Listening to the Enemy

By Mike Griffiths

Many know that during WWII radio amateurs were drafted into the military specifically for their radio skills. But what was their experience like as they started to work for MI6 and the mysterious Radio Security Service (RSS)? This book looks at the experience of Scouser Harry Griffiths, G2DFH and his move to the St Erth receiving station in Cornwall.

Today if you take the road out of St Erth and travel up the hill towards St Erth Praze, you could easily miss a dilapidated single storey concrete building in a field close to the road. This is the guard/generator hut of the very secret and important MI6 Radio Listening Station. Together with its sister sites across the country, it had a profound effect on the outcome of WWII. Listening to the Enemy provides an insight into the fascinating story of this Bletchley Park outstation and Harry Griffith, G2DFH who was a radio operator at the station throughout WWII and recorded much of his work in his 'Code Book'. This is simply full of details about German and Italian radio nets, German brevity codes, double agent callsigns and more. Listening to the Enemy goes onto provide the background about that part the station played in hunting for the Bismarck, Agent Zig Zag the Double Cross system and how it was linked to Bletchley Park and its famous codebreaking activities. The book also records the work of the site post-war to its eventual closure in 1964 when its work was transferred to GCHQ Bude.

Listening to the Enemy is a real insight into the people who served at St Erth, Bletchley Park, the RSS and the stories that they were involved in. If you are interested in the wider story of the RSS activity and the detail of the radio activity they undertook, this book is a revelation.

Size 180x260mm, 132 pages ISBN 9781739889005