Madge Trull's narration is transcribed in full.
[START 00:00]
Madge Trull: My name is Margarita Francesca (Janes) Trull. I was married to Flight Lieutenant John C. Trull, Royal Canadian Air Force. I was born in South America – Chile – of English parents, and I went back when I was three years old, so
of course I was educated and everything in England. I was known as Madge, but I joined up as WREN Janes with my sister Jean Janes, or “Jeannie”, I called her. We both went to Portsmouth in England to join up in the Women’s Royal Naval Service. I had
wanted to be in the nurses, but it was all filled up. So we got chosen for the WRENS, which was very delightful because I liked the idea of the WRENS.
[TIME: 00:55]
M.T.: At Eastcote, we had to be trained as, I don't know, cryptologists, or whatever it is they called us. We were only supposed to be known – it was very secretive work – as “Writers.” On my discharge papers, I was “Intelligence Writer,”
and “Writer” meant “Secretary,” and I had never been a secretary, didn’t even know what to do as a secretary. Now, they call it the ULTRA secret.
[TIME: 01:28 ]
M.T.: After Eastcote, we were sent to Stanmore, where we were really decoding German messages, and I know you’ve heard of the Enigma, and that’s the work we did. First of all, we were sworn under the War Secrets Act, which was ninety years.
I haven’t reached that yet, but there are certain things that have to be kept quiet, and I’m never a hundred percent sure what I can or what I can’t talk about. Because at the time, if we had divulged anything, we could have either been sent up to detention
camp, or… believe it or not, they said shot! We were very careful not to speak to anybody about it. My mother died not knowing what I did, my family.
[TIME: 02:19 ]
M.T.: And when we were at Stanmore, we worked in what were called “Bays.” And in those Bays, there were these huge machines called “Bombes.” The “Bombes” were sort of a mechanical apparatus, if you want to call it that. They were big. Very,
very noisy. They had on them drums, and on these drums had tons of little wires. But if one wire crossed another wire, it would mess up the whole decoding system. So we had to be sure that they were all cleared out and running perfectly. It was kind
of hard on our nervous system, even though we were pretty young. When we had maybe broken a code – which the machine helped us to do, but we had to set it up – we then had to go into a little room with a machine that looked like the Enigma, and work
it back. Now, we weren’t able to read those codes. Those codes were sent to Bletchley Park by a courier in the Army or whoever it was. We didn’t even know much about it at the time, but I’ve learned that since.
[END 03:52]
