Frances Farrer

My part in the Bletchley Park story began in 1943, when I enrolled at Mill Hill on my 17th  Birthday. I applied to be an Air Mechanic, but I was quickly informed that I was being placed instead into a special training category named P5 which was involved with Naval Intelligence, and I was sent to the Naval establishment at Eastcote. Great emphasis was placed on secrecy and on the importance of the work for which we were going to be trained. Our training on the Turing bombes was very pressured and the shifts were extremely demanding. I do vividly remember being on night duty when I picked up the message about escape of the German battleships from Brest, and the excitement and exhilaration that this caused. I had another gruelling interview, after which I was told that I had been selected for overseas duty and that we would be sent to Ceylon on a troopship.

After a few weeks we were assembled for emigration on the troopship; about 70 girls herded into hideous accommodation in what appeared to be the bowels of the ship, stacked like sardines into three layers of hammocks, with 11 washbasins between us. It became clear that a huge sense of humour was going to be necessary for survival, and because we were constantly sweating due to the lack of fresh air, our skins soon turned a dark shade of navy blue from the dye in the mandatory overalls we had to wear! There were thousands of troops on board, but any communication between the WRNS and this supply of males was strictly controlled and any flirtatious thoughts quickly stifled. I do remember the one occasion when we were herded on to the deck above due to an impending attack on the ship by the Italian Air Force, but even then any possibility of communication with anything manly was impeded by a large thick rope placed down the middle of the deck precluding any contact whatsoever! In the event the British planes arrived and so our excitement was over and the Italians fled.

Then we churned through the blistering heat of the Suez Canal and the Arabian Sea until we reached Bombay at the height of the monsoon. Imagine the incredulity of the watching Indians to see the load of girls as we struggled to negotiate the decent from deck to quay, laden with kit, the cascading monsoon rain creating curtains of water streaming from the brims of the mandatory topees. I regret to say that my topee somewhat mysteriously was lost at sea, an accident of course! Then the transfer was made to a dismal Polish ship which took our contingent down to the naval base in Colombo.

Whitehall planners with very little knowledge of the tropics had obviously not realised that the monsoon rain would have turned the designated area of habitation into a sea of mud. We were directed into a series of huts supposedly designed to copy native bandas, but these had unfortunately been finished off with roofs made of tin instead of straw. This guaranteed a total barrage of noise from the heavy monsoon rain and an equally challenging situation when the tropical sun reappeared. However, we worked hard and I believe successfully to thwart the Japanese, only feeling a little depressed and seemingly forgotten when we heard that the European war was over. It was all an amazing experience, the hard work interspersed with many humours and romantic episodes, certainly enough to fill a novel, but I am intensely gratified by the recognition that we have eventually received.