Strawberries

This story was submitted by Maureen Tomison and has been added to the website on behalf of Joan Wise with her permission. She fully understands the site and the site’s terms and conditions

Strawberries

“The strawberries are now on sale.” The momentous and much anticipated news that D Day had started was received like this by Joan Wise a young signaller who was working on her teleprinter in Portsmouth. ”Most messages were in code to ensure that the enemy didn’t understand. We took the messages to the code breakers who worked in a room on their own. We had to knock on the door but we could not go in. We were only allowed to hand it over, the code breakers had to sign for it, and then send it on often to Bletchley Park, Britain’s secret and highly successful weapon in the battle against Hitler. But the message about the strawberries which should have been the most secret was the one we all understood and had been waiting for. You can imagine our excitement but we knew we had to keep it to ourselves and not tell the family until it was announced.”

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