Enigma: How the Enigma code breaking story links to Chichester

Henryk was born in Poznan, Poland, in 1908 and was one of a ‘trio’ of Polish mathematicians who first ‘broke’ the encoded messages of the German military Enigma cipher machine during December 1932 and January 1933.

The Poles had established a Polish Army Cipher Bureau in an attempt break the Enigma code. Marian Rejewski, Henryk Zygalski and Jerzy Rozycki were working at the bureau in 1929. Rejewski was asked to work on a project secretly, without his friends, which involved trying to understand the wiring inside the Enigma machines.

After a breakthrough, Zygalski and Rozycki were called in to help. To successfully decode the messages, the trio tried to understand how the machines worked. They had two machines constructed with the exact same internal wiring and programmed with the same key settings and rotor positions. This, along with intelligence material provided by the French including manuals and code books, allowed the trio to break the code for the first time. In 1938, Henryk developed the ‘Zygalski sheets’ which could be used to read Enigma messages.

Following the invasion of Poland in September 1939, the Polish trio escaped from Warsaw and continued their Enigma codebreaking activities, firstly in Paris and then in the south of France and North Africa.

Throughout this period, they were secretly assisted by Colonel (later General) Gustave Bertrand of the French ‘Deuxième Bureau’ through his links with Hans-Thilo Schmidt, a German spy in Berlin.

In July 1939, with war in Europe looming, Bertrand arranged a meeting at Pyry, south-east of Warsaw, bringing together Henry Zygalski, Alfred ‘Dilly’ Knox and Alistair Denniston of the British ‘Government Code & Cypher School’ (GC&CS) and Commander Sandwith, a wireless expert. At this crucial meeting, the Poles briefed the French and British on everything they had achieved on Enigma and handed over material including reverse-engineered Enigma machines and the ‘Zygalski Sheets’. In August 1939, on his return to England, Knox fully debriefed Alan Turing, who had joined him at GC&CS.

Gustave Bertrand and his wife Marie ‘hosted’ and protected the Polish trio throughout their time in France and had organised Zygalski and Rejewski’s escape from France in 1943. Tragically, Jerzy Różycki had lost his life at sea in January 1942 as a passenger on the ill-fated French steamer ‘Lamoricière’ off the Balearic Islands. With increased danger following the occupation of the whole of France by Axis forces, Zygalski and Rejewski were able to make their way to London via Spain and Gibraltar, eventually arriving at Hendon in August 1943.

With the Codebreakers now in London, Bertrand became head of the KLÉBER French Resistance network but by May 1944, hunted by the Nazi secret police the Gestapo, things became too dangerous for Gustave and Marie. On the night of June 2-3, 1944, the heroic couple was rescued by RAF Tangmere’s 161 ‘Special Duties’ Squadron. The operation was codenamed ‘FORSYTHIA II’.

A Lysander flown by Flying Officer Alex Alexander successfully picked-up the Bertrand’s from a field at Outarville near Orleans in the Loire region of France. In his book ‘We landed by Moonlight: Secret RAF Landings in France 1940-1944’, Hugh Verity states ‘it was Alexander who collected that night one of the most important people in the Allied Intelligence community of the whole war. It was the leading role he [Gustave Bertrand] played with Polish Intelligence in the Enigma story which was so crucial to the history of the war’.

Post-war, Rejewski returned to Poland, but Henryk became a British subject, joined the staff of what is now the University of Surrey and lived in Liss with his partner Bertha Blofield until his death. Liss, although in Hampshire, is within the Chichester Crematorium boundary.

In 2018, on the 50th anniversary of Henryk’s death, a memorial was unveiled by the Polish Ambassador, His Excellency Dr Arkady Rzegocki, and a small sample of soil from Chichester Crematorium was carefully removed and taken to the Polish National Pantheon in Krakow. Similarly, a sample of sand from the seabed where the ‘Lamoriciere’ sank off the coast of Menorca was taken to the Krakow Pantheon where it is kept in memory of Jerzy Różycki.

The story of what happened subsequently at Bletchley Park, when the first wartime Enigma messages were broken by the British in January 1940, has been revealed in several films, including most recently ‘The Imitation Game’ with Benedict Cumberbatch playing Alan Turing.

A branch of Alan Turing’s family (originally from Scotland) settled in the Chichester/Chilgrove area in the 19th century and some of their graves can be found at St Andrew’s Church, West Stoke. His nephew Sir Dermot Turing, whose book ‘XY&Z: the real story of how Enigma was broken’ has been a key source for this article, attended the unveiling of the Henryk Zygalski Memorial at the Crematorium in 2018.

Saturday, December 3, 2022, will see a short ceremony at Henryk Zygalski’s memorial in Chichester Crematorium to mark the 90th anniversary of the first Enigma breaks in 1932/33. In July and August 2023, Tangmere Military Aviation Museum will mount a display commemorating Henryk Zygalski, Gustave Bertrand, Flying Officer Alexander and those involved in Operation ‘FORSYTHIA II’.