Saving Bletchley Park

by Sue Black

  Other billets were less homely, being inside stately homes and manors. If asked by their families, the Wrens would say that they were posted to HMS Pembroke V and would quite often name parts of the houses they were staying in after places you’d find aboard a ship. It was a way to ensure no slips of the tongue when talking to people outside of work. “I was living in Gayhurst Manor, a Tudor house, talking about sleeping in a cabin and going to the fo’csle and down to the galley,” says Bombe operator, and later supervisor, Sylvia Bate. But living in a country house didn’t mean that the lifestyle was cushy. “We had household chores. You were watched like a hawk, doing all the dirty jobs,” she explains. “They would see how willingly you did them and so on, scrubbing long, long corridors.”

  But it wasn’t all hardship. “I was lucky because I was billeted at Woburn Abbey and it was quite lovely,” says Margaret Hamlin, a Colossus operator. “The grounds were vast and we were able to enjoy ourselves and go for walks. There were deer and in the spring the rhododendrons all came out and we’d have picnics. I really enjoyed it there. Mind you, the house itself was a huge building and it was cold and not such a nice place to stay. We slept in the old servants’ quarters. And there were mice everywhere. I trod on one in the dark one night which was horrible. I didn’t know what to do with it so I flushed it down the toilet.” Colossus operator Lorna Fitch agrees: “There were plenty of mice. We tried to entice the ship’s cat up there but it was so well fed that it just wasn’t interested.” She goes on to say that, “Conditions in Woburn Abbey were very cold, not much comfort. I had to sometimes take my clothes to work and dry them over Colossus.” She and her colleagues were eventually given better quarters in some wooden huts that they built in an area called the quadrangle.

  Joan Bailey found herself living at Crawley Grange among all sorts of people: “We were Navy, Air Force and civilians all mixed together. We’d see the boffins sometimes smoking pipes in their tweed jackets. Some were very famous although we didn’t know it at the time. I’ve seen them since on TV and thought ‘I was at BP with him!’ It was a strange environment but we got used to it. We made good friends and the sense of camaraderie was very strong. But even off-duty there was some degree of discipline though. There was an ablutions block but the Petty Officers had their own bathrooms. My sister got in trouble because she kept borrowing one of the Petty Officer’s bath plugs as it was missing from our block. And they were very strict about lights out and curfew times. We slept in rooms in two-tiered bunks. We were on the ground floor and anyone who was late in climbed through the window. I’m pretty sure some other people climbed in the windows too . . . ”

  The birds and the bees were not halted at the gates of Bletchley Park, and in any population of several thousand people, many young and single, there will always be a certain number of, let’s say, courtships. At least one Bletchley veteran has said that when she walked back to her digs in the dark after a late shift – and it was very dark due to the blackout – she was “always tripping over bodies”. Certainly, registrar Rosamond Case says, “There were certain goings on . . . quite a lot actually.” There must have been a generation of unexpected “Bletchley babies”.

  But romances blossomed, too, many resulting in lifelong marriages. Arthur Bonsall, who worked in the German Air Section at BP for most of the war, met his wife Joan while stationed at Station X. “After my arrival at Bletchley Park, I soon realised that many of the staff were billeted in the attractive countryside around Bletchley. If one had a car and agreed to convey some of them to and from Bletchley Park on a regular basis, one would be given petrol coupons and a mileage allowance, both highly desirable,” he explains. “I bought an old car for £10, a 1931 20-horsepower Chrysler Coupe called Boadicea with a soft top, a bench seat in front and a rumble seat for two in the dickey. I first met Joan when I called at the vicarage in Stewkley to transport her and two other women to Bletchley Park one morning in January 1940. Our nearness of age and the fact that Joan was a linguist and came from Yorkshire led us to finding things we had in common.”

  Joan Wingfield worked in Hut 4 once it was built built, but at the time she met Arthur she was working in the library in the Manor House. An atmospheric photograph exists of her taken by her uncle, codebreaker Claude Henderson, who also worked in her section. He wasn’t allowed to take photographs, of course, but has been described as someone who “wasn’t a stickler for the rules”.

  “We spent any free time we had together,” continues Arthur. “We had lunch together in the very unromantic canteen, sometimes at a nearby restaurant, and I remember we played chess there on my portable chess set. It was always very easy to talk to Joan. We worked a six day week and holidays were rare. We were entitled to a week off every three months but this was subject to the ‘exigencies of the service’ which often arose. We were eventually married in November 1941 at Stewkley Parish Church. We decided to have no guests at the wedding, not even our parents. One reason for this was the secrecy; we had not been allowed to tell anyone, not even family, where we worked. Another factor was cost; we were very short of money and Joan earned even less than I did. Thirdly, it was the pressure of work. We took only two days off to get married.”

  Codebreaker Geoffrey Tandy’s story is slightly less romantic but fascinating nevertheless, if only for the curious coincidences that surrounded his secondment. In 1939 he received notice that he was required to report to Station X. He dutifully did so and was told that he had been recruited by someone at the War Office because he was an expert in cryptograms. Nothing unusual there, of course; Bletchley Park was keen to engage people with a penchant for unravelling cryptic messages. However, Tandy was then obliged to point out that he knew very little about cryptograms but quite a lot about cryptogams – plants that reproduce by spores, like algae, ferns, mosses and lichens.[34] He was, at the time, the British Natural History Museum’s seaweed expert and Head of Botany.[35]

  But embarrassment quickly turned to happy accident; shortly after Tandy arrived at Station X, a number of sea-sodden documents that had been recovered from sunken U-boats arrived at BP. Among them was an Enigma codebook. The documents appeared to be unrecoverable, as any attempt to open them resulted in them falling to pieces. However, Tandy knew how to dry them out by using special absorbent papers because he regularly used the same process to preserve marine algae specimens. And it transpired that the U-boat notebooks contained useful information that aided the deciphering of German codes.

  Tandy was to stay on at Station X in the rank of Lieutenant-Commander (RNVR), firstly in Hut 4 and later as Head of Technical Intelligence (Naval Section 6) with responsibility for captured documents. It is curious that he is rarely mentioned in books about Station X. Admittedly he didn’t play as grand a part as Turing, Knox, Flowers or Batey et al. However, it may also be because of the kind of person he was.

  According to contemporaries and biographers, Tandy was something of a drinker and a womaniser and would disappear for days on end, supposedly on work-related business. The advent of war allowed him to contrive even more absences. Quite what his wife Doris – nicknamed Polly – made of these absences isn’t recorded, but it must have put a strain upon her and their three children, Christopher, Anthea and Alison. Interestingly, Anthea’s godfather was the poet T S Eliot, with whom Tandy had worked and become friends. Tandy had a third string to his professional bow in that he was an occasional announcer on BBC radio. His Christmas Day 1937 on-air reading of Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats was the first time the poems were made public – Eliot’s book would not be published for a further two years.[36] He was also the co-narrator of the groundbreaking 1936 short film The Way to the Sea, featuring the poetry of W H Auden and music by Benjamin Britten.

  Eliot developed a deep affection for “Pollytandy” and wrote her many letters, some of which were recently unearthed in her attic – along with some previously unknown Eliot poems. “When a Cat adopts you,” he wrote, “
there is nothing to be done about it except to put up with it and wait until the wind changes.” Eliot’s unrequited love also expressed itself in the addresses he wrote on the envelopes, sometimes referring to the Tandys’ Hope Cottage in Hampton-on-Thames as Hopeless Cottage or even Hope against Hope Cottage.

  As the war ended, so did the Tandys’ marriage. Geoffrey Tandy star-ted a new family in 1946 and left the Natural History Museum in 1948 to take on a new role in intelligence gathering at the Foreign Office. He retired in 1954 and died in 1969.

  It is a fact that many people found true love during their time at Bletchley Park and many marriages took place as a result. Rosamond Case met her husband Peter Twinn at BP due to a shared love of music: “A girl who’d just come down from Oxford knew Peter and offered to introduce me. He was this unshaven green-faced creature . . . night shift is not the best time to meet your future husband.” Mavis Lever met her husband Keith Batey there. Arthur Bonsall met his future wife Joan Wingfield. There must have been a great many private liaisons going on, both openly and illicitly.

  But for some – those people whose sexuality drew them to people of the same gender – such liaisons were not just illicit, they were illegal. In her book Bletchley Park People, Marion Hill cites several veterans who recall people who “acted differently”. For many of the staff, having a mix of academics, other civilians and personnel from many different branches of the military all working together would have felt quite strange. It was certainly more casual than life in barracks, or aboard ship, or even at some universities. One veteran remembers that, “One of the first things I heard when finishing a late shift in the dark was a group of Naval men frolicking in the lake nude with shrieks and giggles. Apparently this happened quite often and the gorgeous officers – some very blonde – were homosexual.” The writer Angus Wilson, who worked in Hut 8, made no secret of his sexuality, despite the prevailing prejudices of the time. He was hugely flamboyant, and one BP memoir states that, “He used to mince into the room, swaggering, and wore what were outrageous clothes in those days – a bright yellow waistcoat, red bow tie and blue corduroy trousers. His nails were bitten down to the quick, he chain-smoked and he had a horrible cracked sort-of maniacal laugh.” Wilson would go on to be awarded a CBE and a knighthood and would win many literary honours. However, not all of the gay staff at Bletchley Park were quite so comfortable in their own skin.

  14

  A celebrity visit to Bletchley Park

  11th May 2009 was a significant one for the campaign: Stephen Fry was going to be visiting Bletchley Park. Yippee!

  Three months earlier, Stephen Fry had very kindly tweeted in support of Bletchley Park – this had made a big difference to the campaign, and he’d been invited to visit.

  Stephen Fry

  @stephenfry

  #bpark You might want to sign the Save Bletchley Park petition. Read @Dr_Black’s reasons why on http://is.gd/ikEh – BP won us the war!

  10:11 AM 4 Feb 09

  He took his involvement with Bletchley one step further, and not only visited Bletchley Park but also tweeted the highlights to his almost half a million followers on Twitter. (As an aside, it’s interesting to note that in February 2009 Stephen had 220,000 followers on Twitter, in May 2009 he had 500,000, and at the time of writing, in 2014, he had 6.8 million. Amazing.)

  After Stephen had agreed to visit Bletchley Park for the day, I had managed to keep the visit a secret, as instructed, though it wasn’t easy, considering how excited I was. Still, for two months I had managed not to tweet or say anything about Stephen’s visit to make sure that he could have a relaxing day walking around and getting the real Bletchley Park experience. Bletchley Park grows on you as you wander around the site and hear the incredible stories, sometimes from people who actually worked there during WWII. I wanted Stephen to have the opportunity to experience that too.

  So, with that in mind, on the morning in question I got up, said goodbye to my lovely family and started the journey up to Bletchley. I’d been quite a few times now, so I did it almost on automatic pilot.

  When I was on the train in to London I noticed a tweet from Rory Cellan-Jones (@ruskin147) saying that he was on his way to Bletchley Park to meet Stephen Fry. I was outraged – I so wanted Stephen’s day at Bletchley Park to be relaxed and enjoyable, and for him to have the experience of a “normal” visitor. I was really worried that any publicity might mean that wouldn’t happen. I actually told Rory off when we met up at Euston to travel up on the train together (sorry Rory!). When we arrived, I checked Twitter, and noticed that after all that, Stephen himself had just tweeted saying that he had arrived at Bletchley Park. (Needless to say I managed not to tell him off!)

  After some brief introductions Stephen chatted to one of the Bletchley Park trustees who had come along to meet him. It turned out that they had been at school together, which led me to wonder why the trustee, who knew Stephen, hadn’t invited him along before and asked him to get involved. I was more grateful than ever for the power of Twitter.

  Stephen Fry was exactly as he appears on television: friendly, charming, interesting and interested in learning new information. He spoke to the trustee, saying that his tie was “positively refulgent!”! I Googled “refulgent” on my phone under the table, and saw that it meant . . . well, actually, go and Google it yourself and you will find out. Two minutes into the meeting and I had already learnt a new word. Excellent stuff.

  After more introductions and background information, it was time for lunch. We chatted about everything Bletchley Park and Simon showed Stephen an Enigma machine.

  Stephen Fry and one of the Mansion House griffins After lunch Stephen unveiled the new griffins at the front of the Mansion House and we then we had a great time touring Bletchley Park and talking to many of the fabulous people that work there, like Tony Sale, seen below demonstrating Colossus.

  Tony Sale demonstrates Colossus for Stephen Fry Bletchley Park veteran Dorothy Richards and Stephen Fry We also met a lovely lady, Dorothy Richards (née Blake), who had worked at Bletchley Park during WWII and was visiting for the first time since the 1940s. Amazing to think that there are still over 1,000 Bletchley Park veterans alive. If only we could record all of their fascinating memories. Wouldn’t that be great? I’ve heard many interesting and exciting stories since I’ve been involved – and I’ve only met a few of these wonderful people.

  On the day I wrote this on my blog:

  It was a truly wonderful day. Stephen Fry so obviously enjoyed himself and was of course extremely knowledgeable and very quick to pick up everything that he had not known beforehand. A genuinely lovely person and now a great supporter of Bletchley Park.

  Stephen Fry with Enigma Thank you so much @stephenfry you made my day and that of everyone at Bletchley Park. I think Bletchley Park will hopefully be safe now that you are involved. Thank you from the very bottom of my heart.

  Oh, Lord!

  On 16th February 2009 I’d written a piece for the Telegraph entitled, “Why I’m ashamed to be British”, asking the UK government to stump up the £10 million needed to save and restore Bletchley Park.

  Bletchley Park needs sustained government funding to preserve it. But then of course we’re in an economic downturn – so how could the government afford it?

  Well, here’s a comparison. In the short term Bletchley Park needs £10 million, which is a pittance compared to how many millions, or is it billions now, that have recently been given to the banks? And how much more than the original estimate is being spent by us on the Olympics?

  It was gratifying to learn, therefore, that on 21st May 2009 there was a question in the House of Lords from Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall, asking Lord Davies of Oldham:

  “. . . what support the UK government will give to the restoration and development of Bletchley Park.”

  Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall was joined by Lord Clement-Jones, Lord Eden of Winton, Bar
oness Trumpington, Viscount Montgomery of Alamein, Lord Selkirk of Douglas and Lord Lea of Crondall in asking for substantial funding to support Bletchley Park. Alas, the reply from Lord Davies of Oldham was, in a nutshell, that the government was already doing enough. I wrote about this on my blog, commenting, “What utter rubbish.”

  I was, needless to say, annoyed. There was fantastic support from the Lords, with several saying that they had strong connections to Bletchley Park, but the government position was clear: some money had been given to Bletchley Park by English Heritage and Milton Keynes council, and that would have to suffice. What a disgrace! What was the point of us having a House of Lords, I wondered, if their opinions were so easily brushed aside?

  So I did the only thing I felt I could do: I blogged, asking people to write to their MP to complain. I pointed out our online draft letter, to make it quick and easy for people to participate. I also pointed everyone to the international petition that had now been set up asking people to help save Bletchley Park. The government was definitely not doing enough, and I wanted them to know it. If the voice of the Bletchley Park supporters was loud enough, I reasoned, it couldn’t be ignored for long.