The Other Side...

'The Other Side' was the name given by members of GC&CS to SIS (and quite possibly vice-versa) when the two organisations shared premises at Broadway Buildings. SIS occupied the fourth floor while GC&CS occupied the third, and while there was a lot of reorganisation of office space (by the time of the move to Bletchley all nine floors of the building had been taken over), GC&CS never left the third floor. There was almost no contact between the two organisations other than at senior level and in the Distribution and Reference Section whose terms of references explicitly included liaison with SIS. This is not as odd as it might sound. The two organisations had totally separate functions (signals intelligence and communications security for GC&CS, human intelligence for SIS) and were funded differently: the Secret Vote for SIS, the Open Vote for GC&CS; all they shared was an address and a man in charge: 'C' who was Chief of SIS and Director of GC&CS.

When the two organisations moved to Bletchley Park in August 1939 the situation didn't change - in fact most of the SIS personnel who moved to Bletchley moved back to London in September once the Luftwaffe hadn't destroyed the capital, but not before a GC&CS member of staff Henry 'Pope' Dryden had written a poem - 'The Other Side' - about their near neighbours. (Dryden had joined GC&CS in February 1939: on his first day after reporting to the War Office he discovered that he would be based at 54 Broadway and was told never to speak to or indeed acknowledge anybody close to the building and after going in, only ever to say 'Third' to the lift operator.)

Such little knowledge of SIS that Dryden had acquired became vitally important in June 1940. he had been in France in uniform as part of the Sigint staff attached to GHQ, and as France collapsed, found himself and his team moving ever further south. He takes up the story:

'The next morning we almost missed the train, but found ourselves that evening in Vichy.  We spent the following morning, Sunday, stripped to the waist in the cellars of our hotel, burning in the furnace all our material except the keys we had recovered. We were not altogether surprised to learn after breakfast on 17 June that Marshal Pétain had announced that France had asked for an armistice, and also that we would be moving again that afternoon.   This time the train took us via Clermont-Ferrand, where we were told by our French friends that they had been ordered to stop.   We indicated that we thought we ought to try to get to England, and they immediately gave us a large lorry and advised us to make for Bordeaux.  We arrived there via Périgeux soon after dawn on 18 June.  Thanks to that uniquely British institution, the schools connection, the oldest member of our party, who had been at preparatory school with him, got in to see the Military Attaché in his bath at 6 a.m., and was given a chit authorising us to board the frigate Arethusa, then lying at the mouth of the Gironde with the primary task of evacuating the Polish Government-in-Exile and the Czech Intelligence Staff.  Embarkation was being supervised by a Guards officer, who took one look at our chit and said:  “This is no good. You need a chit from the Naval Attaché.” Recognising him as a member of what GC&CS called ‘The Other Side’, with whom I had often shared a lift at Broadway Buildings, I murmured in his ear: “We’re from the third floor”. Fortunately this had the desired effect; having spent the night on board, we sailed, unescorted, on a zig-zag course for Devonport. There we were received by the Women’s Voluntary Service with cups of tea such as we had not enjoyed for many weeks.'

(Incidentally, if anyone has a copy of the poem I would be really interested to see it.)