In 1942, Audrie Gie found herself at Bristol Temple Meads, trying to board a train that would take her towards Wrexham and the beginning of her wartime service.
There were so many young women saying their farewells that she couldn't get through the carriage doors. Eventually, a young man simply picked her up and lifted her through a window. It was a rather undignified beginning to what would become a remarkable wartime experience.
Audrie had been called up from Devon, but she had no particular idea what work she wanted to do. When asked, she suggested becoming a driver.
Instead, she found herself taking a series of tests covering subjects including mathematics, languages and Morse code.
She was eventually sent to Douglas on the Isle of Man, where she spent five months learning to recognise Morse code through headphones. The messages became progressively faster, and the women were tested regularly. Those who failed could be removed from the course.
After completing her training, Audrie was posted to Harrogate, where she signed the Official Secrets Act and began work at a secret wireless interception station.
She had become part of Britain's Y Service, a network of listening stations intercepting enemy radio communications. These stations supplied vital material to Britain's intelligence organisations, including the codebreakers at Bletchley Park.
Audrie's work involved sitting for hours wearing headphones, listening to German Morse transmissions and recording the messages in groups of five letters.
The shifts continued throughout the day and night. Getting to the station wasn't always straightforward either. Audrie remembered travelling across the Yorkshire moors in such poor weather that a man sometimes had to walk ahead of the lorry carrying a lamp.
On one occasion, the lorry even tipped into a ditch, although thankfully nobody was injured.
But one of Audrie's most memorable experiences came when the German radio group she was monitoring suddenly disappeared from its usual frequency.
She searched carefully through the wavelengths, listening for something familiar. Eventually, she recognised a transmission that sounded like the group she had been following.
The German operators had changed their frequencies and call signs. Audrie's discovery helped the other British listeners locate the transmissions again.
Her corporal was so pleased that he described her as his A+ operator.
When the war ended in 1945, Audrie was transferred to the Pay Corps in Leeds before eventually being demobilised.
What I find particularly interesting is what happened when she received her discharge papers. Despite all those months spent intercepting German communications, there was no mention of her secret work. Only her relatively short time in the Pay Corps appeared.
For years, much of the work carried out by women like Audrie remained unknown outside intelligence circles. We often hear about the remarkable achievements at Bletchley Park, but the people listening for those messages in the first place deserve to be remembered too.
Had you heard of Britain's secret Y Service before?
Image info:
A Women's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) wireless operator receiving a Morse code message during the Second World War. The woman pictured is not Audrie Gie, but the photograph illustrates the type of wartime work described in her story.
Image: Royal Air Force official photographer / Imperial War Museums, CH 7673. Public domain (expired Crown copyright), via Wikimedia Commons.
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