A Game of Birds and Wolves: The Ingenious Young Women Whose Secret Board Game Helped Win World War II

by Simon Parkin

on a small square of paper known as a chit. They might choose to alter their vessel’s speed or direction, fire star shells or drop a depth charge–any of the actions that were open to them in an actual sea battle. The chit was posted into a little box and duly collected by one of the young women, who passed the instruction to her fellow Wrens, who would proceed to shunt the models around the make-believe Atlantic Ocean accordingly, while kneeling on the floor and carefully marking off each instruction in pencil. In an adjacent room Bernard Rayner and another clutch of Wrens would collect, decode, decipher and transmit signals to and from the naval officers behind the screens. These messages would be delivered to each officer, presenting an almost overwhelming amount of information on which instantaneous decisions had to be made. To mimic the chaos of battle, Roberts and the Wrens would introduce unexpected diversions to proceedings: a lone freighter, for example, spotted by an aircraft and reported to be blazing just over the horizon.2 In this instance, one of the Wrens would gingerly walk across the floor and place grey cotton wool around the miniature ship to indicate billowing smoke. Another Wren, meanwhile, might suggest to her captain that he should send an escort ship to investigate and search for survivors.