The Wrens of World War II
Bletchley’s Secret Source
By Peter Hore
Published by Big Sky Publishing
RRP $29.99 in paperback | ISBN 9781922488633
This book was published in 2021. Somehow I missed doing a review at that time.
The author, Captain Peter Hore, RN, (rtd), is a former Head of Defence Studies for the Royal Navy and the author of numerous books including Henry Harwood: Hero of the River Plate. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a Fellow of the Society for Nautical Research.
In his preface, Hore explains his motivation for writing the book: the often overlooked contribution of women to the Allied victory in World War II.
Women’s footprints, he writes, are sometimes hard to discern because historians – mainly male historians – have unfairly overlooked women and their importance in the tide of events. When women have been written about, it has often been with an air of surprise or innuendo, surprise that women should have anything at all to do with events in which men seemed to have borne the brunt of hardships, or the inference that women’s roles were somehow incidental.
At other times popular writing about women in history tends to be frivolous or superficial. Further, several major works on intelligence-gathering and the wireless war during the Second World War, make no reference whatsoever to the participation of women.
Hore might well have added it wasn’t only historians who ignored the role of women in the wartime fight. He might have pointed to the men at the time too who resisted the engagement of women in the services. Unsurprisingly there turned out to be some jobs they could do better than their male counterparts.
Background
The World War II code breaking station at Bletchley is well known and its activities documented in detail. Its decryption capabilities were vital to the war effort, significantly aiding Allied victory. But where did the messages being deciphered come from in the first place?
This is where the extraordinary story of the Y service (Y meaning wireless intercept) comes in. The Y service was the code for the chain of wireless intercept stations around Britain and all over the world. Their existence became a secret even more closely guarded than Bletchley Park. Hundreds of wireless operators, many of them who were civilians, listened to German, Italian and Japanese radio networks and meticulously logged everything they heard. Some messages were then used tactically but most were sent on to Station X – Bletchley Park – where they were deciphered, translated and consolidated to build a comprehensive overview of the enemy’s movements and intentions.
Hore delves into the fascinating history of the Y service, with particular reference to the girls of the Women’s Royal Naval Service including:
- Wrens who escaped from Singapore to Colombo as the war raged, only to be torpedoed in the Atlantic on their way back to Britain;
- the woman who had a devastatingly true premonition that disaster would strike on her way to Gibraltar;
- the Australian who went from being captain of the English Women’s Cricket team to a WWII Wren to the head of Abbotleigh girls school in Sydney;
- how the Y service helped to hunt the German battleship Bismarck in the North Atlantic, and
- how it helped to torpedo a Japanese cruiser in the Indian Ocean.
Hore has pieced together these incredible stories to build a picture of World War II as it has never been viewed – or understood – previously.
In doing so he has unearthed the real stories of the women who played such an important role in SIGINT.
FURTHER READING
In writing about this book, I was reminded of two books that have already been reviewed on militarybooksaustralia.com – links included below. Like the Y stations in the UK, Australia too played its role in SIGINT.
REVEALING SECRETS: An unofficial history of Australian Signals Intelligence & the Advent of Cyber
by John Blaxland and Clare Birgin
Australia’s Central Bureau was housed at a suburban house at 21 Henry Street, Ascot, in Brisbane with the Cipher Office housed in a garage in the back garden (no air con, corrugated iron roof), staffed by women. It was the communications hub for other SIGINT centres such as Bletchley Park.
Revealing Secrets: An unofficial history of Australian SIGINT
RADIO GIRL by David Duffy
militarybooksaustralia.com 