Bletchley Park (BP) and Romance
Chapter 22
The train chugged through Buckinghamshire until it arrived at Bletchley station. At first it struck Hilda as no more than a small rural station which would see few trains in the course of a day. However, the destination board on the platform revealed that many more trains than she would expect passed through Bletchley, travelling between Oxford and Cambridge.
The air was still and fresh, and as they left the train a variety of birds chattered, lightening their spirits after the noisy starlings of central London. The country seemed much safer than the capital, yet they had not travelled far. A stray German bomb might yet find its way to Buckinghamshire. Nowhere was safe; they needed to remember that.
‘My guess is we're going to Bletchley Park,’ said Shirley Barker, the other successful candidate.
A uniformed driver approached them.
‘You won’t hear anyone call it that. It’s BP from now on. BP,’ he said. ‘Are you the two ladies from London?’
‘Yes. We were told we would be met,’ Hilda said.
‘That’s me. Step in.’
A few passengers set off from the station on foot. Sally and Hilda climbed into the black Austin Seven Swallow Saloon parked at the entrance. Hilda was no expert on cars, but its make was written on its front grill. A rather swanky car for a very short ride, she thought, as they turned into the entrance of Bletchley Park, exactly as Shirley had surmised.
The car proceeded past the main stone building and through the park, stopping outside a long wooden hut. Trees blocked the view behind the structure, and in front was a neatly manicured lawn with only a handful of fallen leaves to mar its perfection.
‘This is HMS Pembroke V, where the Wrens are billeted. Wren Barker, you'll be staying here.’
‘HMS Pembroke indeed. It must be a dry dock.’ Shirley laughed as she left the car with her bag weighing her down. She turned back for a last look at Hilda, who reflected that it would be good to recognize at least one in the weeks and months ahead.
Hilda was dropped off at Hut 4, the London Signals Intelligence Centre. This was to be her work station. It was positioned to the rear of the main building facing north, in the shadow of the main house, and she was sure it saw little if any sunshine. Her residential quarters were a stone’s throw away in Hut 19. Damp walls and poor heating were her first impressions. She soon realized that being accommodated on site was a mixed blessing; it meant she would be available for work any time of the day or night.
There were five other women in the residential quarters. Most were civilian, so she did not stand out. She was glad of that.
The next few weeks were taken up with initial training in the so called ‘Spy School’, run by John Saltman. Hilda was made acutely aware of the secrecy of the work being carried out at BP. She was told repeatedly that she was one of many specialist cogs in Britain’s wheels, and she must never seek out the route by which the work came to her, or where it went after her part in its journey had been completed.
After the training, she was thrown in at the deep end at Hut 4, translating documents from the German and attempting to decipher the codes in which they were written. She saw very little of her hut mates for most of the day, and worked six days a week.
They rotated through three shifts: four p.m. to midnight was no one's favourite; midnight to eight a.m. was by far the least popular; and eight a.m. to four p.m. was the most bearable. At the end of the third week they went off duty at eight a.m. and came back at four a.m; much of that time was spent sound asleep.
Such a strict rota caused stress for many of the Wrens. Hilda did not feel the pressure as keenly. When a technical or mechanical text required translation, she gave it her full attention and completed it as promptly as she could, then allowed herself to relax until the next piece of specialized work arrived. Some of the coded text was complicated, and to make sense of the message she used a rather noisy adding machine to find a pattern of words. She enjoyed this part of the work immensely. It presented her with a stimulating challenge, and she could see why Raeburn had asked her about cryptic crosswords at her interview. The mathematics test was beginning to make sense too. The excitement made time fly, and the satisfaction when she interpreted the document was wonderful.
The only outsiders they heard came on motorbikes, which arrived and left regularly. She never saw the riders, nor knew where they came from or where they went when they left BP. Not even a milkman was ever seen. Their main source of food was a flock of hens pecking around the rear of the huts; eggs were their staple diet until some Americans arrived and introduced them to baloney sausage. Some of the girls were more than happy to spend their meagre wages on Lucky Strike cigarettes and seamless nylon stockings too, though there was scant opportunity to flaunt silky legs on the village dance hall floor. Indeed, no socializing occurred at all, though many of them chewed gum as they worked, partly as an aid to concentration, but mostly for the novelty. Hilda gave it up after a month or so, unable to see how it would ever gain mass appeal in Britain. But America had joined the war, and they gave everyone tremendous hope as well as an insight into a new and exciting lifestyle.
One day, after Hilda had spent more than three months at BP, a colonel came into the room with a technical message for translation. He prided himself on his ability to read it in somewhat hesitant German. Hilda encouraged him. Then she stopped, and looked up at him, something pricking at her memory.
‘Hamburg... 1932...’ she said.
He stepped back to look her full in the face, but shook his head.
She tried again. ‘British Consul Hamburg, 1927-1932?’
‘Yes, yes, that’s right.' Light dawned in his eyes. 'And... you are... are you not... Dr Richter’s wife?’
‘Willy Richter’s widow. And you are Colonel Simpson.’
He gazed at her in silence for a few moments, then sat down beside her. She guessed what he was thinking: how on earth could Hilda Richter have arrived in BP?
‘You are working here?’ he asked, disbelief writ large on his face, although it was obvious that she was employed at BP.
‘You doubt my loyalty to the king?’
There was a slight hesitation, then: ‘No, of course not. I remember now, you are Scottish. I’m just very surprised you are here.’
‘No more surprised than I am to see you.’
It was hard to know how to proceed. Hilda would have welcomed an opportunity to talk about the past with a sympathetic companion, but she was far from sure it would be permitted. Still, nothing venture— ‘Secrecy is paramount as regards the work I am doing, of course, but perhaps we could talk more sometime about our time in Germany. In privacy, of course,’ she said.
‘I would like that very much. May I also hear your oboe again?’
What a surprise. He did indeed remember her.
‘You heard me play?’ she said in delight.
‘You played at the British Consul in the late ’20s or perhaps it was the early ’30s.’
She recalled those happier times with pleasure.
‘And you, Colonel – did you not sing at one of the Consul gatherings?’
He smiled. ‘Yes, I was a baritone.’
‘I still play from time to time. Surely you still sing?’
‘Not so much in recent years, since my wife died.’
She thought she saw his bottom lip quiver slightly, and there was an awkward pause as they realized they were two lonely souls in this austere place, hidebound by secrecy and hard work. Something fluttered inside her, a sensation she vaguely recognized from the past, and she thought tenderly of her years of happiness with Willy. Perhaps a little happiness in the future was not too much to ask... but she cut the thought short before it had time to take root, and straightened her shoulders.
The colonel was speaking again. ‘Perhaps when we have some time off, we could play music together?’
She focused on the crown and two pips insignia on his shoulder. Perhaps they could arrange a musical evening. There was so little in the way of social life here at BP, to offer a little respite from the demanding daily round. Surely some kind of gathering would be approved if a colonel wanted it.
‘I’d be delighted,’ she said. 'Some semblance of normality around here would be very welcome.'
They exchanged smiles as footsteps approached. It was time to resume formal behaviour.
He stood up. ‘This document, er... Hilda, isn’t it?’ He handed over the piece for translation.
‘Yes, Hilda Campbell at your service.’
‘Francis Simpson, at yours. Sir Francis now.’ They continued to smile at each other as the footsteps passed by, but others followed. The conversation was over and he left, glancing back at her before he was out of sight.
Before she had time to consider this remarkable chance meeting he was gone. She wondered briefly what he had been doing to earn a knighthood, then turned to the work he had given her: another message which had apparently come from the German High Command. It took several moments before she was sufficiently composed to apply her full attention to the work. She had no way of knowing how BP had come into possession of these German messages; the place seemed to thrive on secrets. Everyone was required to do the job they were given; hers was technical translation, not interpretation or espionage. But that did not stop her from wondering, or from asking herself what Sir Francis Simpson was doing here.
She would probably never see him again; even the conversation she had had with him was strictly against the rules. There were notices everywhere forbidding them to talk. Do not talk at meals. Do not talk in transport. Do not talk while travelling. Do not talk in the billet. Do not talk by your own fireside, the posters commanded.
That night as she lay in bed she realized theirs was the only conversation she had had all day. Her musings melted into the time she last saw him almost a decade ago. Sir Francis had a brilliant brain and a fine baritone singing voice. He could have been an academic, not a military man. Surely his rank reflected his past, rather than any experience gained as a professional soldier.
Her path and his occasionally crossed again over the next few weeks. They shared smiles as they passed, but did not dare stop to talk, though she sensed more than once that there was something he wished to say to her. She longed for an opportunity to spend more time with him, but both the disparity in their ranks and the hectoring 'no talking' posters left her reluctant to make the first move.
Then one morning in early spring, against all her expectations, he sought her out. She was in the small, bare room allotted to the translation workers for the short breaks they were permitted during their shifts. For once she was alone, sitting at the table with her hands clasped around a mug of weak tea in an attempt to ward off the March chill, and he appeared in the doorway.
'Hilda, I have something to tell you. I have been speaking to the director of operations, and he has agreed that a social evening would be excellent for morale – and you and I are to arrange some entertainment.'
Hilda was speechless with delight and excitement. When she found her voice again, questions tumbled over each other in their haste to leave her mouth, and Francis laughingly laid a hand on her arm to slow her down.
For ten minutes or more they sketched out some plans for the social evening, and when she caught sight of the clock and saw it was time to return to her desk she felt she had been talking to a familiar old friend, not someone she had met only a handful of times to exchange no more than a few sentences.
They met again in the main mess hall after her shift, and arrangements were swiftly under way. A piano was brought into the mess, Hilda had no idea from where, and one of her colleagues was persuaded to play it. A handwritten notice on the wall of the mess hall asking for volunteers produced excellent results. A tenor, two sopranos and another baritone joined Sir Francis to form a small chamber choir, and it turned out that Hilda's oboe was not the only portable musical instrument on site; within a couple of days she was rehearsing with two violins and a viola, a clarinet and a tenor saxophone.
The musical evening took place two weeks later. It was a huge success, and for days afterwards Hilda was stopped in corridors and approached in the mess with thanks, congratulations, and best of all, a multitude of enquiries about when the next concert would take place.
For Hilda the best thing about the event had been the opportunity to spend time with Sir Francis, who had quickly invited her to drop the 'Sir'. He behaved as if they really were old friends, and she began to allow herself to hope there might indeed be something to look forward to in the future.
Another musical evening was scheduled for a month later, and a third a month after that. More musicians made themselves known, and eventually the choir grew to fifteen voices and the small orchestra numbered twelve.
After the third concert, Francis seemed to vanish; several days passed during which Hilda neither saw him nor heard from him. Then one day when she reported for duty she found a folded sheet of paper lying on her desk. She lifted it and turned it over, her hand shaking. His handwriting was unmistakeable, and her heart sank as she read what he had written. Sir Francis had left BP. He could not apologize enough, he said, for disappearing with no warning; it was not his choice, but he was obliged to go where his duty took him, sometimes at very short notice. On 5th June 1942 he had taken up a posting as Consul-General at Leopoldville in the Belgian Congo. Hilda was devastated. They had known each other properly for only a few months, but she felt she had lost a very special friendship, possibly forever. What was more, central Africa with its heat, disease, poverty and Belgian colonial overtures was no respite from a world war. Like her, however, he had gone where he was sent. Her memory of her time at BP would be dominated by these past few months and the three musical evenings in the mess. Now she felt she would never be able to perform a concert again. Sir Francis had made quite an impact her.
The translation work continued at a very steady pace. Sometimes it seemed tedious, but its importance became increasingly apparent; indeed, on two occasions Winston Churchill, the Prime Minister, appeared at BP. She did not see him the first time, but during his second visit he came to the desk she was working at and patted her shoulder. ‘Fine work, young lady. Keep it up and we’ll win this war.’
Had he really said young lady? Hilda wanted to reply, but found no appropriate words. How did one address the Prime Minister? Besides, the No Talking signs on the wall forbade any conversation. But she felt his visit had raised morale throughout the establishment. Though she devoured the newspapers that arrived regularly, she never found any reference to BP or its activities; to the outside world it was as if they did not exist. So a little appreciation went a long way, especially from one in such high office.
The United States of America had entered the war by now, and their troops were making a vital contribution. By the end of 1942, Hilda was daring to hope the Allies were beginning to turn the tide.
Occasionally they heard night bombers droning louder and louder overhead. Hilda knew that in 1940 BP had been hit by a stray bomb, probably intended for Bletchley railway station, but so far the secret establishment itself had suffered no direct hit. When the bombers came, she lay in bed, listening. Each time the noise faded, she sighed with relief that they had not been the target that night. Perhaps there was no target, she told herself; perhaps they were American planes, returning after a bombing raid on mainland Europe. But the bombing of what, and where? Could Hamburg have been their target? Would Renate be safe? Was Otto on home leave? She wished fervently that both American and British bombers would focus their attention on Berlin, the centre of the terror, and leave her beloved Hamburg alone.
All the same, she felt the tide was turning. And she was not alone in believing that.
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Ron