114 | 12 BOmBES
bombes had a name, ranging from Ajax to Fünf (a mystery character in Tommy Handley’s
It’s That Man Again, a popular radio show of the time).^45 The Eastcote bombes were named
after places, and the Wrens slaved over machines called Paris and Warsaw, Chungking, and
Marathon. Other names are visible in Fig. 12.3.
I joined the Women’s Royal Naval Service as a volunteer, not a conscript. I was offered a job in
HMS Pembroke V, in category SDX (‘Special Duties X’). The Pembroke V wasn’t a ship at all, but a
land-based unit, I had no idea where. The officer explained it would be ‘hush-hush work’. So, on
1 January 1944 I got into the back of a closed van with two other new Wrens. We pulled up in
front of some Nissen huts, in Eastcote it transpired.
They showed us into one of the huts and told us it was our ‘cabin’. All Wrens were supposed
to use navy terminology. An anthracite stove burning in the middle of the hut kept out the intense
cold, although the fumes were most unpleasant. We slept in bunks. I met several girls I already
knew, including a cousin of mine. The atmosphere was friendly, but everything about our work
was still a mystery.
On my second day at Eastcote I was taken to ‘Block B’, the holy of holies, and told that I would
be decrypting German messages on machines called bombes. Then I was lectured fiercely about
security. I can’t remember if it was at this point that we each had to sign the Official Secrets Act. As
well as the lectures, we were shown films making the point that careless talk costs lives. Eastcote
was the final station on one of the London Underground’s northern lines, and large posters on
the Underground emphasized the same message to all and sundry.
Then, disappointingly, we became not codebreakers but charladies. We cleaned floors and
windows, even painting some of them. The worst job was the galley, where the cooks delighted
in making us do the smelliest and most revolting tasks. I don’t know why we had this frustrating
figure 12.3 Bombes at the Eastcote outstation and their Wren operators. There were usually two Wrens per bombe.
Crown copyright and reproduced with permission of the Director of GCHQ.