Other rivalries emerged. The units working codes other than Japanese felt undervalued. In the section responsible for Near Eastern, Turkish, Persian, Egyptian, Afghan, and Arabic systems, Lieutenant Cyrus Gordon pointed out that a global war “demands that all parts of the world should be covered” and that the Japanese section “should not gobble up all the trained personnel.” In the German section, one lieutenant complained that some people wasted so much time that they were “little better than saboteurs”; that there was “appalling inefficiency”; that one girl was exceedingly inaccurate but “wept when corrected” and so was not corrected.
In the Portuguese and Brazilian diplomatic section, one woman was unhappy that work sometimes poured in, and that often—after they had broken the messages—they realized that the spike in South American traffic had nothing to do with the war but was the result of “ambassadorial weekends,” which is to say, big diplomatic parties.
In the Italian section, Harold Dale Gunn reported that people became irritable in hot weather. “The recent directive on venetian blinds upset a number of people,” he said, bringing up what many cited as the chief workplace outrage during the summer of 1943: a directive that all window blinds had to be lowered to the same position. It was a classic Washington move, overbroad and ill thought out and made more classic by the fact that it was soon withdrawn. “The venetian blind directive almost caused the resignation of three people,” another worker noted. The biggest complainer was the perpetually aggrieved William Seaman, who declared that “one would gather that officers have nothing to do but think up annoying orders.”
There was some rivalry between women—young and old, married and single. Mrs. Ruth M. Miller ventured that many young women came to Arlington Hall with a “rosy picture of conditions and an anticipation of romantic adventure.” Mrs. Miller ventured smugly that married women like her worked harder than single women did, in that they had “someone to work for and something to defend.”
The perennially discontented William Seaman seems to have been pushed around by a clique of what would now be called mean girls. “When I came into our section it was controlled by a small group of young girls, who made it difficult for new men by assigning us disagreeable jobs and by preventing us from learning how to do the more technical work. They are not in control now, but it is generally known that they pass judgment on new people and are responsible for some being transferred.”
Food! Orders! Window blinds! Men! Women! Coworkers! Young people! It was a cascade of standard workplace discontent. There were some inconveniences unique to women, who often had domestic chores on top of their code-breaking shift work and who struggled to get by in an expensive city. Ruth Scharf was divorced from her husband, who was in the Army and refused to pay child support. Miss Lucille Hall “has tried to save money, but she gave up in despair.” Jane Pulliam’s mother had to send her money.
But many others were fulfilled, happy, and thriving. Doris Johnson, from North Carolina, said the work was interesting. A former teacher, Lillian Parmley, said that “her job here has not been as nerve wracking as handling forty school children.” Lena Brown “got discouraged when she has been unable to dig anything out of a message,” but when she did get something, she “has become elated, and has worked overtime.” Lillian Wall, supervisor of the stenographic unit, said that the women in her unit were “pleased with the prospect of learning a profession.”
Lillian Davis, in charge of logging in the traffic analysis section, had her unit running like a high-end race car. She permitted no gossiping, no gum chewing, no backbiting or nagging. People who were noncooperative were transferred.
Another young woman flexed her managerial talents. Jane B. Park was a recent graduate of the University of Maryland and now ran the cryptographic training unit. There had been a snafu when Dr. Harold Briggs, a history professor, had been assigned under the misunderstanding that he was to supervise training, but everybody—including Briggs—agreed that Jane Park was better qualified. The report noted that Jane Park was “a bright, vivacious young lady who stood high in her class, although her major was Home Economics.” At twenty-three, it was her job to train workers in cryptographic security—encoding American messages—as well as procedure and systems analysis. Today, what she was in charge of would be called cybersecurity.
Perhaps, though, chaos and a certain degree of boredom had their uses. During down periods, the well-educated literary mind turned itself toward ways of commemorating its own secret efforts. In April 1944, two code breakers identified only as M. Miller and A. August—likely Marjorie A. Miller and Ann R. August, who worked on a team together—wrote a poem in celebration of the first anniversary of the breaking of 2468. The poem would not be declassified for nearly seventy years. It was written “with apologies” to Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” with a nod to a popular song titled “Pistol Packin’ Mama.” The first three stanzas described the preparations for the 2468 breakthrough. The next ones described the break itself, Frank Lewis’s shaving off his Van Dyke beard in celebration, and the recruiting aftermath.
In June the state of Carolina, and missionaries back from China
Put on their shoes, packed up their Bibles, swarmed like locusts to the Hall,
And school kids all across the nation got a permanent vacation,
Cause teachers headed for the station, heeding the recruiters’ call,
M.A.’s, B.A.’s, PH.D’s, candidates for Sp-4 (They still are this and nothing more.)
Then along came period 7, everybody was in heaven,
Pencil-pushing-mammas sank the shipping of Japan,
But then the nasty Nip did dare, in Period 8 to change the square,
Making it a vigenere production; charts went down again,
But Seidenglanz knew the solution that would our confidence restore,
“Boys, move the furniture once more.”
Now April 6th we celebrate your birthday, dear 2468,
Even though you’re growing tougher, tougher with each passing year,
Though our overlaps are stalling, and production charts are falling,
Cryptanalysis is still our calling, it’s got to be we’re frozen here!
And we’ll reply when our children query what did you do in the war,
I bought red tape for the Signal Corps.
(Praise the Lord there is no more.)
CHAPTER TEN
Pencil-Pushing Mamas Sink the Shipping of Japan
March 1944