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 and 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 of 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.
