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Staff at Bletchley Park did not spend all their time defeating enemy codes and ciphers. Outside office hours some composed songs and poetry, for fun or public performance. Patrick Barrington, who worked on German air force and Japanese codes, had written humorous verse for Punch magazine before the war, while Chief Cryptographer Dilly Knox had invented the pentelope verse form. Bletchley Park’s Veterans also include the well-known poets Vernon Watkins (Air Section) and Henry Reed (Naval Section). To coincide with the Young Poets Network’s latest writing challenge, inspired by Bletchley Park, we look at some of the poems and song lyrics held in our archives.

 

This Collections uncovered album was first published on 28 November 2018. 

 

Read the Young Poets Network’s Bletchley Park challenge anthology of winning poems online.

Much of the humour at Bletchley Park made light of the situations which staff found themselves in. This verse, attributed to cryptanalyst Lancelot Patrick Wilkinson, pokes fun at householders who had been forced to take Bletchley Park staff in to their homes as billetees.

A parody of the popular Nelson Eddy song “Trees”, this song was known at Bletchley by that title. Written by Daphne Wherry of the Women’s Royal Naval Service (WRNS), it was particularly popular at Bletchley Park Drama Group performances.

Wren Rosemary Lyster wrote “A lament for a lost alphabet” between shifts listening to German navy radio messages at the Coverack Wireless Interception station, Cornwall. The poem refers to the changes to the UK’s phonetic alphabet system (Apple, Beer, Charlie etc) that followed the American entry into the war.

The last entry in Rosemary’s lament demonstrates that she accepts the changes to the phonetic alphabet are a small price for the support of “….our gallant Allies” the Americans.

Probably the most famous poem connected to Bletchley Park is “A Bletchley Alphabet” which made reference to numerous well-known individuals. “Crawley” was Cecil Crawley, the Catering Manager, while “Foss” was Hugh Foss, a cryptanalyst in Naval Section throughout the war.

Although all the people featured in “A Bletchley Alphabet” would have been known to staff at the time, the identities of some are now uncertain. “Kevin” may have been N. Kevin O’Neill, of the Military Section and Testery, whilst “Lowe” was probably John Gerrard Lowe, who worked in Hut 3.

‘Nenk’ is Major David Nenk, a cryptographer working on Japanese codes. Dudley Owen worked Naval Section, while Reiss refers to Bletchley’s Transport Officer, Vincent Reiss.

When not working on meteorological and Japanese codes, Stanley Sedgwick was Secretary of the Bletchley Park Ballroom Dancing Club. Brigadier John Tiltman was a career cryptographer who rose to be a Deputy Director of Bletchley Park and Colonel B.E. “Bert” Wallace was in charge of allocating tasks to radio interception ‘Y’ stations.

This verse, written for a Drama Club revue, addresses the variety of people found at Bletchley Park and the pride that they should have in their achievements. The “…dons at the Duncombe” refers to those who drank at the Duncombe Arms public house in Great Brickhill, a village not far from Bletchley.

The author of this work is humorously expressing the humdrum nature of keeping card indexes up to date. In an age before computers the card index was the best method for storing and retrieving information and Bletchley Park generated tens of thousands of such cards.

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