Writing my books, I am lucky to say, has prompted many groups to ask me to give talks to them. As at December 2024, my diary is filling up; there's Bletchley Park (twice) - as well as various U3A and local history groups.
The talk that I give (just the one so far) is based on the chapter in The Intelligence Zone which deals with the astonishing network of MI6 wartime communication sites that I have come across whilst walking in the hills near my house. These were controlled from the village of Whaddon. I call that talk The Whaddon Web – the many voices of Bletchley Park .
When I get up and talk about the spies, saboteurs and generals who were MI6's customers, I gain as well as give, for I get a lot of feedback from people. For example a couple of nights ago I was speaking (at Whaddon itself as it happens) and as well as the villagers in my audience, there were several enthusiastic radio buffs. They bought along suitcase radios which had been used by MI6 and SOE spies and saboteurs in Europe to communicate with MI6. It was an education and a privilege to hear them.
Hut bases on Wndy Ridge
I have also been given some mini-treasures found by a metal-detectorist friend, Mark. They come from the appropriately named Windy Ridge – which is where some of the radio huts were at Whaddon. That's where messages were broadcast to the Allied generals. From the ridge, for example, General Montgomery was told after the battle of El Alamein in North Africa that his German enemy, Rommel, was down to his last 26 tanks and had no fuel left and that he could now be driven into the sea.
My first picture is of the hut bases on beautiful Windy Ridge (the actual huts were vandalised years ago). This site, I should say, used to have half a dozen 80 foot high aerials and was surrounded by high barbed wire fences and patrolled by armed guards.
What my metal-detecting friend, Mark, found there (with the permission of the landowner) - and has given to me - are, I think, both revealing and very poignant. Apart from some odds and ends of small change, they are three military badges.
They are presented in the photo to show their relative sizes to each other.
Badges 1, 2 and 3 showing their condition as found
The Royal Engineers tie pin badge
The first one is a tie-pin of the Royal Engineers. He was probably an ex-serviceman who was called back into the services to erect the huts and the rest of the amazing communications network of which it was a part (as per my previous articles on this site – see the map).
The second is a cap badge of the Bedfordshire regiment. The Beds and Herts Regiment fought in France and came out at Dunkirk. Later they were assigned to guard duty on sensitive sites such as this. It was found a couple of hundred yards from the site. It probably blew there. It's not called Windy Ridge for nothing.
Cap Badge of the Bedfordshire regiment
But it is the third of Mark's military finds that I really love....
Royal Corps of Signals sweetheart badge
This is a badge as well. It is of the Royal Corps of Signals.
Most of the signallers who manned the 20 or so communications sites of the Whaddon Web, from which the war in Europe was largely controlled, were from the Royal Corps of Signals.
Their communications network was run by Brigadier Richard Gambier-Parry, MI6's comms. boss. That network was, at the time, the most advanced in the world. Indeed it provided the world's first cross-border secure radio communications.
This, along with Colossus, the world's first electronic digital computer, which was invented by Tommy Flowers for Bletchley, were the precursors to the internet. (That of course, was developed much later by a Londoner, Tim Berners Lee, whose dad worked in radar and whose mother worked in Manchester, on the next generation of computers after Colossus.)
That communications network was, as were so many inventions, the child of war. The Royal Corps of Signals were the military masters of that art and that tiny badge is one of theirs. It’s very attractive. In the middle of the badge is Hermes, or Mercury if you will, the messenger of the gods. He is fleet of foot and invisible — which is probably sensible if you will insist in running about in the altogether. Signallers call him 'Jimmy'.
But this is too small for a cap badge. It is what is called 'A Sweetheart'; a small badge that a signaller's lady friend would wear on her breast or collar to show she was spoken for. My one is a bit warped and bent and the pin has broken off. How The Whaddon Sweetheart came to be in the long grass in the idyllic pasture beyond the hedge at Windy Ridge is anyone's guess....
At first sight it's a worthless trinket; but actually this tiny lost beacon of love is a spark from the fire of our country's story.
But Whaddon is only one chapter of the world-changing tale of the Intelligence Zone. If you are into history, have a look at the rest of this website. You might enjoy that too.
©Alan Biggins December 2024
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