Carol Broughton

It was while I was serving at RNAS Yeovilton in November 1943 that I saw a request on the notice board for volunteers for overseas service. Suffering from a really bad cold at the time and not enjoying the freezing winds blowing round the air station, I immediately signed my name, very much hoping it would be somewhere warm. A few days later I was sent to be interviewed by some high ranking Naval Officers (including one Wren officer). When asked my age (I was not yet 18) I was thought to be too young to be sent abroad and questioned as to whether my parents would be agreeable. Thankfully they were and I received a further interview where it was stressed that the nature of the work was highly secret and we must never tell anyone under any circumstances about it.

Shortly after the interview I was drafted with four other Wrens to Plymouth. Our training took place at ACHQ, which was an underground complex of offices at Mount Wise. Our training completed, we were then sent to Crosby Hall in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, where we assembled with other Wrens to await instructions to proceed by night train to Liverpool. All telephones were roped down so that no one could telephone home to say their goodbyes. That night there was a particularly heavy air raid over London, and when it was over I remember looking out of a window and seeing what seemed to be the whole of the Thames on fire, the river reflecting fiery red from the flames of burning buildings.

Having arrived at Liverpool in the early dawn light, we embarked on the troopship Strathden. None of us had been told of our destinations but having been issued with tropical ‘whites’ plus topees I assumed that it would be, as I had hoped, somewhere warm. We joined the troops on the deck and watched England disappear into the misty distance. We were escorted in convoy by naval vessels until out of the Atlantic. At the time we did not know that a previous ship with Wrens on board had been torpedoed and all had been lost.

A memorable voyage followed with the wonderful experience of sailing through the Suez Canal and into the Red Sea and an unforgettable sunset with the sea reflecting the fiery red sky. Arriving at Bombay, we were taken to what had been the former Japanese Embassy where we were accommodated until a ship could be found to take us to Colombo, Ceylon. Until this time, we had not been informed of our destination. Eventually a small ship, the Llanstephan Castle, was able to take us to Colombo.

Our Wrennery was called Kent House, and was approximately six miles out of Colombo. There were other addresses, too, where Wrens of other categories were accommodated. The W/T station where we were to carry out our duties was HMS Anderson, situated some miles inland in a jungle location. Our work in the humid heat without air-conditioning continued through night and day in naval ‘watches’. We worked in buildings that had cadjan roofs made from woven palm fronds, with gaps between walls and the roof. Through the night we could hear the sound of thousands of frogs croaking and from time to time horrible insects would hurtle through the open gap and some of them, enormous things like tiny flying mice, would crash into our backs as we worked. The W/T station was divided up into several offices connected by concrete paths around a central square. None of us questioned or knew what work went on into the other huts, except for the one next to ours which we learned was where Japanese coded messages were intercepted and translated by Wrens who had knowledge of the Japanese language. These messages were then passed through to us and decoded on our TypeX machines. These machines were similar to the Enigma machine but had five steel wheels in the centre with the letters of the alphabet engraved round them. On receiving a signal from the translator each wheel was rotated to match the key group of five letters at the beginning of the Japanese signal. The message could then be decoded though sometimes there were difficulties to overcome. Later we also had to use an American machine called a CCM and these were accompanied by American GI mechanics, a few of whom we thought were sometimes as much of a pest to us as the insects!

Our accommodation at Kent House was similar to the walled huts at the W/T station. There were eight beds to a cabin. The beds were wooden with slats supporting a thin mattress and topped with a mosquito net. Being young, I think we all managed to sleep quite well, but often after coming off a night watch we would oversleep and miss lunch, entailing a visit to a local Chinese restaurant and spending our meagre Wrens pay.

One day we were paid a visit by Lord Louis Mountbatten who was Commander in Chief, South East Asia Command. We assembled in the grounds of Kent House and he gave us a talk about how the war was progressing in Burma and how our work was so vital in supplying valuable information about the Japanese there. How well I remember him standing amongst us, a very handsome man in his white uniform adorned with all the gold braid. He had great charm and his talk lifted our spirits and we returned to our work with a great sense of purpose. Whatever may be said about great leaders of the past, those like Lord Mountbatten really had the gift to inspire.

After the war, when I met my future husband, Jack Broughton, at the BBC where we both worked, we said very little about our wartime experiences beyond the fact that I had been a Wren and he had served in the RAF. We were both interested that I had been sent to Colombo and he had served with a secret unit in Brisbane. We had been married for some years, busy raising our two children, when we heard the announcement on the radio news that the thirty-year secrecy ban had been lifted and we were free to divulge the nature of our work during the war. When mention of Ultra and Enigma was made, my husband looked at me and said how that had been his work in Brisbane. When I replied that it was also what I had been engaged on in Colombo, we looked at each other incredulously and I don’t think he believed me at first until we described the nature of our work. Hadn’t we kept the secret well?