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By Root 456 0

that cheery habituée of Claridges and other smart London spots – remembers the strategies she would employ to bat off unwelcome queries about what she was doing so far outside the capital, and why she was spending so much time doing it: ‘When you were on leave, people would say to me: “What are you doing?” It was difficult. I used to say: “Oh, nothing much, frightfully boring job.” “Oh. Well, what is it?”, they’d say. And I’d say: “I’m a typist, would you believe it?” I would then add: “I could tell you more if you want …” Then they would back away and say: “Oh no thank you, we don’t want to hear about typing.”

‘And that was it. Quite easy after that. You could see them thinking: “Don’t ask Sarah what she does, she’s so boring about it.” If you’re boring enough, they stop asking you.’

Even at home, in the bosom of one’s family, Sarah Baring says that somehow it became second nature not to pry: ‘My family didn’t ask me. My father just used to say – my mother had died, unfortunately: ‘You all right, darling?’ And I would say: ‘Yes, poppa, I’m fine, don’t worry.’ My brother was fighting in Anzio at the time – he wouldn’t have talked either. The information somehow becomes so precious. It’s the lives of your comrades, isn’t it.’

There were lapses of discretion, however. Some came about for the most touching and innocent and human of reasons. Take this incident, reported by a J.B. Perrott to Bletchley Park’s administrator, Nigel de Grey. Perrott, in Signals, had this formal complaint to make, still to be found in the archives today:

On 18 Feb 1943, I met [Wren] Gwen Knight at a Harpenden Gramophone Society recital. Afterwards, on Harpenden station, she stated that she knew what work was being done by this unit, and mentioned types of discriminant, such as ‘shark’, ‘cockroach’, ‘chaffinch’, as well as the expression ‘BP’ … I ascertained that she was in some way connected with deciphering … to the best of my knowledge, Wren Knight is satisfactory on security grounds – her parents would seem to have no knowledge of the nature of her work, she is ostensibly training as a ‘writer’. I consider that the unnecessary remarks made on February 18th were solely to impress me.3

Wise Nigel de Grey was inclined to take this view of the matter too. He wrote back to a Colonel Wallace with these remarks:

I have personally interviewed the Wren in question and I do not think she will transgress again. I gave her the name of the officer who reported her and I think that alone may cause the friendship to cool off a bit. She made the fatal mistake of thinking that anyone connected with our services was entitled to the same information as she has herself …

It is always extremely useful to me to know where people have gone wrong.4

Sometimes, worryingly, it seemed that word had seeped out even wider than Wrens and Signals men. There was this anxious report to de Grey from a Mr Fletcher of Block D:

Mr Chicks, one of the British Tabulating Machine employees, engaged upon the final assembly of the bombes, was recently at home in Chelmsford where his father is a works manager. His father told him he’d met a man, an Air Ministry inspector, who, on hearing that his son worked at BTM Letchworth, said: ‘Oh I know what they do there. They make decoding machines.’ Chicks neither confirmed nor denied this to his father but told him it would be as well if he didn’t talk about it.

This case presented de Grey with a little difficulty, as he revealed in his reply: ‘the matter is one which I think will have to be followed up, though Travis wishes me particularly to emphasise the delicacy of allowing even MI5 into the bombe secret …’5

A little later on, and a small number of American officers also apparently found it difficult not to hint at what they were doing. One Lieutenant Skalak seemed alarmingly garrulous when among British officers, or at dances with Wrens. Indeed, such was the fright he caused that Bletchley Park prevailed upon the FBI to investigate his background thoroughly. Skalak’s loyalty was beyond doubt. He had simply been behaving rather overenthusiastically.