RAF or codebreakers – were sent by bus for the evening dances at the village hall. This wasn’t just a Bletchley phenomenon, of course – there were many young women who practically lived for their dances throughout the war. But the Wrens went at it with unusual energy. The Bletchley Y out-stati
on in Scarborough, Yorkshire, became so noted among Morse-listening Wrens that many women in other stations applied to be transferred there because they had heard it was such fun. Added to this, back in Bletchley and the villages around, there were wildly popular village hops, though veteran Jean Valentine says that as an 18-year-old who had led a sheltered life up until that point, she never forgot her shock at one such occasion when a local young mother started breast-feeding her baby. More than all this, though, the dances were where countless romances were sealed.
The Park had more cerebral pursuits too, including a book club, language courses, and an early film club. You could, if you wished, sign up to learn Latin or Russian. There was a classical music appreciation society, though its limited repertoire of records got rather worn out on the Park’s gramophone; late on in the war, an official request was put in for the purchase of quite an expensive ‘radiogram’.
Given the backgrounds of so many codebreakers, naturally there were chess clubs too; one Wren remembered being on the train with British champion Hugh Alexander when he had a couple of days’ leave. He was sitting there with a practice set because later that day he would be taking on all-comers in a super-chess tournament in Cambridge.
The Lost World of Bletchley Park Page 6