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June 6th 2024
Today marks the 80th anniversary of D-Day, a pivotal moment in WWII. We remember all the heroes who fought for freedom, but today we also shine a light on one of our own incredible alumnae - Paddy Sproule.
The wartime generation of girls, who had knitted sea-boot socks and raised money for the Red Cross Fund, the Spitfire Fund and other charitable works while they were still at school, found themselves caught up in the wider war effort once they left. Mary Rose Murphy became 'an early, human computer' as she put it, helping to manipulate statistics for the RAF at the airfield in Farnborough. One of the most distinguished of these Old Girls was Paddy Sproule, a contemporary of Sisters Wright and Rennie and also of Miss Murphy.
Like many at the time, Paddy's exploits only became known long after they occurred. She had joined the First Aid Nursing Yeomanry in 1942 1942, aged eighteen; her first ambition had been to drive ambulances, but at 5ft 2in tall she could not reach the pedals. Instead, after three weeks' training, she was told to go to Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire, where she would be met at the station. Her destination proved to be Grendon Hall, home of Station 53a of the SOE (Special Operations Executive). Paddy was put to work decoding signals to and from Norwegian commandos who were engaged in espionage against the Germans.
In July 1943 she was promoted to sergeant and sent to Algiers, to work at Inter-Services Signal Unit 6 from where agents and arms were sent into southern France and Italy to carry out guerrilla activity and to wear down German forces in preparation for the Allied landings. While there, she was one of four SOE officers encoding and deciphering all the messages between London, the Italian forces and a British agent in the weeks leading up to the Italian armistice. This involved moving rapidly between three separate codes, one each for the three parties concerned. Further promotions followed and she was sent first to Italy with the SOE and later to London, where she worked for the famous codebreaker Leo Marks, helping to break many messages classed as 'indecipherables'. In the final days of the war in Europe, she was posted to Calcutta where she was put in charge of the SOE cipher office. Her last act in the office was burning the codes and files after VJ Day. Her achievements were such that they merited a high profile obituary in the Daily Telegraph on her death in 2010.
