The £4.6 million Lottery Fund Nisson Huts

[Loiseau]

Exactly, Hoddy.  My father never talked about his war service either - for the same reason I am sure.

But a few years before my father died, in the late 1990s, someone mounted a small exhibition about what had been going on in the Helford River during WW2.  My father at the time was living in Cornwall, so went along - and realised that he knew even more about parts of the story than had been told.  Other visitors had felt the same, and once the exhibition's originator, Derek, realised this, he was able to mount a bigger and better exhibition a year later. 
In conjunction with this, Derek organised a reunion on the Helford River which I was privileged to attend in the role of interpreter. He brought together people who had been in Secret Intelligence Service (like my father), who dealt with secret missions to convey agents and information in and out of occupied France; in Special Operations Executive, who organised sabotage, and also sent boats to pluck downed airmen from tiny islets off the Brittany coast where Resistance workers had conveyed them; people from the Resistance itself, who had hidden out from the Germans and taken every opportunity to make their lives difficult; the son of a French agent, who as a small child was spirited out of France with his family in a converted fishing boat; and one of the sailors who owed his life to the Resistance, who had hidden him for a month when he became stranded in France and enabled him to leave. 
One of the most moving moments for me was to witness this former sailor fervently shaking the hand of one of the Resistance workers who had sheltered him, with tears pouring down his cheeks, and simply saying "Merci, merci ..." over and over again as the only French words he knew.
Some of the material from Derek's exhibition is now in the Imperial War Museum.

My father then obviously realised he was no longer bound by the Official Secrets Act, and wrote down a lot about his war service which somebody encouraged me to put on the BBC's "People's War" site.  The part about the Helford River is here.

Getting back to the theme of this thread, about the celebration (or not) of ingenuity in wartime:
The whole idea of using French fishing boats (see above link) to convey agents etc was proposed to the War Office by an imaginative Frenchman.  The British dared to pick up the ball and run with it so to speak. 
The idea of the boats being repainted and repainted during each trip away from Helford also sounds crazy - but it worked...

Angela

[Salty Sam]

[quote user="Frederick"]Will future generations want to go and look round these huts ? Or will they prefer to look on line for a virtual walk through of the place and listen to a commentary ? Given the world my grandchildren seem to live in they seek to get all information off the internet . I cant imagine them wanting to travel to Bletchley Park and walking round .[/quote]

Over the years the same question has probably been asked about the sounding of the Last Post at Menin Gate, Ypres, and with the exception of 4 years German occupation during WWII, the Last Post has been sounded nightly at 20:00 hrs, since 11 November 1929.

It's not unusual to find a school party from the UK present, nor is it unusual to see a representative of a school laying a wreath.

True, there is a wealth of 'virtual' information avalable, but one fails to grab the emotion or be able to put things in perspective without actually visiting the sites.

[Quillan]

Having given this some serious thought since the original post my answer would be yes, it is worth the money and it is worth saving and these are my reasons why.

This is the place that helped defeat the 'wolf packs' of the Atlantic and many Merchant Seamen owe their lives to the work done here in hut 8 which is why that particular hut and it's associated huts should be preserved and protected. Other parts of the site did work for both the army and the RAF (hut 8 was Navy). Hut 8 was also famous, not just for what it did but for who ran it, namely Alan Turing, arguably one of the most famous British mathematicians that has ever lived. He predicted oscillating chemical reactions which were not actually discovered until some six plus years after his death. Hut 8 also played an important role is the successful Battle of Cape Matapan and the Battle of North Cape which also saved many lives.

The other huts helped us to win the fight against Rommel and played an important role by feeding information to the allies in North Africa which stopped Rommel from getting to Cairo. They also helped to locate nearly all the German divisions in France prior to D Day.

There is no doubt in my mind that without Bletchley and it's huts many people would have lost their lives and we are not talking just on or two but thousands. Also it stopped people back in UK from starving by enabling food to get through and helped the defence of the UK by helping to get the arms through that they so badly needed by re routing the convoys away from where they new the wolf packs were operating.

On a lighter vain whilst on secondment to the RAE at Farnborough I met a most amazing man called R.V. Jones (he wrote a book Most Secret War actually wrote a couple more I believe). He was invited to speak at the officers mess and told a story about his brief time at Bletchley. They were intercepting and decoding Luftwaffe command messages and somehow the Luftwaffe had discovered that a very famous entertainer was going to be flown up to Scotland to entertain the troops there. Apparently they knew exactly when he would be leaving, his route and when he would arrive. The Luftwaffe therefore decided to send two fighter aircraft out to attempt to shoot down the aircraft containing this important entertainer and in doing so would have a great destructive effect on British moral, or so they thought. The dilemma was should they tell the RAF who could then change the flight times, route or whatever but the problem would then be would the Germans twig we had broken their codes so it was decided not to tell them and if the guy got killed then tough. The German fighters unfortunately couldn't find the aircraft anyway so the entertainer was safe. So, who was this very famous entertainer, well he was to turn up later on TV, his name was Hughie Green, shame they missed really. [;-)]

 

[Quillan]

If anyone is interested there is a program on BBC2 tonight (25th Oct) at 21:00 about Bletchley park and the code breakers.

[DerekJ]

[quote user="Quillan"]If anyone is interested there is a program on BBC2 tonight (25th Oct) at 21:00 about Bletchley park and the code breakers.[/quote]

Thanks... recorder set.

I visited Bletchley Park around 6 years ago and found the somewhat rundown atmosphere quite endearing. I went on one of their guided tours which was excellent. The "guide" was outstanding and totally eccentric.

I'm not sure that I'd like to see the place "jazzed up" but I would like to see it preserved and looked after.

[Quillan]

If your really interested there was an excellent film on tele a few years back about Alan Turing (played by Derek Jacobi) called "Breaking the Code".

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115749/