September 2025

In 1945, Britain celebrated VE Day in May and VJ Day in August, as the war - first in Europe and then the Far East - came to an end. For the staff of GC&CS and its larger worldwide network, this meant that the vital and exhausting work they'd been doing suddenly stopped. The lives of all of them had been changed forever, but each person's experience was different.

Bletchley Park's Oral History archive is a treasure trove of Veterans' testimonies. In this It Happened Here episode, we will be digging into our sound archive to focus on how the workers reacted and what happened to them once peace was declared, in their own words. Our guide through these stories is Bletchley Park’s Research Historian Dr David Kenyon.

This episode features the following Veterans’.

Nora Copleston

Miriam Myland

Mary Kenyon

Ron Unwin

Betty Lawrie

John Statham

Betty Flavell

Fay Gold

Joan Smeaton

Gwen Page

Dot Tuffin

Kenneth Nicholson

John Moseley

Jimmy Thirsk

Rena Stewart

Mary Every

Daphne Canning

Betty Webb

Lady Marion Body

Margaret Thomas

Image: ©Bletchley Park Trust 2025

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