The British government's top secret Code &
Cypher School at Bletchley Park, otherwise known as Station X, was the
unlikely setting for one of the most vital undercover operations of the
Second World War. It was at Bletchley in present - day Milton Keynes
that teams of code breakers succeeded in cracking Germany's supposedly
unbreakable Enigma codes, thereby shortening the war by at least two
years. Marion Hill has used the transcripts of some 200 interviews and
memoirs from among the thousands of people who worked at Station X to
give a remarkable insight into the daily lives of the civilian and
service personnel who contributed to the breaking of the Enigma and
other Axis codes. She explores their recruitment and training, their
first impressions on arrival at Bletchley Park ('BP'), their working
conditions, (including the in-house food and entertainment), and their
time off in billets and beyond. These BP workers, from boffins to debs
to ex-bank clerks and engineers, were united in the need to 'keep mum' -
even with their family and close friends.
However, the stressful burden on secrecy created divisions within the
organisation, and illnesses; and many felt disappointed at the lack of
acknowledgement for a vital job about which they were forbidden to speak
until many years later. A selection of archive photographs and
illustrations accompanies the text, drawn from the Bletchley Park Trust
Archive and from the personal albums of those stationed at Bletchley.