Millie's import/export sideline leads to her abduction by a crime ring involved in trading perfume, cigarettes and stockings — and in human trafficking. After her release, Millie is determined to help those sold into prostitution. Millie, Jean, Lucy and Alice decide to tip off Customs and Excise to intercept a contraband shipment and catch the traffickers. Millie is abducted and taken to a seedy hotel, where she meets a young Eastern European girl who indicates that the crime ring is involved in sex trafficking. Jasper, Millie's black market partner who was caught skimming money, has also been kidnapped and badly beaten. Millie persuades Marta, the crime family matriarch, to let her take over Jasper's operation. After her release, Millie convinces Alice, Jean and Lucy that they should help the trafficked girls. The four women make a horrifying discovery.
Bletchley Park History: Captain Ridley's Shooting Party
The arrival of 'Captain Ridley's Shooting Party' at a mansion house in the Buckinghamshire countryside in late August 1938 was to set the scene for one of the most remarkable stories of World War Two. They had an air of friends enjoying a relaxed weekend together at a country house. They even brought with them one of the best chefs at the Savoy Hotel to cook their food. But the small group of people who turned up at Bletchley Park were far from relaxed. They were members of MI6, and the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS), a secret team of individuals including a number of scholars turned Codebreakers. Their job; to see whether Bletchley Park would work as a wartime location, well away from London, for intelligence activity by GC&CS as well as elements of MI6.
The GC&CS mission was to crack the Nazi codes and ciphers. The most famous of the cipher systems to be broken at Bletchley Park was the Enigma. There were also a large number of lower-level German systems to break as well as those of Hitler's allies. At the start of the war in September 1939 the codebreakers returned to Bletchey Park to begin their war-winning work in earnest.
Breaking Enigma
The Poles had broken Enigma in 1932, when the encoding machine was undergoing trials with the German Army. But when the Poles broke Enigma, the cipher altered only once every few months. With the advent of war, it changed at least once a day, giving 159 million million million possible settings to choose from. The Poles decided to inform the British in July 1939 once they needed help to break Enigma and with invasion of Poland imminent..
As more and more people arrived to join the codebreaking operations, the various sections began to move into large pre-fabricated wooden huts set up on the lawns of the Park. For security reasons, the various sections were known only by their hut numbers.
The first operational break into Enigma came around the 23 January 1940, when the team working under Dilly Knox, with the mathematicians John Jeffreys, Peter Twinn and Alan Turing, unravelled the German Army administrative key that became known at Bletchley Park as 'The Green'. Encouraged by this success, the Codebreakers managed to crack the 'Red' key used by the Luftwaffe liaison officers co-ordinating air support for army units. Gordon Welchman, soon to become head of the Army and Air Force section, devised a system whereby his Codebreakers were supported by other staff based in a neighbouring hut, who turned the deciphered messages into intelligence reports.
Editor's Note: Consult your local library and ShopPBS.org for copies of Seasons One and Two. But, in the meantime, consult the Bletchley Park's Shop which even includes a 1940's Boutique:
"Join us for a day of 1940’s glamour and learn how to style your own hair and make-up to get that iconic 40’s look. Hairdresser and make-up artist Sarah Dunn will show you how to recreate some iconic styles including the famous victory rolls as well as applying your make-up to match. The day will take place in the Mansion and will include refreshments and lunch as well as admission to Bletchley Park exhibitions and galleries. Please bring you email confirmation on the day as your ticket."
And there's a relatively new book entitled The Secret Life of Bletchley Park by Sinclair McKay which received a favorable review by one of the codebreakers in The Guardian. Worth searching out is a copy of Enigma, 2001, a film directed by Michael Apted from a screenplay by Tom Stoppard, starring Kate Winslet, among others, and Dougray Scott.
The Story Continues [at the Bletchley Park website]: From Intercept to Action
— T. G.
Pages: 1 · 2
More Articles
- Jo Freeman Reviews Charlayne Hunter-Gault's My People: Five Decades of Writing About Black Lives
- Women at War 1939 - 1945, The Imperial War Museums: Queen Elizabeth
- Jill Norgren’s Late Summer Reading Suggestions
- Veterans Day: Post-9/11 Veterans Earn More, Work More Hours Than Those Who Never Served in Armed Forces
- Balloon Bombs and Blackouts in World War II; For Some a Familiar Time of Anxiety; Growing Up in the Second World War From England's Imperial War Museum
- First Flight: Wheels left the ground, that first gentle lift into the air, and a magic I didn't understand moved us skyward"
- A London Journey Through the World of Codebreaking, Ciphers and Secret Communications
- Exclusion: The Presidio's Role in World War II Japanese American Incarceration
- The PBS Mystery of Mrs. Wilson: It Begs the Question What Do We Actually Know About Our Partners
- A Baseball Story You Might Not Have Heard About an American Catcher and Spy for the OSS