Secrets and white lies at Bletchley Park

In the October 2010 issue of Best of British, Kay Gillioz-Pettigrew tells of working at Bletchley Park during WWII.

We were ferried to and from Bletchley Park by bus. We weren’t encouraged to socialise and I didn’t go anywhere else all the time I was there. We were never allowed to travel alone by train, so Mavis and I went on standoff together to my home in Somerset.
While at home, we were not allowed to sleep in the same room as a sibling, a parent or anyone else. We were given all sorts of tall stories to tell family and friends – spraying submarines with green paint was one of them – but none of them washed with my brother, who was ten years younger than me.
We wore streaks of lightening on our sleeves and this caused problems. These were later removed and we became simply ‘P5’ but by then most people had given up asking questions. It was all wonderful training – if you learn to keep a secret of that size at the age of 17, you never have any trouble keeping confidences for the rest of your life. You also had to be a pretty convincing liar and not-too-bad an actress. The Admiralty didn’t seem to attend much to this aspect the job, so we weren’t offered psychological support, which might be more forthcoming today.

Bletchley Park will be appearing as a specialist subject on Mastermind tonight (8pm, BBC2).