Decoding the past

An interesting WWII story—letters sent by a British POW in Germany back to his family actually contained intricately coded messages that no one has understood for about 70 years. The letters passed German censors, were read by British authorities and then sent to his family, who didn’t know anything about the hidden information.

Sub-Lieutenant John Pryor was taken prisoner at Dunkirk and spent the rest of the war at Marlag und Milag Nord camp, where he wrote the letters. Following the war he pursued his career in the Royal Navy. By the time he got round to writing his memoirs he couldn’t recall how the code worked. It wasn’t until his son, an academic, turned it over to a Ph.D. student specializing in PoW escape plans, who collaborated with mathematicians, historians and geographers, that it was finally deciphered.

Here are a couple of the things that strike me about this story:

Pryor spent five years in Marlag/Milag. He was 21 when he was taken prisoner. I cannot imagine what that kind of confinement at that age must do to a man. According to Wikipedia, the camp housed (give or take) 5000 men; it had a library of 3000 books. Up until I downsized a couple of years ago I had a library of 3500 books. My mind boggles.

Yet following liberation he returned to the RN, raised a family and led what we might think of as an ordinary life (if there be such a thing). He died in 2010, aged 91.

And that’s the other thing that I can’t shake: So many of the men who fought that war endured terrible conditions, did terrible things and must have had terrible memories. Yet, like Pryor, they came home, largely packed those memories away in an attic (literal or metaphorical) and got on with their lives. They neither boasted nor whined.

So I’m really glad that Stephen Pryor found someone who could uncover part of his father’s history, and that the world knows a little bit more about his life.