These were long and desperate sea journeys: RG 0457, 9002 (A1), Box 84, SRH 306, “OP-20-G Exploits and Communications World War II.”
“The attack against the U-boat cipher has been so successful”: RG 38, Box 141, “Brief Resume of Op-20-G and British Activities vis-à-vis German Machine Ciphers,” in folder marked “Photograph of Bombe Machine, about 1943.”
Chapter Twelve: “All My Love, Jim”
“I don’t have anything exciting to write you, Dot”: Jim Bruce to Dorothy Braden, April 21, 1944.
“I get treated worse than anyone I know”: Jim Bruce to Dorothy Braden, April 30, 1944.
“The plane went every way but the right way”: Jim Bruce to Dorothy Braden, May 26, 1944.
“I was just sitting here in bed, waiting for Carolyn”: Dot Braden, April 3, 1944.
“I enjoy very much reading your letters, Dot”: Jim Bruce to Dorothy Braden, August 7, 1944.
“I guess you are still having a good time with your friends”: Jim Bruce to Dorothy Braden, October 28, 1944.
“The weather situations are rather interesting here”: Jim Bruce to Dorothy Braden, November 28, 1944.
“That is a long ways, in fact it is six thousand miles”: Jim Bruce to Dorothy Braden, December 1, 1944.
“In a letter from you that I received yesterday”: Jim Bruce to Dorothy Braden, December 19, 1944.
“I love you and am looking forward with great anxiety”: Jim Bruce to Dorothy Braden, January 9, 1945.
“It stopped raining and cleared up when I predicted”: Jim Bruce to Dorothy Braden, January 14, 1945.
“The letter that I received from you today is the one”: Jim Bruce to Dorothy Braden, February 21, 1945.
Chapter Thirteen: “Enemy Landing at the Mouth of the Seine”
In November 1943, the Purple machine: RG 0457, 9002 (A1), Box 17, “Achievements of U.S. Signal Intelligence During WWII.”
Raven and his crew called him Honest Abe: The Coral team’s monitoring of Abe, and his message about coastal fortifications, are in RG 38, Box 116, “CNSG-OP20-GYP History for WWII Era (3 of 3).”
At Bletchley, code breakers broke a long message: Arthur J. Levenson, oral history interview on November 25, 1980, NSA-OH-40-80, https://www.nsa.gov/news-features/declassified-documents/oral-history-interviews/assets/files/nsa-oh-40-08-levenson.pdf.
“So great were the chances of all the traffic”: RG 0457, 9032 (A1), Box 763, “Cover Plan in Operation Overlord.” A good description of Operation Fortitude North and South is in Thaddeus Holt, The Deceivers: Allied Military Deception in the Second World War (New York: Scribner, 2004), 510–584.
“The ploughman homeward plods his weary way”: RG 0457, 9032 (A1), Box 833, “Security Posters and Miscellaneous Documents.”
A whole section of Arlington Hall was devoted: The role of women in the protective security branch, and their involvement in planning and implementing a number of deception programs, including at Yalta and Normandy, is in RG 0457, 9032 (A1), Box 980, “Pictorial History of the SSA Security Division Protective Security Branch Communications Security Branch.”
“No invasion tonight,” thought Wellesley’s Ann White: Ann White Kurtz, in “From WomenatWarto ForeignAffairsScholar,” American Diplomacy (June2006), http://www.unc.edu/depts/diplomat/item/2006/0406/kurt/kurtz_women.html, describes the receipt of the D-Day messages, bolting up and down the stairs, the first and second messages, and then “sporadic bulletins followed.”
“At 0130, messages on coastal circuits”: RG 38, Box 113, “CNSG-OP-20-GM-6/GM-1-C-3/GM-1/GE-1/GY-A-1 Daily War Diary.”
At 1:40 in the morning they were warned: RG 38, Box 30, “OP-20-GM Watch Office Logs, 22 June 1943–31 Dec 1943.”
Going to church was the only way: Carpenter and Dowse, “Wellesley Codebreakers,” 30, and Mary Carpenter, underlying notes for Mary Carpenter and Betty Paul Dowse, “The Code Breakers of 1942,” Wellesley (Winter 2000): 26–30.
Ann would remember the Normandy invasion: Ibid.
“A great quantity of administrative traffic”: RG 38, Box 113, “CNSG-OP-20-GM-6/GM-1-C-3/GM-1/GE-1/GY-A-1 Daily War Diary.”
At the Naval Annex, Georgia O’Connor: Georgia O’Connor Ludington, oral history interview on September 5, 1996, NSA-OH-1996-09. The extensive nature of the code rooms devoted to communications intelligence coming in from the Atlantic and Pacific theaters is in RG 38, Box 111, “CNSG-OP-20GC War Diary, 1941–1943.”
“There were many signs the enemy was disintegrating”: Elizabeth Bigelow Stewart, essay of reminiscence, shared with the author by her daughter Cam Weber.
Others were not so lucky: Stewart, essay of reminiscence.
Donna Doe Southall was one of: Donna Doe Southall, interview, undated, Library of Congress Veterans History Project.
Chapter Fourteen: Teedy
Teedy Braden finished high school on a Friday: Here and throughout this chapter reminiscences are from John “Teedy” Braden, interview with the author in Good Hope, Georgia, on December 1, 2015.
“I sure do hope that you won’t [be] too busy”: Teedy Braden to Dot Braden, June 26, 1944.
“How’s everything, gal?”: Teedy Braden to Dot Braden, July 20, 1944.
“If I do go it’ll mean that it’s the first step”: Teedy Braden to Dot Braden, July 31, 1944.
He was one of thousands of very young men: Antony Beevor, Ardennes 1944: The Battle of the Bulge (New York: Viking, 2015), 50–53.
Teedy’s unit, the 112th Infantry, suffered: Ibid., 68, 151–156.
And it was one of the war’s worst: Arthur J. Levenson, a U.S. Army cryptanalyst sent to work at Bletchley Park, said, “Battle of the Bulge took us a little by surprise and we were a little ashamed of the intelligence dearth because they had put on a silence and I remember just before there was no traffic.… They had imposed a silence and that should have been a real indicator.” Oral history interview on November 25, 1980, NSA-OH-40-80, 38.
“I suppose that you’ve been kinda worried:” Teedy Braden to Dot Braden, January 1, 1945.
Admiral D?nitz—the new head of state in Germany—ordered: Richard Overy, Why the Allies Won (New York: Norton, 1996), 62.
“You have fought like lions:” RG 0457, 9032 (A1), Box 623, “COMINCH File of Memoranda Concerning U-Boat Tracking Room Operations.”
“My Dear Teedy,” she wrote, “Hope everything”: Virginia Braden to Teedy Braden, June 7, 1945.
Chapter Fifteen: The Surrender Message
Not long after, Alethea Chamberlain: Karen Kovach, “Breaking Codes, Breaking Barriers: The WACs of the Signal Security Agency, World War II” (Fort Belvoir, VA: History Office, U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command, 2001), 41.
The minute Ann Caracristi set foot in Arlington Hall: Ann Caracristi, interview, undated, Library of Congress Veterans History Project, https://memory.loc.gov/diglib/vhp-stories/loc.natlib.afc2001001.30844/transcript?ID=mv0001.