Secret Life of Bletchley Park - McKay Sinclair [49]
One other side-effect of the work, says Jean Valentine, was apparent when she went home. And it was another indicator of the general discretion of the time that this did not prompt more questions: ‘My mother never questioned anything, but she did say to me once: “What are you doing to your shirt cuffs?” I used to take my washing home and the cuffs would be all black. It was the fine spray of oil, which you couldn’t even see so you didn’t know it was happening, a spray coming off the bombes.
‘So I just said, “Oh, it’s the work I’m doing.” And my mother didn’t pursue it.’
11 1940: Enigma and the Blitz
‘Ultra never mentioned Coventry,’ commented Air Section head Peter Calvocoressi. ‘Churchill – so far from pondering whether to save Coventry or safeguard Ultra – was under the impression that the raid was to be on London.’1
The German raid on Coventry on the night of 14 November 1940 is still the cause of debate and controversy today. Thanks to a pointed reference by Captain Winterbotham in his pioneering book on Ultra, the theory that Churchill allowed the Midlands city to burn – in order that the Germans wouldn’t suspect that Bletchley had broken into Enigma – has continually reappeared. And even though most Bletchley Park veterans firmly believe that the theory is nonsense, a few are not so sure. But in order to get a better idea of the searing events of that night, it is necessary to explain a little of the background, and of the increasing value of the intelligence that Bletchley was providing, through the Battle of Britain and beyond.
Back in the summer of 1940, huge numbers of people in Britain had been bracing themselves for what seemed the inevitable. The Germans, triumphant in France and the Low Countries, would, it was popularly believed, now turn to Britain. There was little belief that in the event of an invasion, Hitler’s forces could be successfully fought off. Such pessimism would very rarely be heard out loud; one wouldn’t want to be reported for damaging morale. Neverthe less, to read contemporary diaries, and to hear contemporary accounts, it is clear that a great many people were sick with anxiety about what they saw as Hitler’s coming victory.
Little wonder; nothing like the German war machine had been seen before. Added to this was the calculated sadism, together with the way that any conquered nation would be subject to the paranoia of informers and curfews, the terror of random public executions. News of what had been happening in Poland had come back to London. To listen to Churchill’s speeches now, one simply hears the growl of inspirational defiance. But as Mimi Gallilee says, whenever she went to bed after a day’s work at Bletchley, she would ‘pray first, and pray hard’. She and countless others lived in real fear of a lightning invasion.
Secret preparations were made for such an eventuality. Among them was the recruitment of the ‘Scallywags’, outwardly passive-looking men such as clerics, writers and intellectuals, trained in techniques of subversion and assassination, with the aim of starting as much mayhem as possible. But when would Hitler invade? From the Cabinet and MI6, down to the saloon bar debaters in the Anchor and Crown, it was a subject of intense speculation based upon little more than guesswork.
In August, in preparation for Operation Sea Lion, the Luftwaffe launched a ferocious concerted attack from the air upon RAF airfields and radar stations. Yet in the succeeding weeks, during what became known as the Battle of Britain, the RAF pulled off astonishing repeated triumphs in its airborne skirmishes with the enemy. The image is ceaselessly evocative; that of the people of Kent looking up into a wide, pale blue sky to see, far above, the tiny forms of Spitfires firing upon the encroaching enemy, and of German planes spiralling downwards, their bailed-out pilots floating down