Station X, WRN, Gill MacDermott

Discussion in 'Top Secret' started by dbf, Apr 19, 2011.

  1. dbf

    dbf Moderatrix MOD

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    WRN, Gill MacDermott in 1942


    BBC NEWS | UK | Northern Ireland | Station X
    In part three of our special series BBC Newsline talks to Gill McDermott who served at Bletchley Park.

    "Don't talk to men with curly hair and suede boots," that's the advice Gill's mum gave to her as she set off to London to start her career in the Navy.
    After six months working as a meteorologist her superior officer told her that she was to be sent "on somewhere".

    That "somewhere" turned out to be Bletchley Park, home of the code breakers, those entrusted with cracking the German military codes used for communication.

    Here at Bletchley she worked on some very sensitive intelligence, alongside some early electro mechanical and electronic computers, and she got to meet one of her heroes.

    But Gill also recalls the time spent decoding radio messages from allied resistance fighters in Norway.


    Your Place And Mine - Topics -
    It was not until the mid 1970s that the reason for the wartime secret activity in Bletchley Park became known to the public. It was one of the war’s best kept secrets and that alone is an enormous compliment to the some twelve thousand people, service and civilian alike, who worked there between 1941 and 1945.

    Most of us are now familiar with those activities through films such as ‘Enigma’ and the many radio and television documentaries that have been broadcast but perhaps few people are aware that a large proportion of that estimated 12,000 staff were Wrens, members of the Women's Royal Naval Service, and there is little doubt we owe them a great debt for the work they did.

    It became almost an exclusively Royal Navy posting for servicewomen and the Wrens worked there with great distinction at Bletchley and other outposts of the great ‘Station X’ operation. They were lectured at great length about the need to keep their work secret and that they were ‘never ever’ to talk about it.

    They were told that absolute secrecy was just that and not even to parents, brothers or sisters and definitely not lovers could be told what they were doing.

    Even Winston Churchill was later prompted to comment on how successful the Wrens had kept the secret and it is a fact that some of those Wrens are still reticent to talk about their time there even in the 21st century.

    However they are now able to talk freely and one Station X Wren who was drafted in to break Japanese naval ciphers has made some of her diary memories available to us.

    Gill MacDermott was then 3rd Officer Gill Oppenheim who, like almost everyone else, had never heard of Station X – but, quite unknown to her, they had a desk ready for her at Bletchley Park.
     

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