Secret Life of Bletchley Park - McKay Sinclair [68]
But she adds: ‘The food was very good – and compared to what I got later on a boat over to Ceylon [codebreaking in the Far East], it was magnificent, laid out in cafeteria fashion which we had never come across until then. If you went out for a meal, you sat down and somebody served you. Here, you went and served yourself, which I had never seen before. It was a whole new world. Everything was different.’
And whatever the complaints, there was a bright side. Since the war, it has been proved time and again that whatever the privations, and no matter how irksome the shortages of butter, sugar and meat were, the wartime diet was possibly the healthiest that the British have ever consumed.
15 1941: The Wrens and their Larks
As the numbers of Wrens at the Park grew from hundreds into thousands, their increasing presence also subtly changed the atmosphere of the place. Photographs of these girls in uniform, taken on what seem to be perpetually sunny days in Buckinghamshire, show not only a freshness, but also a good-humoured, no-nonsense expression in so many of their faces.
Despite the discomforts and privations and the relative lack of freedom – or perhaps because for many working-class girls, this life actually presented more freedom – there seemed a general sense of satisfaction, the knowledge that they were fundamentally doing their bit.
For Jean Valentine, who grew up in the Scottish town of Perth, and who turned eighteen in the later years of the war, joining up was a matter of patriotic duty, although she believes that her own recruitment for work on Turing’s bombes was an administrative mistake; for crucially, at just over five foot, she was, according to Bletchley guidelines, too short (indeed, when Jean’s work on the machines began – once she knew the secret, there was no question of opting out – she had to use a special stool to reach the highest drums). Like so many young women during those years, she was acutely aware of the need to contribute in the most solid and practical way possible. It was not enough to stay at home. She now recalls:
‘I got to be eighteen and I thought, if I don’t hurry up and do something positive apart from a bit of firewatching and working in a soldiers’ canteen … then I might end up in a munitions factory. Or on the land. Neither of which was my cup of tea.
‘So one day, I was going down to Carnoustie, near Dundee, to visit my aunt. I had some time to spare so I wandered off into the city. I saw an office which was a recruiting centre for the navy, so I popped in. They gave me an intelligence test and said, “You’ll be hearing from us.”’
Like linguist Sheila Lawn, Jean Valentine had never before left her native land. Her upbringing was comfortable, middle-class – her father had businesses in Perth, one of which, Valentine’s Motors, is still remembered fondly by the townspeople today. Jean was aware that she was signing up for a life radically different from the one she had known. Thanks to that administrative mix-up, she was heading into a career of helping to crack the Enigma codes. Her rude introduction to that life, however, was a head-spinning culture shock.
‘I got a summons and a railway warrant to go to Tullichewan Castle in Dumbartonshire, which at that time was a training centre for Wrens. And I spent a fortnight there learning to do what you do – marching, saluting, that sort of thing.
‘We were told the castle had just been vacated by workmen. The place was filthy. It was disgusting.