Looking at the photograph of Emily Anderson on this page, the only formal portrait of her other than some distant group shots, it is difficult to imagine that this interesting Galway woman was probably the best codebreaker in the British Secret Service during the First and Second World Wars.
Listening in on the enemy’s Morse code that came through wireless signals, and transcribing the dots and dashes into letters and numbers, and then making sense of the gobbledygook on the page, was the task for the codebreaker. The process of breaking codes ‘involved almost unimaginable mental gymnastics’. It was not just the clever algebra or physics scholar that could see a pattern, but a listener with a considerable knowledge of the language, culture and subtleties, above all an alert mind, and just possibly an inspired guess, when (hopefully ) the message becomes clear.
The famous Bletchley Park, the British government’s cryptological headquarters, was located in a nondescript country house, in Buckinghamshire, and in near-by huts secluded in the trees, where a surprising 10,000 people worked 24 hours a day, on the elusive trail of deciphering the enemies movements. At least 7,000 of those who worked there were women.
Added difficulties included deciphering a mixture of languages, and the frustrating habit of the enemy constantly changing its codes. However, the work carried out at Bletchley is credited for shortening the last war by two to four years.
The official secrets act forbade anyone to discuss their business there for 50 years; but over time, some of them did. However generally workers at Bletchley remained silent. Their families were only aware they worked at the Foreign Office.
If this biography had not been written by Jackie Uí Chionna,* Emily Anderson, who never revealed her true work in the British secret service, would have been known only for her brilliant translations of Mozart’s and Beethoven’s letters - works of acclaimed intellectual scholarship, which, despite their prized insights into the minds of two of the world’s musical geniuses, was also a very plausible disguise for a spy.
The fragile peace
Emily Anderson, the daughter of the president of Queen’s College Galway at the turn of the last century, was a young musician and ‘an exceptional linguist’ who studied German in Berlin and Marburg, before the First World War. She was briefly the first professor of German at QCG, before she was invited to help the war effort by going to France in 1917 and using her knowledge of German to listen to what the enemy was saying. Her exceptional skills as a codebreaker were quickly recognised. She knew when the war ended, November 11 1918, before it was announced officially.
In the 1920s and 30s, despite the Versailles Treaty, there was an uneasy truce throughout a restless post war Europe. The British decided to continue its Government Code and Cyber School, (GC and CS ), an intelligence and secret organisation, responsible for providing signals’ intelligence, which was sited at various centres including Bletchley. Emily was invited to stay on during those years of the fragile peace.
At Bletchley she was appointed Head of the Italian Diplomatic Section, where despite resentment from some of her male codebreakers, she was renowned for her hard work, and expected the same high standards of her colleagues and subordinates as she had always set herself. She had a reputation for being an exacting boss with a sharp tongue.
We get a glimpse of the many areas of her abilities when she steps out of the Bletchley shadows into the glare of the Egyptian sun, where she and her team ‘demolish the Italian military machine in East and North Africa’ in 1941.
Good intelligence
In October 1935 Italian troops invaded Ethiopia – the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini proclaimed a new Italian empire in East Africa, comprising Ethiopia and the pre-existing territories of Italian Somaliland and Eritrea.
Following early successes by Italy's ally, Germany, in the Second World War, Mussolini declared war on Britain in June 1940. This meant that British possessions in East Africa, as well as British-controlled Egypt and the vital supply route of the Suez Canal, were now threatened. The British Commander-in-Chief in the Middle East was General Archibald Wavell who was tasked with rooting out the Italian army which was vastly superior to the forces he had at hand. He was soon to learn the value of good military intelligence.
Crucial information
Anderson was 49 when she went to Cairo in late 1940, now as the Head of the Italian Military Section. Her close companion, and an equally exceptional code breaker, was Dorothy Brooks (25 ), who together with a team of four, were soon ‘doing first class work’.
Italian dependence on wireless communication yielded vast amounts of crucial information. Anderson worked in tandem with Bletchley Park who in a three-month period provided 2,600 solutions to Italian army traffic in Libya. Anderson’s team produced 8,000.
Having cracked one Italian cipher after another, Anderson and her team were able to read battle plans in Libya and Ethiopia. Even the daily reports sent by the Italian viceroy in Addis Ababa to Rome were intercepted, and the information forwarded to the British military, often before their intended recipients received them.
‘Force Emily’
General Archibald Wavell, a veteran of the Boer and First World War, was sceptical when it came to the importance of codebreaking, and its usefulness in battle. But he soon came to recognise the value of codebreakers like Anderson as they began to produce information that enabled his forces to anticipate Italian moves in real time.
In a series of battles Wavell defeated and captured an Italian army (five times larger than his own forces ) in Libya, and an Italian army of 370,000 men in Ethiopia (three times larger than his own ). As a supreme compliment he named a 6th Australian division, trained for dangerous mission in Sudan ‘Force Emily’.**
A great victory
Back in Bletchley the significant role played by women codebreakers in smashing the Italians mirrored that of Anderson and her colleagues in Cairo. The Italian Naval Enigma machine had been broken by Mavis Batey, working in a special unit with Alfred Dillwyn Knox, known as Dilly Knox, a Cambridge classicist, brilliant but a noted eccentric. *** She deciphered a message that indicated the Italians were planning to attack a Royal Navy convoy carrying supplies to hard-pressed Greece.
Because the information was gleaned from breaking enemy codes, it was imperative that the enemy did not suspect that their codes were broken. Admiral Cunningham, Commander of the Royal Navy Mediterranean fleet, aware of the news and was secretly preparing to attack the Italian fleet at Cape Matapan, came up with a plan. Knowing that the Japanese Consul in Alexandria, a keen golfer, was sending the Germans reports of the movements of the Mediterranean fleet, Cunningham visited the clubhouse with his clubs and overnight bag. He gave the impression that he was taking the weekend off. Later he slipped away and rejoined his command.
The consul duly informed the Italians that Cunningham was playing golf for the weekend, allowing the Royal Navy to ambush a totally surprised Italian fleet resulting in three heavy cruisers and two destroyers, carrying 3,000 sailors being sunk.
On the evening of the Cape Matapan victory, Rear Admiral Godfrey, Director of Naval Intelligence, telephoned Dilly Knox, and left a message: ‘Tell Dilly we have won a great victory in the Mediterranean and it is entirely due to him and his girls’.
Emily Anderson was awarded an OBE and Dorothy Brooks the MBE for their extraordinary work in ‘demolishing the Italian military machine in East and North Africa’ 1941.
Next week: Galway and Berlin
NOTES * Queen of Codes, the Secret Life of Emily Anderson, Britain’s Greatest Female Codebreaker, by Jackie Uí Chionna, Published by Headline, on sale €18.
** The news of Wavell’s victories were greeted with delight in England suffering severe casualties and lost morale during intensive bombing of London and elsewhere. The Italians, however, had better luck in Greece and Crete. Assisted with troops from Germany, the Greek campaign ended with a complete German and Italian victory. The British did not have the military resources to carry out large simultaneous operations in both North Africa and the Balkans. They came very near to holding Crete but it ended with about 70,000 Greek troops being evacuated. Greece surrendered to German troops on 20 April 1941 and to the Italians on 23 April 1941. Greece was subsequently occupied by Bulgarian, German and Italian troops. Poor old Wavell. Past victories were forgotten. Churchill blamed him for the Greek catastrophe, and fired him.
*** Dilly Knox was noted for doing most of his thinking sitting in a bathtub, one of which was actually installed in his office.
