NOVEMBER 7, 2019 | THE WELLINGTON ADVERTISER | 17
REMEMBRANCE DAY Local veteran remembers time as code breaker at Bletchley Park in WWII By Aryn Strickland ELORA - In 1943 Barbara “Bonnie” Smiley (née Gray) was 18 years old and working as a code breaker at Bletchley Park. The sprawling mansion in Milton Keynes, England, served as the headquarters of Allied code-breaking in the Second World War. The work was repetitive and highly secretive. “We were told so little about what we were doing and it was a complicated process,” said Smiley. Of the 10,000 people working at Bletchley Park, twothirds were young women. Smiley worked as a WRN, the name given to members of the women’s branch of the Royal Navy. Popularly and officially known as the “Wrens,” the women kept codebooks up-todate as new deciphers were established by translators across the hall at Bletchley and in Washington. Wrens copied out new messages on to a set of 600 wide sheets, each with 50 columns. They applied additives received from the U.S. Navy team in Washington to enciphered groups in the columns and applied commonly used code groups to unbroken messages. “The work was monotonous in the extreme. But it
needed to be done and we knew it,” said Smiley. From her arrival at Bletchley, Smiley worked on Japanese naval codes. Japanese messages not only would reveal information about their own operations, but also German activities through the Military and Naval Attaches in Germany. Ultimately these intercepted messages provided vital information about the German defensive plans in France prior to the D-Day invasion. At the time Smiley said she understood very little of the codes that were received and she helped to decipher. “The Japanese were always changing their code books. They weren’t machine codes. They had to distribute the code books every month, which was very difficult to get from one ship to another in that time,” said Smiley. However, she learned the Japanese navy would send “ha” before the name of the operator in their messages. Then, in 1945, Smiley was working the evening shift at Bletchley when she made a breakthrough. “I was at watch at midnight and I noticed that this operator had sent two messages, one at 11:59 and one at 12:01. And I just twigged
that it was the same message, that the operator forgot that the codes had been changed,” said Smiley. She reported her discovery to the head of her watch.
“I wasn’t on duty the next morning and he came to congratulate me which was like God congratulating somebody,” said Smiley. She was promoted to
“The work was monotonous in the extreme. But it needed to be done and we knew it.” - Barbara Smiley
Wren leader soon thereafter. Having signed the Official Secrets Act Smiley and the other Wrens knew very little about the larger picture of the work going on at Bletchley, as they were forbidden from talking about the work, even with each other. It was only after Bletchley Park was declassified in the 1970s that Smiley learned about Alan Turing and the machine he created that cracked the German Enigma. “I didn’t have any idea there was a German section. None of us did,” said Smiley. “I think that’s the way they maintained security, by the fact we worked in pockets and you literally didn’t know
what was going on in the next room.” Smiley worked under Hugh Alexander, an important historical figure and a colleague of Turing’s who, before being transferred in 1943, also worked on breaking the Enigma code. Alexander later went on to become the head of the cryptanalysis division in the British government for the next 25 years. Smiley remembers him as a “lovely man.” “I can remember him quite clearly sitting in his office. And he always wore the same turtleneck, pullover and corduroy trousers, green. And we used to make cocoa for him. We didn’t
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Local veteran - In 1943 Elora resident Barbara “Bonnie” Smiley (née Gray) worked at Bletchley Park (pictured centre), the headquarters of Allied code-breaking in the Second World War. Pictured in her Wrens uniform and present day at her home in Elora. Photo by Aryn Strickland
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