Betty Keeling of St. John’s, Nfld., relates a wartime secret told to her by Ellen Boyd, a mainlander who joined the army as a clerk-typist in 1940 and was posted to Newfoundland.
All the typing was coded and Code C meant strictly confidential. One day the colonel handed Ellen a piece of paper and said: “Make me two copies of this list please, Sergeant.”
Ellen put a carbon between two sheets of paper and began typing. She noticed there was no code on the list.
The names meant nothing to her until she came to Queen Elizabeth.
A few names later, Mata Hari. When she came to Winston Churchill, she said to herself: “That does it, this should have been coded C.” She pulled the hood down over her hands, as required with real secret stuff, and kept on typing.
When she finished, she carefully destroyed the carbon – “No one was going to learn anything from that” – and took the list into the colonel’s office.
“I took the liberty of handling this as Code C, sir,” she said.
“Sergeant, you’re a dedicated worker,” the colonel said, “but I don’t think anyone is going to be interested in the list of gladioli bulbs my wife wants.”
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