April 2021 

 

Our Veterans who served in one of the three women’s auxiliary services during World War Two are always proud of their particular branch and WAAF Daphne Canning is no exception. When Oral History Officer Jonathan Byrne interviewed her in 2017 she was still proud to have worn her ‘Sparks’ badge; the insignia of a Royal Air Force Wireless Operator. 

 

These Oral History Specials allow us to bring you the complete recordings of interviews we have previously featured only as much shorter versions. In this episode, Daphne, who volunteered at 17½, tells us about becoming a Wireless Operator, then later a Morse Slip Reader and also how she survived a being hit by a V1 rocket. 

 

This interview is really three for the price of one because Daphne also tells us the stories of her father and her husband. All three of them linked not just as family but as Wireless Operators helping the Codebreakers at Bletchley Park.

 

Image, courtesy of Mrs Daphne Canning. 

 

#BPark, #Bletchleypark, #WW2, #OralHistory,

March 2021 

 

In our last Oral History Special we brought you the first part of a 2017 interview with former WREN, Mary Sherrard. From 1942 until the end of the war, Mary served at Bletchley Park and then at the Eastcote Bombe Outstation. This helped shaped the rest of her life because it was at Eastcote where she met her future husband John. 

 

After originally servicing Spitfires in 1940, an interview at the Foreign Office sent John to Eastcote and Stanmore to maintain Mary’s Bombe machines. By the time of his demob from the RAF in 1946, he had risen to the rank of Warrant Officer and married his “Scot’s girl”. 

 

In this second part, Mary talks to Oral History Volunteer Mike Chapman about not only her time at GC&CS but also shares John’s story. We hear about the rest of the war and also their fascinatingly varied post-war lives.

 

These two episodes are tributes to both Mary (1923-2020) and John (1921-1999).

 

Image ©Bletchley Park Trust 2021

 

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March 2021 

In March 1946, as an ‘Iron Curtain’ was descending across Europe, in post-war London a document was signed that to this day is the basis of the most important and longest intelligence relationship that the UK has. But that Special Relationship with the USA didn’t suddenly begin 75 years ago; it was the culmination of five years of wartime collaboration.

In this episode Podcast Producer, Mark Cotton, and our Research Historian, Dr David Kenyon, go back to February 1941 and look at each of the milestones that led up to the signing of the UKUSA Agreement – five years that forged a Special Relationship.

Special thanks to Steven Eric Wilson and Mr Ben Thomson for voicing our archival documents.

Image ©Bletchley Park Trust 2021

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February 2021 

 

To keep you going during the lockdown, the podcast team will be bringing you a new episode every two weeks.

 

Last year we featured short clips from dozens of our Veterans telling us what they did on VE Day & VJ Day. Now in these Oral History Specials we can bring you the longer versions of those interviews, allowing our Veterans to tell their full story, in their own voices and in their own way. 

 

Vital to us capturing these interview are a team of brilliant volunteers who visit our Veterans at home to record them. In this episode we join one of those Oral History Volunteers, Mike Chapman, who in 2017 travelled up to the Scottish Borders to interview Mary Sherrard. Mary recorded a fascinating and especially long interview with Mike which we are going to bring you in two parts.  In this first part Mary tells us about joining the Women’s Royal Naval Service and arriving at Bletchley Park in 1942.

 

Image ©Bletchley Park Trust 2021

 

#BPark, #Bletchleypark, #WW2, #OralHistory,

February 2021 

 

As we did last year we have decided to release extra content again during the current lockdown and so for at least the next couple of months we will be bringing you a new show every two weeks. These will be a mixture of Oral History Specials and also our regular content as and when COVID restrictions allow us. 

 

Last year we featured short clips from dozens of our Veterans telling us what they did on VE Day & VJ Day. Now in these Oral History Specials we can bring you the longer versions of those interviews, allowing our Veterans to tell their full story, in their own voices and in their own way. 

 

In early 2020, in what would become one the last interviews carried out just weeks before the pandemic, our Oral History Officer, Jonathan Byrne and his colleague Will Hankey sat down with GC&CS Veteran Tim Edwards. Previously we heard what Tim got up to on the day the war ended in Europe and now we can bring you much more of that interview. Tim’s reminisces about how the discovery of an eyesight problem suddenly stopped his training to be a pilot in the RAF and landed him at Bletchley Park working on German Air Force codes.  

 

Image ©Bletchley Park Trust 2021

 

#BPark, #Bletchleypark, #WW2, #OralHistory,

January 2021 

 

As we release this episode Bletchley Park Museum is currently closed as the UK is in a national lockdown to help contain the spread of coronavirus (COVID-19). Our staff and volunteers like so many around the world are in lockdown, self-isolation or working remotely from home. Unfortunately it means the promised second part of our Q&A’s from our listeners is on-hold for now, but once we are safe to do so we will bring you that show.

 

As we did last year during the first lockdown we will endeavour to continue to bring you new episodes of the podcast. With that in mind we thought back to our VE & VJ Day episodes from last year which included very short clips from dozens of our more than 500 Oral History recordings. So until we can resume our ‘normal service’ it seems the perfect time to shine a light on our Veterans by bringing you the full versions of some of those interviews, in these Oral History Specials.

 

For the first of these special shows we have selected Sheila Wilson who came to Bletchley Park in 1944 to serve in the Naval Section plotting Allied shipping. A post-war career which included becoming a Psychotherapist has given Sheila a truly deep and at times existential view of her time at GC&CS. This makes her interview, which was recorded in 2015, simply fascinating.

But first, before lockdown, we sat down with Jonathan Byrne to talk about why collecting the Oral Histories of our Veterans is so vitally important.

Image ©Bletchley Park Trust 2021

#BPark, #Bletchleypark, #WW2, #OralHistory,

December 2020 

 

At the end of each year we like to focus on the important work that our Oral History Officer Jonathan Byrne and his team of staff and volunteers carry out. As with so many around the world, COVID-19 has had a huge effect on the work of Jonathan’s team in 2020.

 

In this episode we catch-up with Jonathan for an update on the Oral History Project and he shares four more highlights from our archive of 550 interviews.

 

Gwen Adsley was a civilian working in the Communications Section from 1942. Food, or the lack of it, is an abiding memory for her so being able to get an unexpected loaf of bread was a real pleasure.

  

Trixie Davison wanted to do her bit after the Blitz on London and become a Radar Operator so left her Civil Service job and joined the ATS. A problem with her eyesight meant she was transferred to work at Kedleston Hall and Forest Moor Y stations as an intercept operator.

 

Roy Maycock was 6 years old on the day that war was declared and living in what was then the village of Bletchley. During the war his family had both children evacuated from London and Bletchley Park staff billeted on them.

 

Molly Morgan wanted to serve her country, so defying her father’s wishes, resigned from her reserved occupation at The Bank of England and joined the WRNS. Instead of a posting by the sea she was sent to Buckinghamshire to work in the Naval Section alongside Frank Birch. 

 

We would like to wish all our listeners a safe and Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year for 2021. 

 

Image courtesy of Gwen Adsley

#BPark, #Bletchleypark, #WW2,

November 2020 

For the first time since January 2020 the podcast team were able to be physically in the same room together, even if socially distanced. So to mark this return we decided to ask our listeners on social media for their questions about Bletchley Park. 

In this, the first of these shows, Exhibitions Manager Erica Munro, Research Historian Dr David Kenyon, Research Officer Dr Thomas Cheetham and podcast producer Mark Cotton, will hopefully answer those questions and maybe do a bit of myth busting along the way.

Many thanks to our listeners and followers for setting us these challenges.

Special thanks, as always, go to Mr Ben Thomson for voicing our archival documents.

Image: ©Bletchley Park Trust 2020

#BPark, #Bletchleypark, #WW2,

October 2020 

 

For over 8 years the podcast has been privileged to receive help and support from the modern day version of the wartime Government Code and Cypher School, GCHQ, both as an organisation and from their Departmental Historian. 

 

Previous listeners will know that GCHQ has a new Historian and in Podcast Episode 98, we had the honour of being able to exclusively reveal his identity when we met him at the GCHQ Centenary celebrations at the National Memorial Arboretum in November 2019. 

 

We promised then that we’d catch up with him again, and this month we’re doing just that. Podcast producer Mark Cotton sat down with Dr David Abrutat, the recently avowed Departmental Historian at GCHQ, to find out about his life, his service and what he has planned for his “dream job”. 

 

Image: ©GCHQ

 

#BPark, #Bletchleypark, #WW2, #GCHQ,

September 2020 

 

This is the last of three special episodes to mark what would have been our Annual Veterans Reunion. 

 

It was due to COVID-19 restrictions and with huge regret that Bletchley Park Trust had to take the difficult decision not to hold this year’s reunion on-site. But here at the podcast we can still celebrate our Veterans with these special episodes.

 

At a reunion we like to capture as many Veterans stories as we can, but we also always remember that it is their special day and we try not to interrupt it too much for them. Some chats may just be a quick hello and how are you and some might end up with a short interview. But for some Veterans, it might be the first time they have been asked to talk about their vital war work and we are always honoured to be on hand to save their story for future generations. 

 

In this, the last of these special episodes, we’re bringing you nearly 80 minutes from another 12 of our amazing Veterans, including a few of those longer interviews.

 

Featured in this episode, in order of appearance are:

 

Doris Moss

Mollie Brewster

Pamela Forbes

Betty Webb

Elizabeth Davies

Marigold Angela Bostock-Wilson

Diana Tyler

Margaret Thomas

Bartrum Robinson

Edna Garbutt

Pauline Lee

Tom Howie

 

We would like to take this opportunity to thank the Veterans of Bletchley Park and its Outstations, for their service.

 

Special thanks to Katherine Lynch, Sarah Langston and Kerry Howard. 

 

Image: ©Will Amlot for the Bletchley Park Trust 2020

 

#BPark, #Bletchleypark, #WW2,