Gordon Welchman Read online

  Welchman was a university-standard hockey player and while at Sidney Sussex he would sometimes turn out for Cambridge University Wanderers. He was well known among Cambridge University’s leading climbers and explorers and in 1932 led a University expedition to Spitzbergen, the largest and only permanently populated island of the Svalbard archipelago. This was a much more daunting journey in 1932 than today and he wrote a long account of the expedition in the College’s magazine, The Pheon. Years later he told friends that during the expedition he had gone to relieve himself and saw, much to his horror, that his urine was a bright red colour. He was in a state of panic until his colleagues reminded him that they had eaten beetroot for breakfast.5

  Former students always seemed to remember two things about him; an impeccable dress sense and continual, unsuccessful efforts to light his pipe throughout lectures. He was in great demand at University dinners and parties because of his good looks and ability to talk on a range of subjects. One can well imagine him fitting in well at Cambridge in the 1920s and 1930s. Academically, he had specialized in the field of algebraic geometry and in 1934 had been commissioned by Cambridge University Press to write a book titled Introduction to Algebraic Geometry. The subject was notable for its conspicuous lack of practical application, being a branch of pure mathematics. Welchman was quite proud of the fact that he had painstakingly produced all of the diagrams that were to appear in the book.6

  Apart from music and motorcycles, his other great interest as a young man was women. His dashing good looks no doubt were helpful in this regard but, as a gentleman, he never shared with friends or family the details of his youthful dalliances. He did, however, tell his son that he had once attached a sidecar to his motorcycle so that he could convey a young woman on a long journey. On arrival, he discovered that a missing bolt could have separated him from his amour at any stage en route.

  Attitudes to women and motor transport at Cambridge between the wars were, to say the least, traditional. In the spring of 1919 there had been insistent calls for the reopening of the whole question of the position of women in the University. The Cambridge Review in June 1920 addressed the issue in an editorial as follows: ‘so long as the sun and moon endureth, Cambridge should remain a society for men, and any sister institution should by its own arrangements produce a charter, and, as a separate institution, confer its own degrees’. It also went on to deplore the prevalence of young married fellows in Colleges and recommended a period of ‘at least ten years’ celibacy on election’. The problem for the antifeminists was that the view of the country as a whole was against them and in 1918 the Representation of the People Act had been passed, enfranchising women over the age of thirty who met minimum property qualifications. Before the end of 1920 Oxford University had approved the admission of women to full membership. By 1926, women had become eligible for teaching posts and just before the war Dorothy Garrod became the first woman professor in either Oxford or Cambridge. In 1928, women were granted equal voting rights to men in the UK.

  Arcane attitudes were not just restricted to the role of women at Cambridge in the 1920s. In 1925, two Indian tennis stars, D. R. Rutman and S. M. Hadi, were turned down for the captaincy of the University team, even though on the basis of ability and seniority, the role should have gone to one of them. Yet, the prevailing view at the time supported an unwritten law that ‘gentlemen of colour’ should not be elected. Concerns were raised about the morality of young Cambridge men who were often noisy, obstreperous and ingenious. The arrival of the motor car created even more of a stir with the Senate being told in 1925 that ‘the motor habit, when it becomes an obsession, induces a state of mind out of harmony with the best traditions of Cambridge’. There was also a concern about undergraduate immorality being stimulated and facilitated by the use of the motor car after dark. The majority of these young men had been educated at public schools. Sidney Sussex was not a college overly concerned about its social image, yet in 1929, only 25 per cent of its freshmen were from state schools.7

  In 1931, at the age of twenty-five, Welchman became friends with Betty Huntley-Wright, a beautiful young actress and vocalist.8 While family and friends believed that the relationship was purely platonic, Welchman may well have had other ideas as this poem written by him and sent to Betty suggests:

  Dear Betty, I am greeting you

  The day that you are twenty.

  Of birthdays you have had a few

  And may you still have plenty.

  I wasn’t there when you were ‘naught’

  (Oh Betty, were you naughty?)

  But hope to drink your health in port

  The day that you are forty.

  When sixty years have rolled away

  I hope you’ll still be merry,

  And on the happy natal day

  I’ll drink your health in sherry.

  And if we both should be alive

  I hope we’ll still be ‘matey’

  When I’ll have got to eighty-five

  And you’ll have got to eighty.9

  It was almost certainly music which brought Welchman together with his first wife, Katharine Hodgson, as they met at a summer music camp around 1936. Welchman was a member of the Cambridge University Madrigal Society and regularly performed with it. Katharine was a professional musician and came from a very strong military family. Her father, Francis Faith Hodgson, was a captain in the 84th Punjabis, Indian Army. Her mother’s sister, Do, was married to Colonel Arthur Crookenden, a powerful figure in the family who went on to write a history of the Cheshire Regiment in the First World War. His three sons were also gallant soldiers who all ended the war with physical damage.

  Gordon Welchman and Katharine Hodgson were married on 20 March 1937 at the parish church in the village of Pangbourne in Berkshire. They eventually settled in a house called Brandon Hill on the outskirts of Cambridge. Their first child, Jeremy Nicholas (Nick) was born on 11 January 1938 and family life was initially idyllic. Following the signing of the Munich agreement on 30 September 1938, the Cambridge Review was able to report that while a few meetings had been abandoned and a few lectures shortened, the course of University life seemed to be running as smoothly as ever.

  Against this back-drop of life in 1930s Cambridge, in the latter part of 1938 Welchman received a letter which would change the course of his. Unknown to him, two former Cambridge dons, who had worked in the British Admiralty’s cryptographic section, NID 25, (euphemistically known as Room 40 after the room that originally housed it in the Old Admiralty building) during the First World War, had been trawling through the staff and student lists at both Oxford and Cambridge. They were looking for men of ‘the professor type’ who were deemed suitable for secret work within the Foreign Office. In 1919, the remnants of NID 25 and the War Office’s cryptographic branch, MI 1(b), had been amalgamated into a unified signals intelligence agency, the Government Code and Cipher School (GC&CS).10 When Rear Admiral Hugh Sinclair succeeded Sir Mansfield Cumming (the first ‘C’) as Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) in late 1922 or early 1923, he was also made non-operational director of GC&CS. SIS was a section of the Foreign Office and referred to within government circles as both ‘C’s organization’ and MI 1(c). Early in the Second World War, a new cover name, MI 6 was adopted. In January 1924, Sinclair met with the operational head of GC&CS, Alastair Denniston, and informed him that his section’s work would be integrated with that of SIS. GC&CS would be responsible for cryptography and SIS for the distribution of intelligence derived from this source. Furthermore, GC&CS would have full access to SIS records. In June, GC&CS was instructed to distribute decrypted material directly to its customer departments, with copies going to Sinclair. In the spring of 1926 SIS and GC&CS moved into combined headquarters in offices within Broadway Buildings opposite St James’s Park Underground station.11

  The two dons were both from King’s College. Frank Birch was a fellow during 1915–34 and a lecturer in history from 1915 until 1928. In the 1930
s he had left Cambridge to work in the theatre. Frank Adcock had become a fellow in 1911 and held the chair of ancient history from 1925 until 1951. While the First World War cryptanalysts did not have much time for mathematicians, GC&CS was already putting one Cambridge mathematician through preliminary training in London and a second was recruited from Oxford in February 1939. Welchman had been noticed by one of Denniston’s recruiters, hence the letter to him asking if, in the event of war, he would be prepared to defend King and Country by undertaking some secret government work. Welchman’s answer was an emphatic yes and he duly attended preliminary indoctrination sessions on 20–23 and 27–30 March 1939 at the Broadway Buildings in London.12 He had been recruited for the General Diplomatic Section and among his fellow trainees were the Cambridge mathematician who had been recruited the year before, Alan Turing, and two others who would become close working colleagues at BP, Dennis Babbage and John Jeffreys.

  Following introductions by Denniston on the mornings of the 20th and 27th other instructors took over, two of whom would significantly influence Welchman and play a major role in the success of BP. Oliver Strachey13 followed Denniston on the afternoon of the 20th and 27th with sessions on ‘Transposition’. He also did sessions on the morning of the 22nd and 29th on ‘Substitution’.

  As Welchman wrote about Strachey in The Hut Six Story:

  I remember very little else about the preliminary indoctrination in London, except that I was very impressed by Oliver Strachey, a senior member of the GCCS staff, who during the coming war would head an organization known as Intelligence Services Oliver Strachey (ISOS). He seemed to be giving us an overview of the whole problem of deriving intelligence from enemy communications, and this may well have been a strong guiding influence on my wartime work.

  On the morning and afternoon of the 21st and 28th, the recruits were given an introduction to ‘Book-Building’ by John Tiltman.14 Tiltman would go on to be promoted to the rank of brigadier and head the Army Section at BP.

  When he wrote The Hut Six Story, Welchman had no memory of meeting either Dilly Knox (who would be his first boss at BP) or Knox’s assistant Peter Twinn during the course in London. Twinn had been the mathematician recruited from Oxford in February 1939 and he would remain in Knox’s team in the period before the war and the move to BP. Following their indoctrination, the new recruits were placed on an emergency staff list and, in the event of war, they were told to report as soon as possible to Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire. These men of the ‘professor type’ would be employed by the Foreign Office as temporary civil servants and paid the then handsome sum of £600 per year.

  Back at Cambridge, the political temperature was rising. The balance of opinion seemed to favour the National Government until 1935 but by 1938, the national situation was confused and Cambridge Union debates degenerated into complete irrationality. Opinion could be swung to the right one day by fascists such as Oswald Mosley and to the left by pacifists such as Bertrand Russell. In November 1938 the Cambridge Union voted 233 to 107 that the defence of Britain was not safe in the hands of Mr Chamberlain. By the end of term, the post-Munich euphoria was wearing thin as more and more details emerged about the Nazi persecution of the Jews. Churchill addressed a meeting on 19 May 1939, specifically to counter the Union vote against conscription. The meeting was lively and at the end, the chairman declared that a show of hands indicated a 10 to 1 majority in favour of conscription.

  The last word on the debate in Cambridge perhaps came from John Maynard Keynes. Writing from King’s College on 14 October 1939 he said:

  The intelligentsia of the Left were the loudest in demanding that the Nazi aggression should be resisted at all costs; when it comes to a showdown, scarce four weeks have passed before they remember that they are pacifists and write defeatist letters to your columns, leaving the defence of freedom to Colonel Blimp and the Old School Tie, for whom three cheers.15

  On 1 September 1939 German forces invaded Poland and the next day, Britain and France issued an ultimatum demanding that Germany withdraw from Poland within twelve hours. On 3 September Britain and France declared war on Germany and in Cambridge, as he listened to the news as it came over the wireless, Welchman began packing his essential belongs. The next day, after saying goodbye to Katharine and Nick, he climbed into his open-topped Morgan three-wheeler and began the forty-seven-mile journey to Bletchley Park. He would be followed there in the months and years to come by a formidable team of Cambridge intellectuals recruited by Adcock and Birch such as F. L. Lucas, D. W. Lucas, L. P. Wilkinson, J. Saltmarsh, G. C. Morris, A. J. H. Knight, G. Barraclough, Max Newman, F. H. Hinsley, J. H. Plumb, H. O. Evennett, T. D. Jones, R. J. Getty, D. R. Taunt, L. W. Forster, D. W. Babbage, R. F. Bennett, E. R. P. Vincent, D. Parmée and F. J. Norton. Welchman would personally go on to recruit, among others: C. H. O’D. Alexander, P. S. Milner-Barry, J. W. J. Herivel and D. Rees.

  Chapter 2

  Bletchley Park: The First Four Months

  On 3 September 1939, the operational head of GC&CS, Alastair Denniston, informed T. J. Wilson of the Foreign Office that they had been obliged to recruit men from the emergency list at a rate of pay agreed by the Treasury. Welchman’s name was on that list1 as one of the men of ‘the professor type’ and he duly reported for duty on 4 September. He was greeted by Denniston in his office on the ground floor of the mansion at BP which had been the morning room of BP’s pre-war owners, the Leon family.

  BP had been bought by Sir Herbert Leon, a wealthy London stockbroker and his second wife Fanny around 1882 along with 581 acres of land. They had added servants’ and domestic quarters and further extensions. The mansion, which one former GC&CS employee described as ‘ghastly’ and another as ‘indescribably ugly’, had a number of different architectural styles integrated into its façade. Apparently, the Leons travelled abroad extensively, would see some architectural feature which they liked and would return home with a sketch of it for their builders to implement. Sir Herbert died in 1926 and his wife carried on running the estate until her death in January 1937. Sir Herbert’s heir, his son George, duly sold off the bulk of the estate at auction by splitting it into lots. Lot 1, which initially didn’t sell and consisted of 55 acres including the mansion, stable yard and lake, was bought by a consortium of local builders and developers headed by Captain Herbert Faulkner, a keen horseman whom Welchman would later remember riding around BP in his hunting attire. Faulkner was planning to divide the land into smaller parcels for residential development and knock down the mansion and most of the other buildings on the site, He also planned to keep the lake, which stood to the south of the mansion, and build himself a house on the Leons’ croquet lawn alongside it. He had already taken down some stables and removed some of the wood panelling in the mansion when he was approached by agents representing a branch of the Foreign Office, GC&CS.

  The Chief of SIS and non-operational director of GC&CS, Hugh Sinclair, had become concerned that most of the British intelligence services were based in the middle of London and he had started looking for a site outside the capital to serve as a war station for intelligence activities. Bletchley Park was an ideal location as it was close to Bletchley station which was on the main north-south West Coast rail line, and near the A5, a major arterial route along which ran trunk telephone cabling connecting the north and south of the country. There were also direct rail links from Bletchley station to both Oxford and Cambridge which would prove useful as many of the people on the emergency staff list of the ‘professor type’ would come from the universities there. A deal was struck for the site to be leased for a period of three months and it was subsequently purchased by Sinclair on 9 June 1938 for £6,000.2 Faulkner didn’t get his house by the lake but he subsequently got the contract to build the wartime huts and brick buildings at BP, many of which still stand today.

  During the Munich crisis, partly as a precautionary measure and partly as a mobilization exercise, Sinclair sent GC&CS and other Foreign Office staff to BP. Te
lecommunications engineers had already been working on the site since its purchase. At the end of September 1938 the Munich agreement was signed and most of the GC&CS staff returned to London. The following year it was clear that war was imminent and, around 15 August 1939, GC&CS returned to BP along with other intelligence units to begin their wartime activities.

  Denniston sent Welchman to join the team led by a veteran First World War cryptanalyst, Dilly Knox. They were based in the end cottage of three within the BP stable yard which became known as ‘The Cottage’. The team already included the brilliant mathematician Alan Turing from King’s College, Cambridge. which was also Knox’s alma mater. Turing had also arrived on 4 September but had been working part-time for GC&CS before it moved to BP. Other notable people working in The Cottage were John Jeffreys from Downing College, Cambridge, whom Welchman knew well, Peter Twinn, the Oxford mathematician who had been recruited earlier in the year, and Tony Kendrick, who had been Knox’s only assistant in 1938. When he arrived, the team were already hard at work at unravelling the mysteries of an encryption machine with the brand name Enigma. They had begun this work well before they arrived at BP. Welchman was provided with very little information when he arrived as Knox’s management style seemed to be to tell a new recruit to find something to do and get on with it. In any event, he soon realized that he could learn everything he needed to about the Enigma machine in an hour or so.