Saving Bletchley Park

by Sue Black

  “Hold on, Bletchley Park is saved! There is no way that we are going to shut now with all the support we have. What we need to talk about now is building Bletchley Park for the future.”

  A massive smile spread across my face. I had been so caught up in campaigning and raising awareness that I hadn’t stepped back and realised that, yes, Simon was right. With the amount of publicity and support generated, the interest from the media, and visitor numbers going up steadily, Bletchley Park was no longer under threat of closure. It was a wonderful moment, and it was amazing how it had snuck up on me. Three years of campaigning, with thousands of people getting involved. And it had actually worked.

  I sat there through the rest of the meeting, nodding and interjecting where appropriate, but my mind was whizzing around at 100 miles per hour. Bletchley Park was saved. SAVED! The best way to describe how I felt is that it was like the feeling demonstrated in cartoons when you see a character get hit over the head with something and stars appear around its head. I was shocked. I was over the moon. The words Bletchley Park is saved, Bletchley Park is SAVED ran on a constant fast tape around and around my head, a bit like the paper tape used in the Colossus. BLETCHLEY PARK IS SAVED!

  In May 2011 I sent 1819 tweets

  22

  D–Day

  “Without Bletchley, the D-Day landings might well have been a catastrophic failure and the forces could have been thrown back into the sea.”

  —Professor Sir Harry Hinsley OBE

  We’ve all heard of D-Day.[51] But less well-known is the Pas-de-Calais Gambit of 1944, also called Operation Bodyguard. It was something that Bletchley Park very much had a hand in.

  Following the Trident Conference in Washington, DC, in May 1943, plans were drawn up by the Allies for a massed channel crossing of troops into Europe with the goal of liberating France, pushing on to Berlin and ending the war. It was to be called Operation Overlord. But first, there was the tricky business of pulling together the troops and resources needed, picking a date and appropriate landing site, and getting everyone and everything safely across the English Channel without the Germans noticing. The obvious solution was to wrong-foot the German high command by a campaign of disinformation.

  The Allies had already had some success with this tactic. “We read all the Enigma signals of the German Abwehr which meant that we captured every spy that arrived in the United Kingdom by having advance knowledge of his arrival,” says Harry Hinsley. “Which meant that we could turn such as we needed and use them to send messages we wanted the Abwehr to receive, and monitor the reception and the reaction of the Abwehr. All that signal intelligence underlay the effective use of what was called the Doublecross Operation for the purposes both of stopping German reception of intelligence (other than false intelligence) and also of creating deception by sending them false intelligence.”

  What began now was a similar thing but on a much larger scale. German radio operators started to pick up word of a large new military force called the First US Army Group (FUSAG) being assembled in the UK. At the same time, they received intelligence that the British 12th Army was getting ready to invade parts of Scandinavia, Turkey, Crete and Romania. The Allies were apparently planning something very big and very coordinated. And, what was more, there were strong hints that the Allied forces would be landing at the Pas-de-Calais, the closest part of France to the UK.

  Of course, it was all lies. The planned landing was going to take place further west, in Normandy. To bolster the lie, five separate sub-operations were set up to support Operation Bodyguard: the first was Operation Fortitude, the aim of which was to convince the Germans that the Allies had more troops and equipment than they actually did. This featured a fictional British 4th Army, based in Scotland, and the fictional FUSAG in the south of England which was supposedly under the command of General George Patton. One of the more ingenious ploys used for Fortitude was the creation and display of hundreds of inflatable tanks that, to a spotter plane, looked just like the real thing. Secondly, there was Operation Graffham. This was a deception aimed at making the Axis Powers believe that Britain was building political ties with Sweden in preparation for an upcoming invasion of Norway. Operation Ironside played on the Germans’ fears about a landing at Pas de Calais by suggesting that a secondary force would be landing ten days afterwards. Operation Zeppelin was similar to Fortitude but suggested targets in the Mediterranean. Finally, there was Operation Copperhead which involved the actor M E Clifton James – who looked very much like General Montgomery – making a number of appearances at strategic, but fake, sites to suggest the idea that he was overseeing preparations. This operation formed the basis of the famous 1954 autobiography and subsequent movie I WAS Monty’s Double.[52]

  Supporting all of the various operations was Station X. By monitoring the Axis radio and telegraphy traffic, they were able to check and double-check that the deception was working. Veterans attest to the fact that, during the preparations for D-Day – even though many of them had no idea that such an audacious plan was underway – the work at BP suddenly became much more intense, as did the need for secrecy. A 20-mile travel restriction was imposed, and staff were discouraged from leaving the site. The canteen was shut and people had to eat in their billets or offices. In her book Bletchley Park People, historian Marion Hill describes the sense of excitement experienced by one worker who was made privy to the impending Normandy landings: “One morning in June 1944, JH (John Herivel) beckoned me to a corner and whispered, ‘We’re invading Europe today.’ My heart stopped . . . from then on was a most hectic time for BP.”

  As the crossing – codenamed Operation Neptune – got under way, Station X went into overdrive. Messages flew about in the ether from U-boat crews and other ships at sea, and from observers in France of parachute landings and mysterious vessels being spotted. As each message was intercepted, decoded and translated, counter-intelligence was fed back the other way to denounce such sightings as insignificant or explainable by other means. “This knowledge of the enemy’s ignorance and relative passivity was not only reassuring; it was certain,” says Peter Calvocoressi. “Since, by this time, we had from Ultra a panoramic knowledge of the German forces, we could tell that units which could be switched were not being switched. We could therefore confidently assert that the failure of additional squadrons to show up in the new theatre was not due to our failure to spot them there but was confirmed by the fact that they were all positively known to be elsewhere. In intelligence the negative can be very positive.”[53]

  Churchill contacted Harry Hinsley several times during the crossing to ask if the enemy had figured out what was happening. Hinsley was delighted to be able to report that, as far as anyone knew, the Germans were watching the wrong part of the coast.

  Bletchley Park was to continue to provide the same level of support throughout the entire Operation Overlord campaign. Meanwhile, the Germans responded with deadly force, sending wave after wave of V-1 and V-2 rocket-powered bombs to obliterate selected cities and military sites across the UK. Once again, the extraordinary bubble of secrecy around BP kept it safe from harm. To counter the V weapons, BP worked with double agents, feeding information back to Berlin about how successful their bombs were. “At that point, the bombs were falling in Central London so [ . . . ] this double agent was instructed to tell his masters that they were falling north of London,” says Mavis Lever. “The result of this was that the Germans cut the range back a little and, as a result, the rockets started falling in south London. Just where my parents lived. I had no idea and it is just as well that I didn’t. So when I saw the devastation at Norbury, I did not know that it had anything to do with anything I was doing. It really would have been a terrible shock to know that.”[54]

  As the workloads got ever higher, staff health started to falter.[55] The numbers of people reporting sick started to increase and exhaustion set in. With a sense that the end of the war was getting c
loser, anyone who decided to take a day off rather than work voluntarily was seen by many as a slacker or, at worst, a traitor. Marion Hill went through the Bletchley Park archives and found a number of diary entries and audio interviews in which Wrens and WAAFs describe how they felt during those months: “You’d have nightmares about setting the machines,” says one Wren. “You’d wake up clutching a phantom drum. The work was painstaking and at times soul-destroying. Depending on shifts, you sometimes didn’t see sunlight in days.” Another described getting “awful boils” by her eyes and under her arms. Yet another: “The strain got me down. I realised I could be dangerous because slipping up on one message meant that some agent may be killed. I became afraid to open my mouth in case I gave away something I’d heard during my work. I was becoming a liability. I got ill with the strain of it all and decided I should walk before I did any real damage.” Stories started to appear about attempted suicides: “People who were not suitable just . . . went. And, of course, other people had breakdowns and they went. The writer Angus Wilson had a breakdown when he was here – he tried to commit suicide in the lake and it was hushed up – but then you heard lots of things . . .”

  VE Day finally arrived but, despite the mass celebrations all over the UK, things were rather more downbeat at BP. After all, there were still rogue Nazi units to be accounted for and the war with Japan was far from over. As one veteran recalls: “We assembled on the grass outside the Mansion to hear that war with Germany was over. There was a huge cheer and great excitement – though our delight was muted as we still had the Japanese to finish before we could go home. So back to our decoding machines.” But no amount of discipline could prevent a certain amount of celebration or douse high spirits. Outside one of the huts there was a large brass bell that staff were not supposed to touch. “Quite a lot of us rang that bell,” recalls one Wren. “I think the guard officers turned deaf.”

  That bell was the death knell for Station X.

  As the war in Europe finally wound up, staff started to drift away from BP. There was still a great deal of interest in monitoring the communications of other countries – particularly Russia – and the war with Japan was still current, but the huge numbers of people that had been on site were no longer needed. “It was a sort of dribble down,” says cryptanalyst Sheila Mackenzie. “The numbers got less. Ten thousand, then eight thousand, however many it was, we didn’t all leave at once.” In August 1945 word came through that the Americans had dropped the atomic bomb on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

  Soon afterwards, memos titled “Re-Distribution of Surplus Staff” and addressed to individuals started to arrive at BP. The memos began: “Owing to the cessation of hostilities, there is no further work for you to do in this organisation. In these circumstances, there is no object in continuing to report here for duty, and with effect from . . . [date], you are free to absent yourself.”

  Bletchley Park’s war was finally over.

  23

  A royal visit

  Bletchley Park was saved! I was relieved but also excited for what the future held. That summer was a good one for Bletchley – full of celebration and planning.

  15th July 2011 was a particularly important day for Bletchley Park. The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh came to visit. I knew the Queen’s visit was happening but didn’t receive my invitation until the day before in the post. (It’s a good job that mid-July is a reasonably quiet time for academics!) The Queen was at Bletchley to unveil a memorial to the codebreakers that had worked at Bletchley Park during World War II.

  It was absolutely wonderful to see so many codebreakers together at Bletchley Park, especially to see them being interviewed by the press.

  The Queen gives a speech at Bletchley Park Codebreakers Oliver and Sheila Lawn Me, Captain Jerry Roberts, his wife Mei The Queen’s speech was wonderful, and it included mentions of Alan Turing, the women who worked at Bletchley Park, and the rebuild of Colossus, which is housed there. It was great to be there and listen first-hand to a speech from our reigning monarch about so many of the things that I and many others had been trying for years to bring to the attention of the establishment.

  The highlight of my day, though, was seeing Captain Jerry Roberts and other veterans being presented to the Queen and getting recognition for their contribution at Bletchley. The Queen’s visit was certainly fabulous for the amount of national press that it generated. Finally, after almost 70 years, the veterans’ efforts were being recognised on a national and international scale. Hallelujah!

  Twist of fêtes

  To celebrate the fact that Bletchley Park was out of danger, a garden party was planned for 3rd August 2011. Having a summer garden party at Bletchley Park was an absolutely inspired idea. Peter Barron at Google said that it was an opportunity to say thank you to all of the people that had been part of the campaign to save Bletchley Park. I loved that idea, as not only would I get the opportunity to give something back to the people who had put so much effort into making sure Bletchley Park was saved, but I would get to celebrate with them at the place that had brought us all together in the first place.

  I was also excited about the prospect of finally meeting in person all, or at least some, of the people that I had been tweeting with for the past two and a half years. I had really got to know some people well over Twitter in that couple of years – that had been one of the really wonderful things about the campaign. Not only did it bring lots of people together to achieve a specific aim, but it was also the basis for many friendships and enjoyable human interactions.

  I went to the Google offices in London every week to meet up with Peter and three of his colleagues, Lynette Webb, Claudia Baker and Amy Brown, to discuss what we were going to do at the party, who we were going to invite and what needed to be done to make sure that it was a success. We decided that it would be great to theme it around the traditional British village fête. We would have cream teas, tombola, guess the number of sweets in the jar, and all sorts of traditional fête activities. Bletchley Park already had a marquee, so that was handy.

  We also wanted to give everyone who came along the opportunity to have a tour of Bletchley Park and TNMOC. With about 400 guests hopefully attending, that was a serious task to organise logistically. We decided that 30-minute tours would be best, allowing us to ensure that everyone who wanted to have a guided look around would get the opportunity.

  The Turing papers were going to be on display so everyone would be able to see them as part of the tour. I had seen the papers when they had first been brought up to Bletchley Park. At that time they had been laid out on a table in the library in the Mansion House. Since then a special exhibition area had been put together at Bletchley and I’d not yet seen it.

  The cinema was going to be opened up for the afternoon of the fête showing wartime Pathé newsreels all day. I’d always thought that the cinema at Bletchley Park was a completely underused resource, so I was glad that people were going to have the chance to experience it.

  Google code auction prize at the Google garden party I learned that The Daily Telegraph were going to be covering the garden party, and as well as featuring it in the paper they were going to make a special edition handout in a 1940s style. The handout would be made available on the day at Bletchley Park and also distributed as an insert to the paper that week. There would also be an auction to raise money for Bletchley Park and provide another focus for attention during the garden party. Peter knew an auctioneer at Christie’s, so he was tasked with asking him if he could run the auction on the day. Lynette was going to sort out the “guess the number of sweets in the jar” and a framed piece of Google code to be auctioned. I was tasked with sifting through about two thousand names from my contacts for the guest list. Because of the campaign, I did have a huge number of contacts who I knew were big fans of Bletchley Park. There were also the many professors and heads of computer science from universities around the UK tha
t had signed the petition to 10 Downing Street in July 2008, and the many contacts that I had from setting up BCSWomen and banging the drum about the lack of women in computing. Most of the actual organisation was done by the extremely capable Claudia Baker from Google, who was really great at keeping us on topic and managing the whole project, as well as being fun to work with.

  At the beginning of July, a month before the big event, I was tasked with writing a blog post about the garden party, then tweeting and Facebooking about it to raise awareness of what we were doing. I posted the invitation and details of the day along with some photos of Bletchley Park, train times from Euston and driving directions. I could hardly wait – I was so looking forward to celebrating not just Bletchley Park’s hugely important past, but also its bright future.

  When, at last, the day of the garden party arrived, I made my way up to Bletchley, excited about the party but anxious about how many people were going to attend. It was a grey day, overcast and spitting with rain – not really the best weather for a summer garden party.

  By the time I arrived at the Park, though, it was brightening up a bit, and the view over the lake towards the marquee was as lovely as always. There was a Bletchley Park Trust fundraising committee meeting before the party, so when I arrived I made my way up to the Mansion House and joined the meeting.

  After the meeting finished I had a chat with Claudia from Google, the main event organiser, and Simon Greenish, Director of Bletchley Park. We were excited about the party but worried about the weather. We walked over from the Mansion House to the marquee on the lawn next to the lake to have a look at how things were progressing. Yes, it was still raining, but Kevin Hollick and the team from Benguela Events were working away making the inside of the marquee look amazing.