Secret Life of Bletchley Park - McKay Sinclair [97]
And an American officer after the war summarised what he considered the great charms of Bletchley Park: ‘If you had to be in the Army, it was nice to be in a place where you wouldn’t be shot at. If you had to have a desk job, it was satisfying to have one you believed was extremely important to the war effort as well as offering a heavy mental challenge. We could be smug in the knowledge that we had been in an important place at a crucial time.’
In 1944, it was Gordon Welchman’s turn to travel to the States, and his account of the voyage illustrates the frustrations and satisfactions that this secret life at Bletchley brought to a proud man:
I went to America on the Queen Mary in February 1944 and found myself sitting at the Captain’s table with several well-known people, including a minister in the British cabinet, the head of the National Physical Laboratory, and film producer Alexander Korda.
During the voyage it became apparent that the cabinet minister resented the presence at the Captain’s table of this Gordon Welchman, who didn’t seem to be doing anything important. However, when we reached New York, and the passengers were awaiting instructions, we heard a broadcast announcement: ‘Will Mr Alexander Korda and Mr Gordon Welchman please disembark?’ I happened to be standing near the cabinet minister and saw the look of amazement on his face!10
Welchman does not record the pleasure that he doubtless felt upon seeing this expression.
He was in the USA as an invitee of Sir William Stephenson, a senior Intelligence man who, at the behest of Churchill, had set up a shadow ‘British Secret Service’ in the USA, in the event that the Germans invaded and overran Britain. But the focus of Welchman’s admiration was on America and its people. He so enjoyed all he saw and experienced there that in 1948, he emigrated for good. This was his account of his first encounter with his US counterparts:
The Americans, I found, are particularly good at putting people at their ease by preliminary talk about this and that before serious matters come up for discussion. When I first arrived in Washington, before I was allowed to make contact with the cryptanalysts, I had to be introduced to some of the top brass, whose approval was needed.
No doubt they would have made things easy for me by a period of general conversation, but in my case no such ice-breaking was necessary. I had only just arrived from England, where our wartime diet was simple, and was suffering from my first exposure to American food. As soon as we reached the building, I had to ask: ‘Where is it?’ … when I finally arrived [to meet the dignitaries], everyone was grinning and there was no ice to be broken.
In other words, even as the two countries’ senior military personnel found themselves in continual dispute, among the code-breakers there was an unusual camaraderie, warmth and mutual respect. For America, the relationship was vital – Britain had made so many of the giant, and sometimes devious, intellectual leaps that made such an operation possible. Conversely, much in the way that America was helping Britain out with military resources, it was also proving invaluable in terms of supplying Bletchley.
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What then, from 1941 onwards, of Britain’s other allies? When it came to the existence of Bletchley Park, the French turned out on many occasions to be the source of tremendous anxiety in Whitehall.
It was of course alongside Gustave Bertrand, with his ‘Scarlet Pimpernel’ pinches, that – before the start of the war – Alistair Denniston and Dilly Knox had been fed information by the Poles. After the Germans invaded France in the spring of 1940, the Polish mathematicians, having already left Poland, now had to be evacuated again.