At the open door stood a woman, Tilly estimated to be in her early forties, with short-cropped, salt and pepper hair, no make-up, wearing a midnight blue tailored skirt and jacket and laced black brevets. As the girls reached her and extended their hands, she extended hers and accompanied it with a wide, warm, smile.

Officially, she was Mrs. Abrams, but she informed her new arrivals, she preferred to be called Nora, by those who worked in her area, which was Hut 6. In turn, she said, most of the time, she would call them by their first names.

Bidding them to follow her, she turned to her left and started to walk across the Macadamised yard toward a number of buildings which she explained were Huts 1 and 8 and, to the far right of them, the two much larger buildings were Blocks A and B. When she reached Hut 1, she continued along the left side of it until she reached a second building directly behind, which she informed them was Hut 6, which was led by Gordon Welshman, and would be where they would be working. Consisting of clapboard and painted a pale lime, with white trimmed, wooden sash, windows surrounding the structure, the, unusually low, one storey, building, which appeared to be about twenty feet by fifty or sixty feet, was capped with an asphalt-shingled, low-pitched roof.

Before entering, Nora explained that no matter what function was carried out in which building, the building were, and must be, referred to only as Hut and its’ number, or Block and its’ letter. She finished the outdoor portion of her orientation by explaining that the team in one Hut worked with its’ twinned team, located in another Hut. In their case, Hut 6’s twin was Hut 3, which, she pointed out, was directly to the left side and end of Hut 6.

Nora then opened the door and stepped inside; indicating Tilly and Nuella should follow. Once the door closed and they adjusted their eyes to the difference in light, they could see a large room with strange looking machinery lining the walls, as well as scattered throughout. An indeterminate number of people, seemingly more women than men, were silently hunched over tables or busy checking the machines.

Over the next thirty minutes, Nora provided the girls with the history of the cipher machine the Germans had developed in nineteen-eighteen, called Enigma, for its’ banking and financial institutions. Although unsuccessful serving that industry, the German military quickly realised its’ potential in transmitting unbreakable coded messages and heartily embraced its’ use.

Appearing somewhat like a large typewriter, if one key on its’ keyboard was struck, an electrical impulse would go from it through a number of wheels, contacts and wires, which looked like an old switchboard, to a panel directly above the keyboard, where an enciphered letter would appear. The recipient of the enciphered message would merely reverse the process, by typing the coded message into their machine and taking note of what showed up on the above panel.

Due to the almost endless permutations of configured wheels and wires, it was believed to be unbreakable. Yet, in nineteen thirty-two, the Poles achieved the unthinkable and not only broke the code; but, were able to build a duplicate.

Once the war began, the Poles had discovered the ciphers were being changed at least once per day, instead of once per month; thus the Poles were completely thwarted in being able to access the German messages. Fortunately, in July of nineteen thirty-nine, Poland shared everything they had on the machine with Britain and France; so, by January of nineteen-forty, Bletchley had broken the Enigma machine’s secrets and were feverishly working in Huts 3 and 6 handling the Army and Air Force messages, and 4 and 8, taking care of the Navy, decrypting almost every German message that was intercepted.

When Nora finished, Tilly and Nuella stood speechless, until Nora asked if they had any questions. With a straight face, Tilly merely asked where they would find the cleaning supplies, so they could get started, which invoked the loudest laugh Nora had ever produced.

As soon as she stopped choking and was able to breathe evenly, she hugged Tilly and told her she had one of the drollest, sharpest, senses of humour she had ever witness. She went on to tell the girls that although it was extremely important what they achieved in their Hut, a bit of humour was vital in order to temper some of the terrible information they had to process.

Nora then turned to the room, called out for everyone to listen up and then proceeded to introduce Tilly and Nuella; generating a hearty round of applause. Once it had died down, Nora called out to a woman who was standing just past the third table on the left and asked her to come forward and join them.

Her name was Rita Scoffield and, as Nora explained, she would be working with the girls over the next few days, until they felt completely comfortable doing their work.

Rita shook hands with Tilly and Nuella, welcomed them to Hut 6 and then led them back to the fourth table on the left, where she had already positioned three chairs, instead of the normal two. Over the remainder of the week, Tilly and Nuella worked prodigiously emulating everything Rita showed them; surprising themselves by carrying out several tasks completely by themselves, by Friday afternoon.