Description
Mrs. McCauley explains her daily routine as a code and cypher clerk expressing her sadness when having to work with the casualty listings.
Isabelle McCauley
Mrs. Isabelle McCauley was born in Highland Creek, Ontario in 1923. Always looing for a source of adventure, Isabelle decided to join the service and become a member of the Women’s Division, Royal Canadian Air Force. After receiving training as a code and cypher clerk, Isabelle was given the opportunity to go overseas, an opportunity not all women got when joining the service. During her time in London, England, Mrs. McCauley was witness to many air raids and bomb blasts within the city. After years of service Isabelle was discharged on November 1945. She returned to Ontario and throughout her retirement years spent a great deal of time travelling.
Transcript
In wartime nothing goes in plain language. It all has to be coded. What we call cyphers, you know, we had machines and books and different codes in them. But I didn’t do, it wasn’t like cryptography where you broke the codes or anything. We just did it. We coded and decoded the messages.We did shift work. So, you were either on the eight ‘til three or, three ‘til ten, or ten ‘til eight in the morning because you didn’t go out after ten o’clock at night. Like the tubes stopped running. Yeah and we just, the messages would come in. We were in a locked room, and they’d put the messages in teletype or wireless would get them, put them in to us and then we would decode them and send them to where they had to go.The worst thing we had to decode was casualty lists, or code. We had to do the casualty lists to send to Canada. We got messages from India and Cairo, just general business of the Air Force
Metadata
Code and Cypher Clerk Duties
Medium
Video
Owner
Veterans Affairs Canada
War or Conflict Term
Second World War
Person Interviewed
Isabelle McCauley
Branch
Air Force
Units/Ship
Royal Canadian Air Force Women's Division
Occupation
Code and Cypher Clerk
Duration
1:31
