Ian Mayo-Smith

GCHQ/MW – The army camp at Bletchley – The Sergeants’ Mess

 I don’t think much has ever been written about the army camp where members of the military wing of Government Communications Headquarters at Bletchley Park were housed. The Army camp and the neighboring RAF camp were located right next to Bletchley Park itself. The camp housed all the military personnel that worked in Bletchley Park as well as the usual complement of support staff dealing with transportation, stores, medical services, etc. The camp commander or “O.C. Troops” was Lt.Col. Fillingham whose previous posting had been as C.O. of a young soldiers’ battalion of the Durham Light Infantry, and the Regimental Sergeant Major was RSM Conners.

I think the powers that were must have given a good deal of thought in picking the men for these two posts for this was no ordinary military camp. The majority of the men and woman stationed there were not the usual variety of soldiers. For example I was once showing the wife of the Chairmen of the Rural District Council around the camp and we came to the music hut. (How many army camps, I wonder, had a music hut?) There was a corporal playing the piano. When we came out of the hut the chairman’s wife exclaimed. “That Corporal, ‘e do play lovely.” I had to explain to her that he was Corporal Wilfred Dunwell, professor of piano at one of the prestigious academies of music in London.

Clashes between the military culture and the very different Bletchley Park culture were avoided owing to the good sense displayed by both Fillingham and Conners. I can only remember one minor but amusing clash. This occurred when a young Lieutenant from the young soldiers battalion of the Durham Light Infantry came to the camp as Assistant Adjutant. He had not been properly briefed. One of his first mornings after arrival he was touring the camp with RSM Conners on a daily inspection and he came upon a bed with the blankets and kit laid out on it, but he observed that there were none of the mandatory metal studs on the boots laid there. “Sergeant Major, that man’s on a charge. There are no studs on his boots.” “But sir,” replied Conners, “That is W.O.I Briggs’ bed, sir.” (Even in normal military establishments subalterns do not normally put  W.O.1s on charges for minor offences.) “I don’t care who he is. That man is on a charge.” The young Lieutenant, was due to go to Oxford, after the war and it was later that day that he discovered he had just put the man who was due to become his tutor at his Oxford college on a charge. Nor did he understand why he got such funny looks from fellow members of the Officers’ Mess at lunch that day.

The Sergeants’ Mess was I think quite unique in the annals of the British army. I am sure there has never been another one like it. RSM Conners of the Black Watch presided over it. He was exactly the right man to be the Sergeant Major of the camp. He was a regular soldier among all us of war-time-only recruits. It was said that he had been educated at Dulwich College and that during his career he had been offered a commission but had preferred to say in the ranks. He was equally at home with other regular soldiers and with the university faculty members and students that made up most of the membership of the mess, including people of a rank equivalent to his own, such as W.O.1 Peter Benenson, who went on to become the Founder of Amnesty International and W.O.1 Asa Briggs who became the first head of the Open University in Britain. Toward the end of the war when the general election was pending Peter Benenson took leave so that he could act as the election agent for a young Lieutenant, also at Bletchley, whose name was Roy Jenkins, later Lord Jenkins. (Many years later when I went to Buckingham Palace to receive from Her Majesty the MBE that I had been awarded for work I had done in Nigeria, the Home Secretary, reading out the names as we were called forward to stand in front of Her Majesty was the same man, Roy Jenkins, by then, like myself rather older.)

Other typical fellow members of the mess that I remember included Sgt. Herbert Murrill, later Director of Music at the BBC. Murrill died tragically early. But while at Bletchley he was able to invite another composer friend of his Sgt. Edmund Rubbra, who was head of the army classical music group, which gave a concert in the mess. We were not starved for good music at Bletchley. One of the members of the mess was the brother-in-law of Reg Kilbey, the cellist of the Albert Sandler Trio, a very popular  broadcasting group at the time. Kilbey, accompanied by Jack Byfield, the Trio’s pianist, came several times to play for us, but there was also plentiful musical talent within the membership of the mess itself.

Among the women members of the group Jeanne Cammaerts is one who stands out in my mind. She was the daughter of the Belgian intellectual Emile Cammaerts and I think English was probably not her first language. She was a big and imposing girl and she showed considerable acting talent as Eliza Doolittle in a production of Shaw’s Pygmalion with the parts of Professor Higgins and Colonel Pickering played by fellow members of the Sergeants’ mess.  Another woman Sergeant whose name now escapes me went on to become the editor of one of the leading women’s magazines in Britain.

Although normal military discipline was enforced inside the camp, this was not so within Bletchley Park itself. There was no saluting. We were all colleagues working towards a common goal. Our responsibilities varied and, of course, there were some people in managerial and supervisory positions as in any large organization, but those responsibilities did not always correspond to relative ranks in the military. In my own case, as a Staff Sergeant I was the supervisor of one of the three shifts of “setters” in the Testery. The other two shifts had Captains supervising them. And from time to time I had commissioned officers working in the section that I supervised. This was not a problem. This apparent paradox was most clearly illustrated when Staff Sergeant Singleton, in civvy street a senior civil servant in the Ministry of Labour, was posted away from Bletchley Park as the war with Germany was ending. He was needed to take charge of labor problems in Germany after the war. For this task he was, we heard, given the rank of Brigadier. From three stripes and a crown on your arm to three pips and a crown on your shoulder is quite a jump and it was, I imagine, the most exceptional promotion in the British army in World War II.