Practically as new. This book is such a great opportunity to feel and understand how it felt to live in London as a young woman and be a part of such an important enterprise. Written by someone who was actually there, and about something that was kept so secret for so long. The Bletchley code breakers. This is about an ordinary woman who was a part of that time. Mary was born in London on February 3, 1927and grew up in a large and generally very happy family. As soon as she was old enough, at 17, she joined the Womens Royal Naval Service (WRNS). Immediately she was posted to a Bletchley Park outstation where she decoded enemy Enigma messages as a Bombe machine operator. She described these seminal events in her life in a memoirAn Extraordinary Time: Memories of a Young Girl growing up in World War II. In 1956, on her way home to England from North America, she met her future husband, Andrew, on the ocean liner, SS Saxonia. They emigrated to the USA in 1959, produced a son (David),