Finished another one!! Hurrah.
Not sure I am really going to need spoiler alert for this one as it is a factual book. However, if you do not want to know about the amazing work carried out during the Second World War by so many people in a small part of present day Milton Keynes then look away now and go and paint your toe nails or sort your laundry.
Station X - Michael Smith
This is the amazing story of the codebreakers that worked in Bletchley Park (BP) during the Second World War and everyone should read this one!
The efforts of the people who worked on breaking into the codes that were used by the Germans and Japanese are simply amazing. The way that they laboured on day after day trying to get one step ahead of the enemy is such a wonderful and interesting story and shows the true dedication of the people selected for the task.
The main thing that the people working at BP tried to do was break into the messages sent by the Germans about the movement of all the separate parts of their armies. The Germans were not making it easy for the Brits by using a thing called an Enigma machine. Basically it was a sort of typewriter with keys used to type the message, a keyboard to read off the encrypted letter and several wheels that would turn every so often changing the link between the letter typed and the one encrypted. Sounds easy to figure out but was not. You have to remember that this was all before the time of computers and fast mainframes. All they had in BP was pens and paper, an awful lot of very, very clever people and a lot of black coffee.
The book tells the story of who the people were that did this decoding work and how they approached their job. It gives you a very good insight in what it was like to work in an environment where you really only knows what you do and not what someone in the building next door is doing. Nor do you know what the consequences of your work are. All you know is that you have solved your part of the puzzle and that would make you more proud than anything in the world. One of the best parts of the book is the little anecdotes that the survivors tell of the people that worked there. some of them were as brilliant as they were eccentric. One of my favourite stories tells of one of these men standing by the lake on the grounds with a cup of coffee in his hands. After he had finished it he looked kind of at a loss at what to do with it so he threw the cup in the lake! Other stories tell of the antics they got up to with laundry baskets and games of rounders with the Americans that nearly started another war. then there are the stories of the excitment that was felt when you knew they had broken a code and that you had contributed to it in one way or another. These people took real pride in their work and are some of the unsung heroes of WWII. Some historians say that the work carried out in BP took about 3 years of the duration of the war so their contribution must not be underestimated.
What you have to remember is that there was not just one code that the Germans were using.. oh no the crafty invaders used several different codes for each part of their military machine. There were an Enigma code for the Navy, Army and all of them changed on a regular basis. The only reason the English were able to get into the codes was that the Germans were so convinced that they were the master race they were not always as careful as they should have been in how they used their coding en encrypting. Sometimes it seems a really insignificant, almost stupid mistake that gave the codebreakers a way in. It could be that they send the same message with different enigma settings, forgot to encode part of a message or simply not bother to change the settings on the enigma machines.
It is hard to imagine what the world at the time of BP was really like but this books gives you a really good insight into the people that worked in BP and how they experienced the war. It tells of the geniuses that contributed to the code breaking, the challenges they faced, the prejudices they had to overcome to get their contributions recognised and the impact their work had on the shaping of the new world post WWII. It is a fascinating read and I cannot recommend it highly enough and I am so proud that I live in the city where the museum is now based. It is a great place to visit.
By the way, BP is also called Station X. Not for any super cool reason and to make it sound all fancy but simply because it was the tenth station station in the line.
Title: Station X
Author: Michael Smith
Pan Books
ISBN nr 978-0-330-41929-1
Books to be read: 75
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