When a young BBC radio assistant during the Second World War was handed a scratched disc to play on air, they did the helpful thing: swapped it for a different one.
The music was simply there to fill short gaps between wartime news broadcasts, the assistant reasoned, so the tune itself was of little consequence.
Unfortunately, that was not the case. The first record was a coded message for resistance fighters in Europe, and by playing another the assistant was unwittingly hampering the war effort.
The are revealed in an archive of material that sets out in detail for the first time how the BBC sent secret messages across the airwaves on its European service.
A 1941 memo explains how a Lieutenant Peter Peterkin - a codename - would arrive at the BBC’s Bush House headquarters with a particular record under his arm.
“I have agreed to the following temporary arrangement for the inclusion of gramophone records in the 4pm and 9.30pm Polish bulletins daily,” a senior BBC executive wrote.
 |
| The statues on Bush House, the former headquarters of the BBC, are seen dressed in glasses, scarves and T-shirts by artist Leo Caillard as part of his The Classical Now show at Bush House and Sommerset House, in London, Britain, March 19, 2018. |
“A Polish officer giving the name of Peter Peterkin will come to Bush House each afternoon and evening at 3.45pm and 9.15pm and will ask for you or your deputy. He will bring with him a gramophone record which he will hand over to you and he will wait until after the transmission to receive the record back.
“I have guaranteed that this record will be played for a minimum of one minute at the end of the 4pm and the 9.20pm bulletins… I have agreed this procedure for the next few days because I am convinced of its importance.”
The collection of documents and oral interviews, published online today by the BBC History department, includes the recollections of former executive Alec Sutherland.
In an interview recorded in 1979 but not previously made public, Mr Sutherland told of being recalled to the BBC as a “troubleshooter” after a period on secondment with the US Army.
“Bush House at that time broadcast the European services and there was a certain amount of clandestine work went on,” he said.
“It had been the practice on certain news bulletins to have them... under-run in terms of time. I was notified that we kept in Bush House a whole series of ‘fill-up’ records, little bands of music running from 10 seconds to 40 seconds according to what time had to be filled up before the next bulletins.
“And what was happening was that the recorded programmes assistants looked at these discs and, being purists, would hold it up to the light and see it looked kind of scratchy and they would see a band of equivalent width that they thought would make an equivalent broadcast.
“And so they would play the other band and the wrong bridge would get blown up in Poland.
“Now they couldn’t be told this - all that could be done was to supervise them viciously and crack them over the head if they made any kind of mistake.
“And I suppose to this day there are half a dozen middle-aged men around London who see me as the most rotten character.”
 |
| Soldiers of the British Army inspect their Valentine Tank, circa 1940. |
The archive also includes a list of coded messages to the French Resistance which would be slipped into broadcasts on the eve of D-Day. They included ‘the cats were courting one another in the garden opposite’, ‘the premium seats for the orchestra are 18 francs’, and ‘the big banks have branches everywhere’.
A pencil cross beside one of the phrases - ‘sooth my heart with a monotonous languor’, a line from a Paul Verlaine poem - indicated that this line would be broadcast to signal the invasion was about to begin.
