Secret Life of Bletchley Park - McKay Sinclair [92]
Perhaps, like many aspects of British life, this might have more to do with class and background than anything else. It is not a great exaggeration to suggest that in the countryside, sex tended – and probably still does tend – to happen sooner than in the overcrowded cities, for the very simple reason that there is the freedom to take off and find privacy. It is also easy to suspect that reticence about sex was much more prevalent among the middle classes; women who knew just how precious one’s reputation was, and how easily it was lost. One might say that for upper classes and working classes alike, there was less to be lost in this way, and as such things were a little more relaxed; whereas for the young middle class, one’s good name was crucial when it came to maintaining one’s hard-won social standing. In some ways, the middle years of the twentieth century were more censorious than the famously repressed Victorian era.
There were always rumours, including stories of unwanted pregnancies and illegitimate births; it was said that one Wren at RAF Chicksands gave birth but the baby died soon after. She attempted in her distress to hide the little body but the authorities found it. The girl was then taken away, and no one knew what became of her. Yet when it came to sex, one former Wren interviewed by Marion Hill responded with a curious blend of worldliness and innocence: ‘There were a lot of romances going on. Of course you couldn’t actually share a room with a man in a hotel. They asked to see your marriage certificate first. But where you will, you find a way. There was plenty of opportunity for walks in the countryside, bike rides. I can remember drinking Champagne on hilltops with young men.’3
They must have been very wealthy young men. Champagne in wartime north Buckinghamshire cannot have been very abundant. And the mention of hotel rooms illustrated perfectly what young suitors were up against; nevertheless, for many, the very idea of trying to get such a room in the first place wouldn’t have been countenanced.
Another Park veteran recalled: ‘BP contained a network of long-standing relationships … The Section would ensure that arrangements for shift-working took due account of them … for it was difficult to do much “carrying on” with someone on a different shift.’ Equally, if a romance was starting to wither, ‘it might have been advisable to reshuffle the shifts. On the whole, the system worked pretty well.’
Young Mimi Gallilee too could see romance all over the Park, but she succinctly expresses the innocence that was very much a keyword at the time: ‘There were lots of marriages. Other liaisons,’ she adds, ‘you didn’t know about.’
20 1943: A Very Special Relationship
The idea that a close partnership between Britain and the United States was forged during the Second World War has become one of the abiding assumptions of our political landscape. They gave us the tools, and we finished the job. What we lacked in material resources, we more than made up for with bulldog pluck; a pluck that earned the admiration of Uncle Sam, and created a bond between the two mighty nations that has remained strong until today. It is a stubbornly enduring image. The war, it is believed, shifted the relationship between the two countries irrevocably from one of mutual suspicion to one of mutual respect.
Yet it is obviously not that simple, and indeed seemed very far from being the case throughout the war itself, according to several historians who have written recent studies on the subject. Walter Reed believes that while the rapport between Churchill