E61 - Our 5th Anniversary

Bletchley Park

History

4.8 • 177 Ratings

🗓️ 9 August 2017

⏱️ 59 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

August 2017

Hear some of the best bits from five packed years of this podcast, primarily from the Veterans themselves, but also a smattering of prestigious visitors down the years, from movie stars to heads of foreign security agencies.

The highlight of the calendar at Bletchley Park is without doubt the annual Veterans’ Reunion, when people who worked at the Government Code and Cypher School and its outstations during World War Two return to revive and share their memories, helping to keep the story alive for future generations. The Bletchley Park Podcast has been capturing the Veterans’ trips down memory lane for five years now, not least on this wonderful day each year.

To celebrate this podcast’s 5th anniversary, hear the best of the reunions so far with snippets of conversation, interviews and emotional reminiscences from the stars of this story, the Veterans themselves. Each year, they meet new friends among the thousands of people who were part of the Bletchley Park operation as, even if they worked in the same section, it was often at a different time or on an opposing shift pattern. Veterans’ families who attend either with, or to represent, their relative, also shine with pride when they learn more about their incredible achievements.

Image: ©shaunarmstrong/mubsta.com

#BPark, #Bletchleypark, #Enigma, #WW2, #History

Transcript

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0:00.0	The
0:07.0	The From the home of the co-breakers and the birthplace of modern computing, this is the Bletchley Park podcast.
0:43.8	Welcome to the August 2017 episode of the Bletchley Park podcast. We're celebrating five years of making this podcast all about Bletchley Park, its stories, told mainly by its veterans,
0:50.6	but by some experts, VIP visitors and the occasional movie star.
0:55.4	I'm joined by podcast producer Mark Cotton and Bletchley Park's research historian, Dr David
1:00.0	Kenyon.
1:00.9	The highlight of every year at Bletchley Park is without fail, the veterans reunion.
1:06.5	And it's a day when veterans come together to look back at their time there and what they
1:10.8	achieved and to celebrate the fact that they can now come back and see future generations
1:16.0	learning all about it. Mark, you've been there every year throughout the five years and it's
1:20.5	always the highlight of the year. What's so special about it for you? It's seeing the veterans
1:25.1	interacting together because they're just, sometimes they just seem like they've gone back to their youth.
1:29.9	Also, usually you find they're people that haven't met before.
1:32.8	They didn't know each other then.
1:33.8	You've got to remember there's about 10,000 people working out.
1:36.4	Well, they'll walk around with a little bad John and it will say their maiden name and it will generally say where they work.
1:41.8	And you will see 90-year- old ladies going up to another lady saying
1:44.9	oh did you work in block B I didn't know you did I and all of a sudden they're off in conversation
1:50.8	and being able to sit in on those conversations and sometimes you know be able to record them that's
1:56.3	what we do this for really isn't it so we can tell their stories. That's absolutely it for me.
2:01.2	I spend the other 364 days of the year. Thinking about Bletchley, in terms of archive and documents,
2:08.7	a lot of my time I'm trying to find and prove things that we think we know, can we demonstrate it,
	...

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