E67 - In Their Words Part 2

Bletchley Park

December 2017

Bletchley Park’s Oral History project has been running for six years, interviewing more than 400 veterans so far. These personal testimonies capture the unique and precious memories of people who worked at Bletchley Park and its outstations.

Not only are these interviews a great source of historical facts, adding to what we know about the work carried out by the Government Code and Cypher School during World War Two, they’re also a treasure trove of lesser-known details about the processes and what life was like during that time. Adding reminiscences about food, fun and uniform to the official records of how the codebreaking was done make this truly a people’s history of Bletchley Park.

In this second part of our December episode we bring you yet more of these amazing stories. We hear from Brenda Done, a Bombe Operator stationed at Stanmore, how she was told what their work was achieving. Enid Wenban of the ATS paints a picture of the long gone outstation at Beaumanor and David Bentliff tells us what it was like for a seventeen year old to break Japanese codes.

Image: ©mcfontaine

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