Prompted by a tantalising comment from Dr Margaret Henderson (1932) to our Director of Community Relations, Chavaune Francis, in Melbourne recently, our Archivist Shannon Lovelady has discovered something really exciting about one of our Old Collegians. Roma Gornall (Craze 1932) was here from 1925-1932. She studied Latin, German and French. She was a Prefect in both 1931 and 1932 and went on to UWA in 1933 to study French, obtaining a BA (Hons) in French in 1937. From 1935-1938 she was on staff at PLC teaching English, French, Latin and Italian. She then headed for Europe around Christmas, 1938. Kookaburra 1939 (late) notes After engaging in secretarial work in connection with Jewish refugee work in London, she went to Leipzig in Germany to teach English in a German school. On the declaration of war however, she left Germany and is at present in London. But theres a little more to that story... Although things in Germany were getting a little dicey, Roma stayed beyond evacuation to hear Joseph Goebels speak, nearby. Having heard him she got out and arrived in London on 2 September 1939, the day after war was officially declared. A few days later she was enjoying a cup of coffee at a cafe when a man approached. He asked if she was Roma Craze and said it had been suggested to him that he should make himself known to her. He then asked if she’d like to ‘help’. He was from MI6 and recruited our Roma to Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire, where a group of legendary WWII analysts and codebreakers managed, its estimated, to shorten the war by as much as two years. Roma was among the first five women to be seconded to Bletchley Park and was there from October 1939 for the duration of the war. She put her superb language skills to good use in SIXTA, the group which recorded and analysed activity on enemy radio networks. Sworn to secrecy, she never said a thing to anyone until looooong after the war… PLC News of December 1991 humbly reported Roma spent the war years in England, where she met and married her husband John. They returned to NSW and farmed for nearly 40 years... Until this research, little did we know her enormous contribution to the war effort and the risks she took to give it. This brilliant, brave, inspiring woman died in NSW in 1995. For more information on Bletchley Park here: lostpastremembered.blogspot.au/2013/12/the-lost-world-of-bletchley-park-and.html and here: warhistoryonline/war-articles/wwiis-female-codebreakers.html and for what happened to the women of Bletchley Park, see here: telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/9520807/What-happened-to-the-women-of-Bletchley-Park.html
Posted on: Thu, 19 Jun 2014 11:34:36 +0000
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