The Secrets Of Station X
The story of a Bletchley girl
Nazi communications during World War Two were encrypted using complex cipher machines, such as Enigma and Lorenz.
In the mansion house and huts of Bletchley Park (known to those who worked there as Station X) and its outstations in Buckinghamshire, top secret work was conducted to break the codes of intercepted enemy messages. The intelligence resulting from this work had a direct influence on the outcome of the conflict.
Languages graduate Rena Stewart worked at Bletchley for 18 months in the Intelligence Corps after signing up to the ATS (Auxiliary Territorial Service) with a friend.
“We did our fortnight’s basic training in Guildford,” explains Rena. “But we must have been destined for Bletchley because once we had signed the Official Secrets Act we were sent on a course where we were given lectures by Bletchley people about the work there and also telling us about the ranks of the German army and about their intelligence. We were sent to Bletchley at the beginning of 1944, just around the time of my 21st birthday.
“I worked in Hut 3 in a department called the German Book Room, writing down decrypted German messages into a book. It sounds just like copy typing but it was more complicated than that because they were all in five letter groups and there were things that had been misheard or that were corrupted in some way so you really had to know German pretty well to do the job. The messages were extremely varied, being about army supplies, quantities of ammunition, people asking for compassionate leave, every kind of thing. . The most interesting thing that I ever had to type was a report, sent from the Lorenz nz machine which went direct to Hitler, from Field Marshal Kesselring. He was reporting on his opinion of the position in every theatre of war that existed at the time and it was fascinating.
“Initially we were doing morning and evening shifts of eight hours but then as things progressed and more and more messages were being decrypted, we had to do night shifts as well. It was intense work and we did it six days on and one day off. We were based in a military camp adjoined to Bletchley
Rena was then given an extra job – translating the personal will of Hitler
Park. So we had a sort of double life; in the camp we had a camp commandant who was very keen that we should be a ‘proper’ army unit and do route marches and compulsory PT and all that sort of thing, but at Bletchley nobody paid any attention to rank or ever dreamed of saluting, and it wasn’t compulsory to wear your hat when you went out, which was a rule in the army.
“There was a ver y good atmosphere at Bletchley although there was resentment r between people who w were in the ser vices and the t civilians, who seemed to have h more of a cushy time than t we had and didn’t have all a our restrictions either.
“They did at one time try to t even things out by making the t civilians do compulsor y PT P but that didn’t work ver y well! w Our social life was
nearly all with our fellow ATS people and we tended to go up to London to the theatre or something together as much as we could, so we didn’t really get to know any of the civilians.
“The need for secrecy was very strictly enforced. We weren’t supposed to go into anybody else’s office and we were advised not to even talk with our own colleagues when we were away from the office because we might be overheard. Of course the less we knew, the less we could give away, so we didn’t get a great deal of explanation as to what was going on. My family were told that my work was secret and that I couldn’t tell them anything and they just accepted that. I think that people did, in the war.”
After Germany’s surrender, Rena was sent to work in an interrogation centre in Germany, translating the written statements of prisoners, mostly people who had worked either with the German army or the SS. While she was there, she was given an extra assignment alongside her intelligence duties – translating the personal will of Adolf Hitler.
“It was one of two documents he left in his bunker, which detailed what he wanted to happen to his family. Two of us worked on it and we were told to take our time, making sure that there were no mistakes at all, and that’s what we did, discussing practically every word. We were told not to tell people that we had done it.
“It was our translation that appeared in historian Hugh Trevor-Roper’s book The Last Days of Hitler which was brought out a couple of years later.
“I remember my time at Bletchley and in Germany ver y clearly and I have been back to visit the Park several times. It was a great honour to be associated with such a major breakthrough.”