The secret listeners : how the wartime Y Service intercepted the secret German codes for Bletchley Park

Cover; Title page; Contents; 1 Tuning in to the Enemy; 2 Reporting for Special Duties; 3 The Human Computors; 4 The Listeners at Large; 5 The Blitz and the Ghost Voices; 6 Heat, Sand and Ashes; 7 A World Wide Web of Intelligence; 8 Feuds, Farce and Panic; 9 Wilder Shores and Secret Missions; 10 This is No Holiday Camp; 11 Storms in the Desert; 12 Rommel and the Art of Dirty Tricks; 13 Not So Quiet on the Domestic Front; 14 Life-Long Friendships Were Forged; 15 By the Sleepy Lagoon; 16 Foreboding and Frustration; 17 Witnesses to Different Worlds; 18 D-Day and After.;Follow-up to the bestselling The Secret Life of Bletchley Park, the hitherto-untold story of how young men and women across the world listened in to and intercepted the enemy's radio traffic so that Bletchley Park's codebreakers could turn the course of the war. Before Bletchley Park could break the German war machine's codes, its daily military communications had to be monitored and recorded by #x93;the Listening Service" #x96; the wartime department whose bases moved with every theatre of war: Cairo, Malta, Gibraltar, Iraq, Cyprus, as well as having listening stations along the eastern coast of Britain to intercept radio traffic in the European theatre. This is the story of the #x96; usually very young #x96; men and women sent out to far-flung outposts to listen in for Bletchley Park, an oral history of exotic locations and ordinary lives turned upside down by a sudden remote posting #x96; the heady nightlife of Cairo, filing-cabinets full of snakes in North Africa, and flights out to Delhi by luxurious flying boat.

Behind the celebrated code-breaking at Bletchley Park lies another secret…

The men and women of the ‘Y’ (for Wireless’) Service were sent out across the world to run listening stations from Gibraltar to Cairo, intercepting the German military’s encrypted messages for decoding back at the now-famous Bletchley Park mansion.

Such wartime postings were life-changing adventures – travel out by flying boat or Indian railways, snakes in filing cabinets and heat so intense the perspiration ran into your shoes - but many of the secret listeners found lifelong romance in their far-flung corner of the world. Now, drawing on dozens of interviews with surviving veterans, Sinclair McKay tells their remarkable story at last.

Cover Title page Contents 1 Tuning in to the Enemy 2 Reporting for Special Duties 3 The Human Computors 4 The Listeners at Large 5 The Blitz and the Ghost Voices 6 Heat, Sand and Ashes 7 A World Wide Web of Intelligence 8 Feuds, Farce and Panic 9 Wilder Shores and Secret Missions 10 This is No Holiday Camp 11 Storms in the Desert 12 Rommel and the Art of Dirty Tricks 13 Not So Quiet on the Domestic Front 14 Life-Long Friendships Were Forged 15 By the Sleepy Lagoon 16 Foreboding and Frustration 17 Witnesses to Different Worlds 18 D-Day and After. 19 The End and the Beginning20 The Legacy of the Listeners Notes Acknowledgements Index Reporting for Duty: an extract from The Secret History of Bletchley Park Introduction: an extract from The Lost World of Bletchely Park Copyright. Behind the celebrated code-breaking at Bletchley Park lies another secret... The men and women of the 'Y' (for Wireless') Service were sent out across the world to run listening stations from Gibraltar to Cairo, intercepting the German military's encrypted messages for decoding back at the now-famous Bletchley Park mansion. Such wartime postings were life-changing adventures – travel out by flying boat or Indian railways, snakes in filing cabinets and heat so intense the perspiration ran into your shoes - but many of the secret listeners found lifelong romance in their far-flung corner of the world. Now, drawing on dozens of interviews with surviving veterans, Sinclair McKay tells their remarkable story at last.