Before Bletchley Park could break the German war machine's code, its
daily military communications had to be monitored and recording by "the
Listening Service"--the wartime department whose bases moved with every
theatre of war: Cairo, Malta, Gibraltar, Iraq, Cyprus, as well as having
listening stations along the eastern coast of Britain to intercept radio
traffic in the European theatre. This is the story of the--usually very
young--men and women sent out to far-flung outposts to listen in for
Bletchley Park, an oral history of exotic locations and ordinary lives
turned upside down by a sudden remote posting--the heady nightlife in
Cairo, filing cabinets full of snakes in North Africa, and flights out
to Delhi by luxurious flying boat.