A DISTURBING DISCOVERY

One of my most vivid, lasting childhood memories concerns the young women from Bletchley Park who were billeted to our big old Rectory during the war years. Bletchley, remember, was the center of important ultra hush-hush activities that were revealed only decades later to be the decoding of German High Command messages thanks to the capture of the so-called Enigma machine. I discovered online today, wandering in that strange maze of information that is the Internet, a book about Bletchley Park in which my father appears in a somewhat unflattering cameo role. The book is "The Hidden History of Bletchley Park: A Social and Orgainizational History" by C. Smith. Here's the excerpt:

"That said, while most residents appear to have been incurious, there were some locals, intrigued by the arrival of a military installation in their town, who attempted to discover what was going on. One such example was reported to CG&CS’s (Government Code and Cypher School) security staff, who recorded the incident in some detail:

There is a parson in this neighborhood whose name is the Rev. Harry L. Clothier, The Rectory, Aspley Guise. We have had a number of people billeted there from time t time and as a host he is very kind. He has, however, apparently acquired a good deal of information about Bletchley Park, some of which gets rather close to the knuckle. The four girls who are billeted there now are getting a good deal disturbed about hm because he not only seems to try and catch them out with the idea of obtaining a little more information, but he repeats what he knows to everyone that comes to the house and seems to take a quite unchristian delight in getting the girls into an awkward position when introducing strangers.

The result of Reverend Clothier’s interest in the activities of his tenants was an issue which the agency’s security took seriously. However, there was some concern regarding how to deal with the problem of outsiders learning too much about CG&CS. Just as the agency was keen to avoid the unwanted attention that might be generated if it prosecuted those staff members who breached security regulations, it also took a measured stance against local gossip: if the agency was too heavy handed with offenders then that, in and of itself, would have been revealing. As a result, CG&CS appears to have taken a policy of trying to frighten offenders into silence as opposed to resorting to legal action. In the case of Reverend Clothier, it was decided that the best course of action was that he be ‘officially warned to keep his mouth shut.’ Rather ominously, the security official suggested that what the Reverend required was ‘a thorough frightening.’”

Those "girls" were a constant presence in our household. One memorable Christmas Eve, adorned in their fur coats, they were the "reindeer" that pulled Santa's sleigh (a big old baby carriage) along the upstairs corridor to the nursery door. At five, six, seven years old, I was in awe of them, their seductive, feminine mystery, and even at that age I knew that we should never, never ask about their work. But it seems my father did.

Curiosity, of course, is a natural and healthy quality. When it reaches to top secret military information and the apparent compromising and embarrassment of the young women I remember so fondly from my childhood years, that's something else again.