Remembering ...

"The intelligence which has emanated from you during this campaign has been of priceless value to me," Dwight D Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander.

"I know I told you to leave no stone unturned to get staff, but I didn't expect you to take me literally," Winston Churchill to Stewart Menzies.

"It looks as if Bletchley Park is the single greatest achievement of Britain during 1939-45, perhaps during (the 20th) century as a whole," George Steiner.

"I knew you were all mad, but I didn't realise you were quite so young," Winston Churchill.

"It was the most exciting time of my life."

"There were two set rooms and we got into trouble if we listened to anything else than the frequencies we were given. We had no newspapers or radios to get any news."

"I already knew Morse as I had learnt it in the brownies and guides."

"One of the hazards of war was that we girls lost a lot of the hair on the top of our heads due to the constant wearing of the headphones."

"I earned 14 shillings. A sixpence was kept by the army and half a crown was sent home to mother."

"They didn't have a jacket to fit me as I was 5' 8 1/2". It was so cold in winter we would wear our pyjamas under our uniforms. Because we were doing an important job we were let off making our beds and hut inspections - we only had one a month."

"It fell to my lot to be driven in from Stony Stratford by Knox, who had a remarkable theory that the best way to avoid accidents was to take every cross-road at maximum speed," JES Cooper on Dilwyn Knox.

"We would creep up to the mansion for coffee at night. We would all read the Times and there would be these clever men with beards and corduroy trousers. We thought it a bit odd that they weren't in uniform but no-one knew what anyone else did."

"I worked in Hut 11 on the Bombe machines. There was no air, a lot of noise, we called it the Hell Hole."

"I told my family that I was doing clerical work at Forest Moor, we didn't tell a soul anything as we had been told to keep our mouths shut."

"Bletchley was top brains and winning the war, that was all we cared about."

"We were told as little as possible but everyone got very excited when the machines reached a stop."

"My sister used to come home with the tips of her fingers all blackened and I once asked her about it. She said 'Never ask me what I'm doing and never ask me after the war because I can't tell you' and we never did," sister of WRN who worked at Bletchley Park.

"Some Foreign Office lot. They're all beard and brains with not a bob between them," station master at the Bletchley Park rail station.

Go back to: Bletchley Park Commemorative Badge

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