Ebook: The Secret Listeners. How the Wartime Y Service Intercepted the Secret German Codes for Bletchley Park

Aurum Press, 2012. Качество изначально электронноеThis book details the lives of the convert operators that monitored German and Japanese communications, usually coded, and both decoded their transmissions and for the overseas operators, forwarded the information to Bletchley Park. Most operators came under the official secrets act and therefore have been unable to discuss their WW2 activities, even to this day.
The book tells of the training, where they operated from both across the UK and overseas, both on land and on small islands in the tropics. Many names are included and tells of the long nights monitoring the enemy transmissions, it goes into their social life and of the various bases that they were stationed at. The volume follows from pre WW2 right through until the later 1940s when they were gradually demobbed! It isn't a technical book as such, its more of a social account of the operators, their lives and how they managed to maintain their monitoring activities and provided immense help in bringing WW2 to an earlier closure.
Much has already been written about the remarkable WW2 work at Bletchley but this volume covers the web of worldwide listeners who provided much of the source material for Bletchley. Often working in dangerous, uncomfortable conditions their dedication and concentration comes through in this very readable account. The topic has the potential to be a litany of personal histories but the author cleverly avoids this pitfall by humanising each chapter and allowing the reader to gain just a glimpse of what it must have been like. The fact that the enemy never got wind of the comprehensive allied code-breaking achievements must go down in history as one of the most remarkable achievements of human dedication, self discipline and self sacrifice. (Goodreads review)