My Memory of D-Day working at the BBC

My memory of D-Day by Evelyn Stewart Armstrong

At the time of the invasion of Europe, I was working at the BBC in the Engineering Division which I joined in January 1941. The call-up of men and the simultaneous need to expand services made it necessary to recruit women into the Division which until then had been exclusively male-staffed, and I was one of the first women to be employed. There were three sections - Transmitters, Control Rooms and Recordings. I went to the Control Room of The European Services in Bush House, London. Pre-war, the men had been kept on routine posts for months, even years, but the need for Technical Assistants as such that as soon as we showed we could tackle a particular post, we were allowed to do so. By 1944 I was taking any of the Control Room posts as needed.

On D-Day morning I was on the day shift. My mother and I were listening to the radio news while we had breakfast. The newsreader announced that landings had been reported on the French coast. We had had such reports before, they were raids with no follow-up, but this morning - I don't know why - I said to my mother, "Keep the radio on, I think this is going to be the invasion." I went into Bush House by Tube as usual and just before nine o'clock I relieved my opposite number on one of the key positions. I was surprised when the SME (Senior Maintenance Engineer in charge of shift) came to me and said, "I want you on that position today." A control bay was plugged up for programme, and was apparently a routine recording operation. I changed over, and as I did so I saw through the large glass window separating the SME's office from the Control Room that he went to the safe and brought out a sheaf of papers. He came back and gave them to me. "Programme starts at 0932," he said, "and you're working on cues."

This meant I had to change sources in the programme by following key words in the script, a thing we never did at Bush House as we broadcast in twenty six different languages and thus had no script but worked on cue-lights and buzzers. Then I saw why this was so different - it was a live broadcast in English from a number of different sources, and it announced the invasion of Europe.

I had just enough time to check the sources set on the equipment, look quickly at the script, and at 0932 I put the programme on the air. I was concentrating so firmly on what I was doing, to ensure there were no mistakes or hitches, that I have little recollection of the programme itself, except that General Eisenhower alerted the Underground Forces to whom for a long time we had been sending coded messages. Only when it was over did I have time to realise how momentous it was. The programme was beamed not only to Europe, but was fed to Broadcasting House for transmission nationally and to lines for the Commonwealth and America. I was just one cog in the wheel, but I am proud that I was privileged to do my part.

I am now eighty nine, and hope that some more of my old colleagues are alive to remember that day.

Evelyn Stewart Armstrong

(Incidentally, the BBC Year Book for 1943 has a picture of Bush House Control Room with some of the shift present - JME Toms on left sitting at a control position, ME Rudolph standing, SME George Petty behind the office window, and myself, TA Evelyn Stewart, at SB (simultaneous broadcast) position on right.)

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