E77 - Veterans’ Reunion 2018 Part 1

Bletchley Park

History

4.8 • 177 Ratings

🗓️ 9 September 2018

⏱️ 48 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

September 2018

Every year, close to the anniversary of GC&CS staff first arriving at Bletchley Park in 1939 we invite our Veterans and their families back to celebrate their vital war work. It’s our favourite day of the year at the Museum and it allows us to share their amazing stories with our listeners.

This year also coincides with the 80th anniversary of the formation of the Auxiliary Territorial Service or ATS, the woman’s branch of the British Army during World War 2. To celebrate, our Veterans were given a sneak peek at our new ATS pop-up exhibition.

In this, the first of two episodes this month, we will take you to this year’s reunion and listen in as Betty Webb and Mary Watkins reminisce about their time in the ATS, the gas masks, the knickers and how it changed both their lives.

Also we hear from Doris Moss, who arrived at Bletchley in 1942 after escaping the German advance in Belgium two years earlier and went on to break both Italian & Japanese codes.

Finally actress and drama teacher Elizabeth Davies tells us how she was plucked from Balliol College Oxford to help crack Japanese Naval Codes.

Image: © Will Amlot for the Bletchley Park Trust

#BPark, #Bletchleypark, #WW2, #Veteran, #OralHistory

Transcript

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0:00.0	The
0:07.0	The From the home of the codebreakers and the birthplace of modern computing, this is the Bletchley Park podcast.
0:42.7	Welcome to the September 2018 episode of the Bletchley Park podcast.
0:50.8	Veterans Reunion, Part 1. Every year, close to the anniversary of GCNCS's staff first arriving at Bletchley Park in 1939, we invite our veterans and their families back to
0:55.2	celebrate their vital war work. It's our favourite day of the year at the museum, and it allows us
1:00.1	to share their amazing stories with our listeners. This year also coincides with the 80th
1:05.3	anniversary of the formation of the Auxiliary Territorial Service, or ATS, the women's branch of the British Army during World War II.
1:13.2	To celebrate this, our veterans were given a sneak peek at our new ATS pop-up exhibition.
1:18.5	In this episode, we'll take you to this year's reunion and listen in as Betty Webb and Mary Watkins reminisce about their time in the ATS,
1:26.7	the gas masks, the knickers and how it changed
1:29.2	both their lives. Also, we'll hear from Doris Moss, who arrived at Bletchley in 1942 after
1:35.8	escaping the German advance in Belgium two years earlier. She then went on to break both Italian
1:40.7	and Japanese codes. And finally, actress and drama teacher Elizabeth Davis tells us how she was plucked from
1:47.7	Balliol College Oxford to help crack Japanese naval codes.
2:26.8	Music I'm . . She could go just here. Yeah.
2:27.8	Okay, can everyone's attention please?
2:30.8	You all need to look in here, bizarrely.
2:33.5	Right, here we go. Can everyone look towards me, please?
2:36.3	Oh, hang on, let's have a look. Oh, it's a good one. Hang on. Let's do that again.
2:42.2	Very nice. And for all time's sake, let's do one more, and then we're done. Thank you very much, everyone.
2:46.8	Thank you. Can I just say something before everyone moves? Obviously this is a very, very important day for us.
2:52.6	We are so proud to have all our veterans back with us today and from the outstation.
	...

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