I studied English, history and philosophy at Birmingham University, but I never completed my third year because war broke out. If I’d agreed to become a teacher I could have finished it, but I wanted to be an actor.
Soon after I left, I got a letter from the Foreign Office asking me for an interview. I had to wear a (borrowed) hat and gloves. It was an amazing place – the room I was shown to was 100 miles long. They assessed me, and told me they were looking for intelligent and respectable people to work for them. That was all I knew.
On my first day at Bletchley Park, in August 1944, I walked from the station, up a path with trees, and the old house appeared before me. The first thing I did was sign the Official Secrets Act. I was one of the last people in.
My job, in Hut Six, was to sort incoming signals. I worked at a machine like a typewriter: coded messages came in all the time. From the first three letters you knew what location they were coming from, and you filed them accordingly. All the files were named after animals: lion, panther, and so on,
The night shifts, from midnight to 7am, were the worst. We were served lunch in the middle of the night, which was horrible. But breakfast was wonderful.
There was a US army camp nearby and they invited us to dances. The Americans we met were amazing. One bought a girl some nylons; I’d never seen them before and asked to hold them. I don’t know what I was thinking: they could have laddered.
I think I was aware of what Alan Turing and others were doing, but you never talked about your work, even within Bletchley. I certainly wasn’t allowed to tell my parents what I was doing.
I was living in digs in Elstow, a long way away. I shared with another girl, Jean, who worked there, too; our landlady, Mrs Lee, had a baby.
One day, the woman in charge of the hut called me up. “We’re moving you,” she said. I panicked, thinking I’d have to move digs, and said: “Why? Is Jean coming with me? What about Mrs Lee?” She said: “For God’s sake, girl, we’re promoting you!”
I was moved to a different hut, which was much more interesting. For a start, there were men in the room, and maps on the wall. I’ve no idea what everyone was doing, but it was much more stimulating.
I worked at Bletchley until May 1945 – I was still there on VE Day. My reference, when I left, said I was a “neat and careful worker”.
I met my husband, Arthur, in May 1947 at Central School of Speech and Drama, where we were studying. He was beautiful, with golden curls. We married in September, four months later – it was still that postwar spirit where you didn’t hang around. He was a fighter pilot, and he died in 1985. I never told him what I did during the war.
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