Finding the Unknown

Several years ago I read a book by YA author Annie Laura Smith called The Legacy of Bletchley Park. Bletchley Park is in England, and the book is about the code-breakers during WWII. It is fiction of course, but a group of codebreakers did work there and helped hasten the end of the war.

I never thought about those who might have worked in similar ways in the U.S.—until I met Lou. Lou worked as a codebreaker in Washington, D.C., during WWII and is one of the many “Rosie” women who contributed to the war effort. In her nineties, she is a perky lady with a great sense of humor and obviously a very bright woman. She worked with the Signal Corps and later married a sailor who was a medic and was wounded as he rescued a friend at Iwo Jima.

In talking about her work as a codebreaker, Lou said that when she started the job she was told that “If you tell anyone, even where you work, the penalty will be death. You will be put before the firing squad.” When I heard her say this, I had wondered whether she might be exaggerating until I read an article by David L. Boslaugh (Capt., USN, Retired) in which he said that in his interviews with people who had been involved in post war codebreaking computers, they were usually open about their work, but not when he asked about World War II activities. Then he said, “It seems that a security officer’s admonition, ‘If you ever talk about your work here we can have you shot,’ was very effective” (Boslaugh Article). I also learned that David Kahn has written a book called The Codebreakers—the Story of Secret Writing. If you are interested in that aspect of the war, you might want to check it out.

Like many other women (and men) who worked on the home front during the war, Lou didn’t know the exact significance of her work, but she had the sense that it was important. She says that her job was to “find the unknown.”  The workers, (all women, she says), put the numbers into three different categories before giving their results to the Sergeants, who then actually decoded the messages. You can learn more about Lou’s story by visiting the Kennesaw University’s Museum of the Holocaust, where they have what is called “The Legacy Series.” It is also on line at http://historymuseum.kennesaw.edu/ .