Fwd: OBITUARY : Caroline Chojecki

Friday January 12 2018

OBITUARY : Caroline Chojecki
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Naval analyst who played a key role at Bletchley Park in the battle 
against the U-boats and later helped to counter the Soviet threat

- Caroline Chojecki during her wartime service at Bletchley Park

On a cold mid-January afternoon in 1945 Caroline Chojecki was struggling 
up a spiral staircase at Bletchley Park, the government’s top-secret 
centre for code-breaking during the Second World War, on her way to see 
colleagues in the “surface vessels” department. An intelligence analyst 
who specialised in interpreting translated secret messages sent by the 
German U-boat fleet, Chojecki had been doing research into the possible 
range of Germany’s newest and largest submarines. She was carrying a 
volume of Jane’s Fighting Ships and a copy of Cassell’s World Atlas.

As she neared the top of the stairs she suddenly collapsed, dropping the 
books, which clattered down the stairs to the floor below.

Chojecki, who was 24, had pushed herself beyond her limits, having 
worked flat-out in a continuous state of urgency at Bletchley Park since 
being recruited from Cambridge University in 1942. She was sent to the 
on-site doctor, who diagnosed exhaustion and prescribed two months’ 
leave. His patient was infuriated. As she put it many years later: “It [ 
the diagnosis ] was thoroughly unwelcome and I have never been so 
frustrated in my life. When I got back things were very nearly over, bar 
the shouting.”

Chojecki’s career at Bletchley Park is little known outside the 
tight-knit and dwindling community of former colleagues who worked with 
her and is partly to do with the fact that she was infuriatingly modest. 
She was proud of the contribution she made, but rejected praise of her 
work, often remarking of her time at Bletchley that she did not deserve 
credit because unlike so many others she “did not bleed” in the service 
of her country.

In fact, Chojecki, who was a superbly organised, systematic and creative 
thinker, made an important contribution to the methodology at Bletchley 
when in 1943 she introduced a card- indexing system that prefigured the 
computerised intelligence databases that she helped to develop after the 
war.

At Bletchley the staff in her department were dealing with a huge amount 
of material as intercepted signals emerged from hundreds of U-boats. 
Chojecki realised that key details could easily be lost, while the 
careful accumulation of titbits on any individual or craft could quickly 
develop into a useful profile.

She began to compile a database that was later copied by the Admiralty 
in London, which required her to visit once a week to maintain its 
version of the index. The database grew steadily in size and importance 
as an analytical tool with Chojecki writing firm information in fountain 
pen, leaving more speculative details in pencil.

Responsibility for updating this database was one of the reasons why 
Chojecki ended up in a doctor’s surgery. “The card index was the bane of 
my existence because it would be useless unless kept up to date, but it 
proved invaluable later on,” she recalled.

In 1992 Chojecki gave a rare insight into her time at Bletchley Park. In 
a speech she delivered at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst she 
recalled her place of work — Hut 4, the home of Naval Intelligence. This 
she described as a damp and decrepit single-storey “shanty” painted in a 
mottled greyish-white with an old iron stove for heating, leaving its 
inhabitants with chilblains in winter even though almost everyone wore 
mitts.

- Caroline Chojecki outside her former workplace, Hut 4 at Bletchley
   House, with her son, Jan, and grandchildren Alice, Lucy and Greg
   in 2003

“The most immediately striking feature of the analysts’ room in Hut 4 
was the large cork wall-drawing which covered one end of it,” she said. 
“This represented a chart of the Atlantic and the Northern areas. Across 
this wall there appeared to crawl coloured caterpillars, with labels 
attached. There was also a scattering of labelled pins of a variety of 
colours. I was soon to learn that the caterpillars represented convoys, 
and their positions, course and speeds were all plotted currently as 
information was received.

“Some coloured pins showed the reported locations of convoy stragglers, 
damaged or sinking vessels. Different coloured pins were used to show 
the estimated presence of a U-boat. The whole scene was constantly kept 
up to date, and everybody in the team took a hand in repositioning pins, 
plotting from shipping reports, or any other relevant information.”

After the war Chojecki declined an offer from the historian Harry 
Hinsley to join his team writing what would become his five-volume 
history, British Intelligence in the Second World War. However, her 
career took off again in the 1970s when she became a key member of the 
Soviet Studies Research Centre ( SSRC ), which was set up at Sandhurst 
in 1973.

Chojecki joined to help with clerical tasks, but her experience at 
Bletchley Park, which was initially unknown to her new employers, 
quickly became evident. At Sandhurst she introduced a computerised 
version of the Bletchley card index system, which became central to the 
unit’s operation as it grappled with Soviet strategy and capabilities.

She was born Caroline Elizabeth Rowett in November 1920 to John Quiller 
Rowett and Helen Rowett ( née Coats ), one of three children. Her mother 
had had a leg amputated in 1915 after being incorrectly diagnosed with a 
tumour. Her father, who was originally from Cornwall, was a prominent 
businessman and philanthropist whose wine and spirits import-export 
business supplied rum to the troops on the Western Front.

Caroline’s childhood and early life was heavily influenced by her 
father’s suicide in 1924. He took his life after losing money on a 
business venture in America and after spending £70,000 sponsoring the 
last Antarctic expedition of his school friend Sir Ernest Shackleton — 
the so-called Shackleton-Rowett or Quest Expedition — in 1921-22. 
Shackleton died of a heart attack when his ship was anchored off South 
Georgia. The family were shattered by Rowett’s suicide and left in a 
parlous financial state that required the sale of homes in East Sussex 
and central London. His widow took the children to Scotland, where they 
settled at Helensburgh near Glasgow. Caroline attended St Bride’s 
School, and was sporty and artistic.

After a gap year in France, living with a family in Paris, Caroline 
followed her elder sister, Helen, to Cambridge. She read modern 
languages, specialising in French, Italian and German, at Girton 
College. On graduating in 1942 she was drafted to serve in the Auxiliary 
Territorial Service, but was recruited to Bletchley Park after being 
interviewed by Frank Birch, the head of the (German) naval section.

Known in her family as Betty, she commuted regularly to Cambridge, where 
she looked after her mother. She met her husband, Zygmunt Chojecki, a 
Polish exile, in the city after the war. She was introduced to him 
because, like her mother, he had also lost a leg. In his case, it was in 
Italy after the Battle of Monte Cassino.

Zygmunt, who died in 1983, had been deported with his family from their 
home in eastern Poland during the Second World War and forced to work on 
Soviet farms. After his release, he joined the Polish Army in the Middle 
East and settled in England after the war. He later worked at the SSRC, 
helping with Russian translation — and introducing his wife to the team. 
The couple married in 1953 and had three children, who survive them. 
Maryla worked as a jeweller, Jan is a technology transfer specialist in 
biological science and Alina worked as a nurse specialising in premature 
babies.

- The mansion at Bletchley Park

Chojecki was appointed MBE in 1986 and retired from the SSRC in 1992 at 
the age of 72. In later years she continued living at the family home in 
south Oxfordshire, kept in regular touch with her former colleagues at 
Sandhurst and kept her eye on eastern European politics.

Away from her work, she had one great passion, which was painting in oil 
and water colours, particularly Italian landscapes, which she pursued at 
the holiday home that she built with her husband in the Abruzzo region 
of Italy.

In 2003 her son, Jan, persuaded his mother to accompany him and his 
children on a visit to Bletchley Park. “She was very proudly and 
stubbornly quiet about her war work and it was the first time she had 
been back since 1946,” he said. “She was on the alumni list, but she had 
never talked to us about what she did there. She was more open then — we 
walked around all the huts and she described how the side door in Block 
B, giving on to the lakeside, used to be left open to allow air and a 
little extra light into the dark, smoke-filled offices where the 
‘denizens of Hut 4’ had transferred in late 1942. You could tell that 
the memories were coming back.”


Caroline Chojecki, MBE, intelligence analyst, was born on November 11, 
1920. She died on September 24, 2017, aged 96


https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/register/caroline-chojecki-s3xwpdxqd

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/imageserver/image/methode%2Ftimes%2Fprod%2Fweb%2Fbin%2F9e475ee4-f6ec-11e7-a789-003e705b951e.jpg

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/imageserver/image/methode%2Ftimes%2Fprod%2Fweb%2Fbin%2F9138f668-f6ec-11e7-a789-003e705b951e.jpg

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/imageserver/image/methode%2Ftimes%2Fprod%2Fweb%2Fbin%2Fd61409bc-f6ec-11e7-a789-003e705b951e.jp
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Chojecki’s career at Bletchley Park is little known outside the 
tight-knit and dwindling community of former colleagues who worked with 
her and is partly to do with the fact that she was infuriatingly modest

https://www.facebook.com/timesandsundaytimes/posts/1926607160701890

https://www.myfamilyannouncements.co.uk/henleystandard/view/4437561/chojecki-nee-rowett-caroline-betty

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_associated_with_Bletchley_Park