Read The Secrets of Station X Online
Authors: Michael Smith
If this sounded distinctly ominous – indeed a reflection of the very real, dangerous and lonely position in which Britain would soon find itself – the reality of the move was entirely different. The first wave comprised only around 110 members of the pre-war establishment and in the last peaceful weeks of the summer of 1939 war could not have seemed further away, said Nigel de Grey,
a 53-year-old veteran of the First World War codebreaking
organisation
Room 40, who was recalled for the move to Bletchley.
There is no moment in time more beautiful than the early days of a fine English autumn such as were the last days of August 1939 and the last days of peace. In such richly romantic
atmospheric
conditions even the architectural vagaries of Bletchley Park were wrapt in a false mellowness and almost, but never quite, achieved the appearance of a stately home. The house, its ‘carriage sweep’ and backyards had been enclosed in posts and rails to mark the narrow confines of the ground that had been bought for the War Station of GC&CS and its richer relation the MI6. So much that happened afterwards seems, in retrospect, to have sprung from the decision to house GC&CS in Bletchley Park that we may be forgiven perhaps this brief recollection of its exterior features. They form the background against which so many difficulties of signals intelligence were fought out and so much was achieved; the conditions of work there reflected upon so many problems of staff and efficiency that Bletchley Park and its gradual complete transformation became an historical factor that it is impossible to ignore. On mobilisation, the house was already too small to accommodate the number of people for whom office space was required. A neighbouring boys’ school was acquired at short notice and the Commercial Section, some of the Enigma party and some of the so-called Diplomatic Sections of GC&CS were pushed into it before the proprietor had had time to remove his furniture.
The second floor of the mansion was reserved for the staff of MI6 who had moved to Bletchley, while the Naval, Military and Air Sections of GC&CS were on the ground floor along with the telephone exchange, the teleprinter room, the kitchen and the dining room for the entire staff, de Grey recalled.
Recruits previously earmarked began to drop in with the slightly
unexpected effect of carrier pigeons and were dispatched to the billets provided by the neighbourhood. A curious air of
unreality
pervaded this collection of strangers and friends. None of the new arrivals had any idea of the general organisation or, indeed, of what other sections existed beside the one to which they had been appointed and it was no one’s business to explain. This was not like reservists rejoining the colours. It was more like the prim first day at a public school. The sight of a professor of some erudition struggling with an unfamiliar task on the blankets of a boy’s bedstead in the dormitory is one not easily forgotten.
Not the least striking feature of the list of people who moved to Bletchley in that first wave is how few of them were actually working on German material. Aside from Denniston and his deputy Commander Edward Travis, there were twenty-nine people in the diplomatic and commercial sections, none of whom were working on German cyphers (the largest number of people focusing on any specific language were the nine
working
on Italian diplomatic cyphers, with the next largest number the six working on the cyphers of Britain’s ally France). The Military Section comprised eighteen people of whom only four were working on German material, half the number who were working on the Italian Army systems. The Air Section had a staff of just eleven, of whom only three were trying to break German systems. The Naval Section had more people, a total of twenty-five, but only two of them were German experts, as opposed to eleven working on Italian systems.
‘There was virtually no yield whatever from German codes and cyphers – diplomatic, naval, military or air – other than partial decrypts of low-grade, air-to-ground
Luftwaffe
traffic,’ said Frank Birch, a famous actor and Room 40 veteran recalled in 1939 to take over as head of the Naval Section. ‘On the civil side, the two high-grade German diplomatic systems had not been seriously tackled since their introduction in 1919, and,
owing to the wartime diversion of experienced research
cryptanalysts
to service tasks, were not to be subjected to concerted attack until 1941.’
The only section focusing exclusively on Germany was Dilly Knox’s research section, which was solely interested in Enigma. It comprised just four codebreakers – Knox himself, Turing, Twinn and John Jeffreys, another Cambridge mathematician – and was working on its own in a cottage adjoining the mansion. So out of the 110 members of GC&CS who moved to Bletchley, only thirteen were actually working on the codes or cyphers of the country which was now the main threat to the UK.
The inside of the mansion was impossibly crowded and it was difficult to manage, recalled Edmund Green, one of the senior members of the Naval Section, who became the office manager and acquired the nickname ‘Scrounger’. He recalled that this was a result of the determined manner in which he ensured that the naval codebreakers had any equipment they needed.
Chaos is a mild term to describe our condition at the outset. We had very few plans, nowhere to lay our heads – no
furniture
, books of reference, maps, atlases, dictionaries or any tools with which we might be expected to finish the job. Our difficulties were increased by the fact that our work was so ‘hush hush’ that we were not able to specify the reason for our importunities – for so they were regarded. Then we were a government office tied and bound by the red tape of rules and regulations which none of us, even the heads of the
organisation
, really understood. It was like playing a game with an umpire who did not know the rules. Was it then surprising if some of us resorted to methods frowned upon by the Civil Service? Lastly we were expanding at a speed only equalled by rabbits breeding in a warren. I not only had to scrounge tools but if we acquired a typewriter, our next headache was to find a typist to work it. I had always understood that the most difficult and temperamental personalities were prima donnas.
I soon discovered that many of those with whom I had to do could give stones and a beating to any Patti or Tetracinni. As far as our own staff were concerned, once one had discovered the human end of them, they were worth their weight in gold. If we did strike a dud, it was my business to sell him or her. I am told that I once swopped a small and incompetent typist for a large and priceless card index.
Secrecy was paramount, Josh Cooper recalled. Service
personnel
initially wore civilian clothes in an attempt to suggest that the site had nothing to do with the military.
We were all instructed not to tell friends and relations where we were, but to give as our address a Post Office Box Number in Victoria Street. Letters addressed to this box were delivered to Broadway and forwarded to Bletchley by MI6 courier. The system broke down when large parcels were addressed to the Box Number. In one case a grand piano was consigned in this way.
Most staff were put up in hotels until Parliament authorised the billeting of personnel vital to the war effort on ordinary
households
. Private cars were used for transporting staff into work and taking them back to their rooms. ‘A great friend lent me his Bentley for the duration of the war because he decided it was better for it to be driven than being put up on blocks,’ recalled Diana Russell Clarke. ‘So I had this beautiful grey Bentley and of course they were useful because we used to collect people to come into work and then drop them home afterwards.’
The two things that stuck in the mind of Phoebe Senyard, a 48-year-old spinster, who was a senior clerk in the Naval Section, were the great secrecy surrounding the whole affair and the wonderful food the staff were provided with.
A great deal of secrecy had to be observed of course and we were given instructions to inform inquisitive persons that
we were attached to the Air Ministry for the aerial defence of London. What I remember very well were the wonderful lunches with which we were served. Bowls of fruit, sherry trifles, jellies and cream were on the tables and we had chicken, hams and wonderful beef steak puddings. We certainly could not grumble about our food.
The threat of war seemed to leave the staff at Bletchley completely unruffled. As Barbara Abernethy recalled, at lunchtime, most of the codebreakers would troop out onto the lawn in front of the house to play rounders.
We had a tennis ball and somebody managed to commandeer an old broom handle, drilled a hole in it and put a leather strap in it. It was all we had, things were getting a bit tough to get. If it was a fine day, we’d all say rounders at one o’clock, we’d all go out and play, just to sort of let off steam. Everybody argued about the rules and the dons just laid them down, in Latin sometimes. We used trees as bases. ‘He got past the deciduous,’ one would say. ‘No he didn’t,’ another would argue. ‘He was still between the conifer and the deciduous.’ That was the way they were.
Malcolm Muggeridge, who served in MI6 during the war, recalled visiting Bletchley and watching the codebreakers debate the finer points of the rules of rounders.
They adopted the quasi-serious manner dons affect when engaged in activities likely to be regarded as frivolous or insignificant in comparison with their weightier studies. They would dispute some point about the game with the same fervour as they might the question of free will or determinism, or whether the world began with a big bang or a process of continuing creation. Shaking their heads ponderously, sucking air noisily into their noses between words.
For most of the university dons recruited as codebreakers since the First World War this was the life to which they had become accustomed, a mixture of Oxbridge high table and Foreign Office gentility. But to many of the more junior staff it was a world they had never seen before. ‘It was beautiful,’ said Barbara Abernethy. ‘Lovely rose gardens, mazes, lovely old building, wonderful food.’ For a brief moment, Bletchley Park really did have the relaxed air of a weekend party at an English country mansion.
‘None of us quite knew what would happen next,’ said Abernethy. ‘War had not been declared and most people thought and hoped that nothing would happen and we would go back to London.’ Given their experience the previous year, when Chamberlain’s agreement with Hitler at Münich had averted war, most of the staff were highly sceptical about the likelihood of Britain becoming involved in war. ‘As one cynic put it: “The Poles are going to be sold down the same river the Czechs were sold down last year”,’ said Henry Dryden, a member of the Military Section. The codebreakers began mounting a ‘sleeping watch’ with duty officers staying overnight in the few bedrooms that had not been taken over as offices, or simply putting up a cot in their own offices. ‘The news in the papers was grave enough but there was still nothing in our material to indicate that Germany was on the brink of war,’ recalled Cooper. ‘Early in the morning of 1 September 1939, I met the admiral’s deputy, Colonel Menzies, over breakfast in the old dining room in the house. I must have made some fatuous remark about another quiet night, to which he replied tersely: “Heavy fighting all along the Polish frontier”.’
In the early hours of the morning, the German Army had swept into Poland. The Polish infantry divisions were unable to hold back the
Blitzkrieg
launched by the highly mechanised
Wehrmacht
. When the British told Hitler to withdraw, he responded by accusing the Poles of being the aggressors. Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister, then gave him an
ultimatum. If he did not withdraw his troops from Poland, Britain would declare war on Germany. At 11am on 3 September 1939, the deadline set in the ultimatum expired without any response. Britain was at war with Germany, standing
virtually
alone against the might of Hitler’s forces. Bletchley Park was now faced with a race against time to break the German Enigma cypher.
With more and more people arriving, the cramped
conditions
in the mansion were soon getting on everyone’s nerves. Sinclair died of cancer shortly after the start of the war, so Denniston wrote to Menzies, who had taken over as head of both MI6 and Bletchley, suggesting that the MI6 sections be moved elsewhere.
Many of our recruits are men of considerable distinction and it is definitely felt that in the allocation of accommodation such facts should be taken into account. It appears to me improper to invite such as these to try to do work requiring a high degree of concentration in overcrowded rooms. There is a real spirit of discontent growing among my colleagues. I have congratulated them on the good work that is being done under trying
conditions
and the natural reply is ‘improve our conditions and you will get more results’. The Naval Section is now grossly
overcrowded
and we have to remember that we have added to our staff volunteers of very considerable standing and the research work they will undertake is of extreme national importance and one which calls for some degree of comfort in their
surroundings
in order to get the best out of them. It seems that there is not room to house MI6 and GC&CS in Bletchley Park
efficiently
. The only alternative therefore is to separate. It therefore remains to examine whether alternative accommodation can be found for some or all sections of MI6.
MI6 sections began to move out; the GC&CS Commercial and Diplomatic Sections had already moved into the neighbouring
Elmer’s School and a programme of construction of temporary wooden huts began. Soon the various sections began to move out of the mansion into the newly constructed buildings, adopting the name of the hut they were in as their section title, in part for security reasons. The first to move was the Naval Section, which moved into Hut 4, next to the mansion, in November 1939.