BARBARA HART, NÉE TUCKER
Bletchley Park, Wren in the Newmanry, February 1943 – August 1945; Naval Section, August 1945 – December 1945. Interviewed July 2014.
© Crown Copyright: By kind permission Director GCHQ
had this class full of dotty giggling little Wrens. Some of them only seventeen. Less than teenagers – schoolgirls.
Barbara left school at 16 and was recruited to the WRNS from Cardiff Central Library. I did my WRNS training at a ministerial college in Leeds and was given a sort of navy blue dress – it was just awful. I had my photograph taken and I sent it home to my parents, and my father was so upset when he saw it he cried! I think all the girls I trained with went to Bletchley Park. [When we got there] we went to the Newmanry with John Herivel for maths and IQ tests. He had patience… he was only young himself and 14
Barbara worked on the machine that preceded Colossus and was dubbed Heath Robinson. The machines were housed in the Newmanry which received enemy messages from the intercept station at Knockholt. These messages, encrypted with the Lorenz cipher, were punched onto paper tape and mounted on a Heath Robinson machine. A successful run would help deduce some of the settings of the Lorenz machine used to encrypt the message. Because the tapes were so noisy… we had a hood with a telephone in and it wasn’t always possible to hear. I loved my time in the Newmanry. I really enjoyed every minute of it. There was an Army group, part of Major Tester’s staff, through a hatchway to next door. We were never allowed in there, but I think most of the tapes used to go through that hatchway. My husband [Ronald Hart] worked in the Testery – we met through that hatchway! He, like me, left school at 16, but he was always very good at crosswords.
When a few Americans arrived, breakfasts at Bletchley Park improved. There was one we all absolutely adored called George Vergine. All the girls thought he was lovely. Some Americans worked in the Testery; they cheered everything up. You weren’t told anything. We just got on with it. Those girls that worked on the big Colossus did a wonderful job. It must have been very uncomfortable – those valves sent off a tremendous heat. I was promoted to Petty Officer. After Germany surrendered, everything came to a stop. I was then moved to the Naval Section sorting out captured U-boat documents. There were sacks full of not only documents but personal belongings – photographs of families and cameras. I didn’t really like that. I felt sad about that. But it was a job that had to be done. Later I did a different job, to do with hydrography. I was asked by Commander Tandy to do whatever I could about these captured U-boat charts – all in long drawers, stacked high. Day after day I sorted them all out in their areas and numbers. I obviously did the right thing as I received a handwritten letter of thanks from Frank Birch.
Bletchley Park Magazine
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