Bletchley Park

March 2019

In this It Happened Here episode we go back to the spring of 1944 when much of Europe, and indeed the world held its breath awaiting the ‘Second Front’ in Europe. This would be realised in June when Operation OVERLORD; the D-Day landings, began in France.

During that spring, however British and Allied troops were involved in some of the fiercest fighting of the war, in Italy and in the Far East as the tide finally turned against the Japanese in Burma.

The codebreakers at Bletchley Park continued to support these operations, and were able to achieve some of their most significant successes yet, against both German and Japanese codes and ciphers.

As usual our guide to these events is Dr David Kenyon, Bletchley Park’s Research Historian.

In memoriam, Stephen Freer (1920-2017) and Edward Simpson (1922-2019)

Image: Original Japanese Section Archive material ©Bletchley Park Trust 2019

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February 2019

This month we leave the code breaking behind and focus on what became an important part of the Off-Duty time for many of the staff at GC&CS during World War 2.

Working long shifts and being far from the bright lights of London and other major towns, the staff of Bletchley Park organised much of their own entertainment. As early as 1940 the management recognised that the staff needed diversions to fill their down time and encouraged the organisation of many of these.

With a staff drawn from so many clever and gifted people it wasn’t long before there was a film society, a gramophone club and various clubs for amongst other things fencing, sculpture, architecture and Scottish Dancing. One of the most successful of these was the Bletchley Park Drama Group who between 1941-1946, staged performances of established plays and wrote their own musical reviews.

Bletchley Park volunteer steward and guide, Harold Liberty, has been researching the Drama Group over the last year and we sat down with him to find out what he had discovered. Our Veterans add some colour to the story as they fondly remember the Drama Group from interviews from our own Oral History Archive.

Reproductions of original scripts performed by Harold Liberty.

Image: The cast of Saloon Bar from October 1944

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December 2018

In this second of our two episodes this month we bring you two more interviews from our Oral History Archive.

Our Oral History Officer Jonathan Byrne and his team have collected over 450 interviews in the last 7 years with our Veterans’. Now with the support of Milton Keynes Council the project is being extended to include local people with connections to the wartime Bletchley Park.

Judith Wainer couldn’t have been a closer neighbour to Station X as she lived on Wilton Avenue. Her family had senior GC&CS staff billeted on them but she never got to see what was inside the fence that was literally at the end of her road. In this interview she is joined by her childhood friend Jean Cheshire who grew up with her family during WW2 living in Cottage 2 within that very fence, as her father Robert was Chief Groundsman, Quartermaster, driver and Head of the Refreshment Hut.

Jimmy Thirsk joined the Intelligence Corps in April 1942, first serving at Beaumanor before coming to the Home of The Codebreakers later that year. Even at the age of 100, when this interview was recorded, his detailed recall of the vitally important Traffic Analysis work he did in the SIXTA Group is astonishing.

In memoriam, James “Jimmy” Thirsk (1914-2018)

Image of Jimmy Thirsk: ©Jimmy Thirsk

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December 2018

In the first of two episodes this month we bring you three interviews of Veterans and local people from our Oral History Archive.

Our Oral History Officer Jonathan Byrne and his team have collected over 450 interviews in the last 7 years. He tells us about a new project, being run with the support of Milton Keynes Council, to extend our archive to include local people with connections to the wartime Bletchley Park.

At the outbreak of World War 2 Val Pinker was a teenager living in Wolverton Park House. She recalls her mother’s horror at the thought of having evacuees and instead had 4 members of staff from GC&CS billeted on her for the rest of the war.

Gwendoline Herbert was not only a local but after an interview with her headmistress, started work as a civilian in the Transport Section at the home of the code breakers.

Betty Lawrie’s memories of her time working for The Foreign Office at Bletchley Park are as clear as day, including her part in getting a grandmother of a future Royal pickled.

Image courtesy of Mrs Betty Lawrie.

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November 2018

In this exclusive additional episode, podcast producer Mark Cotton was given special permission to record inside the normally top secret walls of GCHQ in Cheltenham.

There he met GCHQ’s Departmental Historian Tony Comer to talk about the life of a modern GCHQ insider, how it has changed over the last 3 decades and was given a guided tour of their own secret museum.

Tony also gives us some sneak peeks into how their upcoming Centenary in 2019 will be celebrated.

Grateful thanks to GCHQ for all their help and for allowing us to record this very special episode.

Image: ©Crown Copyright

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November 2018

In this month’s ‘It Happened Here’ we are marking 75 years since the establishment of the Eastcote Outstation, the site at which Bombe machines were operated from the autumn of 1943. By 1945 over 100 machines were at Eastcote along with over 800 Wrens and RAF technicians, and a small group of American GIs. How did it start and what was life there really like?

Bletchley Park’s research historian Dr David Kenyon tells us the complete story with help from our Archivist Guy Revell and Veterans’ Audrey Wind, Colette Cook and Betty Flavell.

Image: Eastcote Joint RAF-WRNS Hockey Team ©Bletchley Park Trust 2018

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October 2018

In this It Happened Here episode we are going back to the autumn of 1943 and the invasion of Italy. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill saw it as strike at the Germans via the “soft underbelly of Europe”, while our American allies saw it as a “tough old gut”.

At a strategic level the allies may have had differing opinions but in the Intelligence War the cooperation grew closer with the increasing involvement of American personnel in the code breaking operations at GC&CS.

Bletchley Park’s resident historian Dr David Kenyon explains what they were doing both over here in the UK and over there In the United States.

Image: ©Crown. Reproduced by kind permission, Director, GCHQ

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