E120 - Oral History Special No. 4

Bletchley Park

History

4.8 • 177 Ratings

🗓️ 19 March 2021

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

March 2021

In our last Oral History Special we brought you the first part of a 2017 interview with former WREN, Mary Sherrard. From 1942 until the end of the war, Mary served at Bletchley Park and then at the Eastcote Bombe Outstation. This helped shaped the rest of her life because it was at Eastcote where she met her future husband John.

After originally servicing Spitfires in 1940, an interview at the Foreign Office sent John to Eastcote and Stanmore to maintain Mary’s Bombe machines. By the time of his demob from the RAF in 1946, he had risen to the rank of Warrant Officer and married his “Scot’s girl”.

In this second part, Mary talks to Oral History Volunteer Mike Chapman about not only her time at GC&CS but also shares John’s story. We hear about the rest of the war and also their fascinatingly varied post-war lives.

These two episodes are tributes to both Mary (1923-2020) and John (1921-1999).

Image ©Bletchley Park Trust 2021

#BPark, #Bletchleypark, #WW2, #OralHistory,

Transcript

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0:00.0	The
0:07.0	The From the home of the codebreakers and the birthplace of modern computing, this is the Bletchley Park podcast.
0:38.7	Welcome to this additional episode of the Bletchley Park podcast. Welcome to this additional episode of the Bletchley Park podcast.
0:43.7	Oral History Special, number four.
0:46.5	In our last oral history special, we brought you the first part of a 2017 interview
0:51.5	with former Wren Mary Sherrard.
0:59.6	From 1942 until the end of the war, Mary served at Bledchley Park and then at the Eastcoat bomb outstation. This all helped shape the rest of her life because it was at Eastcoat
1:04.8	where she met her future husband John. After originally servicing Spitfires in 1940, an interview at the Foreign Office sent John to East Coat and Stanmore to maintain Mary's bomb machines.
1:17.3	By the time of his demob from the RAF in 1946, he'd risen to the rank of warrant officer and married his Scots girl.
1:25.2	In this second part of the interview,
1:30.0	Mary talks to oral history volunteer Mike Chapman about not only her time at GCNCS,
1:33.0	but also shares John's story.
1:35.4	We hear about the rest of the war
1:36.7	and also their fascinatingly varied post-war lives. So for the recording, your husband was...
1:51.8	John.
1:52.4	So we've got him on the role of honour as John Alfred.
1:56.2	Charon.
1:56.9	Yes.
1:57.5	Can you remember when he was recruited into the RIA?
1:59.7	It was very near the start of the war.
2:02.1	Right.
2:02.4	Because he was two years older than me and he would be 18 or so.
	...

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