ABSTRACT
In July 1942 I received two sets of call-up papers. The first required me to report in two weeks' time to the training centre of the Pioneer Corps at Maryhill Barracks in Glasgow. The second referred me in less peremptory language to a nondescript address in Bedford, which proved to be that of a perfectly ordinary small-town villa in one of the little streets leading down to the River Ouse. It turned out to be a school of cryptography where, along with some thirty others, I was indoctrinated over five or six months in the simple codes and ciphers employed during the First World War and still used to provide a few hours' secrecy in exposed situations where code books and ciphering machinery would be in danger of capture by the enemy. We learned about various systems of substitution and transposition and how to set about solving them. We were not taught anything about machine ciphers or given any information about the extent to which enemy ciphers were being read. Some of our time was spent in language study, in German and Italian, with a particular emphasis on the conventional phrasing used in official telegraphese.
