Secret Life of Bletchley Park - McKay Sinclair [73]
On the day of that unforgettable visit, in September 1941, Churchill also inspected the Hollerith machine installation in Hut 7. As one breathless eyewitness account stated:
The visitor was presented with a scene of intense activity. There were 45 machine operators in action at as many machines. Then all the machines were halted at the same instant, and in the complete silence that followed, Mr Freeborn [the man in charge of the Hollerith section] gave an introductory explanation … At the conclusion of the demonstrations, all machines were brought back into action as the visitor was conducted to the exit, but all brought to rest as Churchill paused on the threshold to make his farewells.2
Churchill’s tour also took him into Hut 8, to meet Alan Turing; according to his biographer Andrew Hodges, Turing was ‘very nervous’.
The Prime Minister then gave a short address outside Hut 6 to a group of gathered codebreakers, in which he said: ‘You all look very innocent – one would not think you knew anything secret.’ It was here that, famously, he went on to describe his audience as ‘the geese that lay the golden eggs – and never cackle’.
John Herivel, in a lecture given to Sidney Sussex College in 2005, seemed a little less romantic and slightly more clear-eyed about this manifestation than Gordon Welchman had been. Nevertheless, his account still conveys something about the aura of true leadership:
Word suddenly reached us in Hut 6 that he was coming and those in the Machine Room … were told to stand up facing their machines. People were much more biddable in those days, so we did what we were told and for what seemed an eternity waited patiently.
Then the sound of many voices was heard in the distance, gradually becoming louder and louder and reaching a crescendo immediately behind me before subsiding when Welchman’s voice was heard saying, ‘Sir, I would like to present John Herivel, who was responsible for breaking the German Enigma last year.’
On hearing my name spoken by Welchman in this totally unexpected manner, I turned automatically to the right to find myself gazing straight into the eyes of the Prime Minister! We looked silently at each other for a moment or two before he moved on … If I had the necessary presence of mind – which I did not – I would have reminded him that the day the Military Enigma was broken was soon after that on which he himself had become Prime Minister.3
Once again, the justifiable pride radiates through, finding as its focus the sudden connection with this near-mythic leader made flesh. On the subject of the address given outside Hut 6, however, Herivel went on to give a more soberingly realistic portrait of the man in whom Britain’s destiny had been entrusted:
Soon he came and scrambled on to the mound where he stood rather uneasily for a moment – for it was a miserably dark day with a cold wind. We saw before us a rather frail, oldish looking man, a trifle bowed, with wispy hair, in a black pin-striped suit with a faint red line, no bravado, no large black hat, no cigar. Then he spoke very briefly, but with deep emotion … That was our finest hour at Bletchley Park.4
According to one history, when Churchill was at last about to be driven off, he lowered his car window and said to Alistair Denniston: ‘About that recruitment – I know I told you not to leave a stone unturned, but I did not mean you to take me seriously.’
Just one month later, perhaps emboldened by the great honour of that visit, Welchman, together with Alan Turing, Hugh Alexander and Stuart Milner-Barry, wrote directly to the Prime Minister to make a special plea for more staff. In the first couple of years of the war, Welchman, by his own cheerful admission, had had no problems of any sort with recruitment. He had ‘shamelessly’ (to use his own word) gone around