May 2014
When Elizabeth Marshall, nee Tatham, was recruited
to Bletchley Park in 1944, she was told “This is a
very, very secret place. You must never breathe a
word of what you do here.”
Every one of the ten thousand or so men and women
who worked for the Government Code and Cypher
School, a mixture of military and civilians, was sworn
to lifelong secrecy. During a visit to Bletchley Park,
Elizabeth recalled “We were told ‘your family and
your friends must not know.’ We sat there absolutely
agog, wondering what we had let ourselves in for.”
Her parents died soon before the veil of secrecy was
lifted in 1974. She says “I was absolutely horrified,
I don’t mind telling you. My great friend rang me up
and said ‘Have you heard, they’re talking all about
Bletchley. It’s all over the papers.’ I said ‘What! We
were told never to talk about it.’ I still find it extremely
hard to take in that everything that was locked in my
head for so long is now common knowledge.”
You can hear the full interview with Elizabeth in the
May episode of the Bletchley Park Podcast
https://audioboo.fm/boos/2149628-the-bletchley-park-podcast-e22-a-very-very-secret-place
The Bletchley Park Trust is dependent on Veterans
themselves and their relatives to register for their
rightful place on the Roll of Honour. The Trust is also
in a race against time to gather Veterans’ memories
first hand in its Oral Archive.
http://www.bletchleypark.org.uk/news/v.rhtm/FindaCodebreaker-719559.html
Picture: ©Bletchley Park Trust
#BPark, #Bletchleypark, #ww2veteran, #enigma
