Cracking the Luftwaffe Codes: The Secrets of Bletchley Park by Gwen Watkins

Author:Gwen Watkins
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Bisac Code 1: HIS027100: HISTORY / Military / World War II
ISBN: eBook ISBN: 9781783036608
Publisher: Frontline Books
Published: 2013-02-18T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

Changes

IT HAD BECOME OBVIOUS very quickly that the huts did not provide enough working space for the growing numbers of BP workers, so in 1942 two two-storey buildings were built on the north side of the lake, called respectively A Block and B Block. Then followed C and D Blocks, and in the late spring of 1943 F Block was completed, and Mr B led his little band out of the hut which had housed us so uncomfortably for so long. It had been both chilly and stuffy in winter and baking in summer, and we left it without regret.

F Block was furthest from the mansion, the canteen and the transport collection point, but it was nearest to the private lane which led from the back of the Park to the railway station. If you slipped out of your section at five minutes to four (having brought in your weekend bag) and ran as fast as you could down the lane, you stood a good chance of catching the train from Birmingham which was supposed to arrive at three ten but nearly always ran late. Or you could stroll down in a leisurely fashion and catch the four ten to Euston, which nearly always came in before half-past four.

This was not the only advantage to the move. Instead of the cramped quarters of the hut, we now occupied a spacious sunny room with real radiators that worked and windows that could be opened. There was a work surface round two corners of the room and gleaming new metal tables in the centre, while Mr B sat surveying his domain from a shallow dais at the front. And if you became weary of this luxurious accommodation, you could walk up and down the wide corridors outside, either to rest your eyes and back, or to dabble about in the shining new washroom, where there was real rationed soap, or simply to see what was going on in the BP world.

In this wide light corridor, you might see the two Fetterleins, father and son, now united in the same building, in affectionate conversation. Or you might see ‘Cleo’ Welsford (so called because her real name, Enid, did not seem to express her haughty temper), a noted Renaissance scholar, steaming along in pursuit of some malefactor who had not returned the Bird Book. This was a weighty tome, compiled in the early days with enormous effort by the members of Sixta (an abbreviation of Hut Six Traffic Analysis), which recorded all Luftwaffe three-letter call signs, and in some marvellous way predicted their midnight changes. Perhaps Cleo had been involved in its compilation, for she had a kind of possessive feeling about it. During a lecture she was giving about its use, she had once thrown the Bird Book at the poet, who was preoccupied with a difficult metre at the time. Accustomed in his Gower home to avoiding the attacks of nesting sea birds, he had adroitly leaned away, and it stunned an unlucky flight sergeant dozing in the row behind.

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