The Coder Special Archive: The Untold Story of Navy National Servicemen Learning and Using Russian during the Cold War by Tony Cash and Mike Gerrard (review)

Although military communications constitute some of the most closely guarded secrets maintained by national governments, tactical radio transmissions are often made in the clear or employ only rudimentary encryption. These types of transmissions are vulnerable to eavesdropping, especially if analysts possess the language skills and experience necessary to understand and record the everyday traffic generated by units in the field. To be effective, however, such activities have to be undertaken on a huge scale. Hundreds of trainees need to acquire the requisite language skills, scores of instructors need to be recruited, and an appropriate selection process and training pipeline needs to be established to supply a stream of analysts, usually junior enlisted personnel, to various listening posts. Requirements can also be difficult to anticipate because international events can shift national priorities when it comes to monitoring potential opponents’ communications. The fact that the entire enterprise is shrouded in a veil of secrecy only adds cost and complexity to an already daunting enterprise.

In this volume on the development of a cadre of Russian linguists for the Royal Navy during the first decades of the Cold War, Tony Cash and Mike Gerrard describe the experiences of conscripts who were selected for training and service as “coders” and the manner in which they were trained and assigned to monitor Soviet military communications. Forgoing émigrés who had the requisite language skills because of security concerns, the British government created its own training pipelines to obtain trusted analysts—a practice that is common in contemporary militaries. Using the recollections of many participants in the program, Cash and Gerrard provide extraordinarily detailed descriptions of the most mundane aspects of the coders’ existence, not only providing insights into the experience of serving in this clandestine service but also offering a view of everyday life in postwar Great Britain and the British military.

Beyond the engaging tales of personal adventures, Cash and Gerrard highlight several issues that are encountered when large militaries develop a cadre of linguists. Linguists are often set apart from the rank and file by their superior intelligence, education, and language skills. Failure to complete language training was rewarded by banishment to normal sea duty. The fact that language training is an inherently “joint” (common to all services) enterprise is highlighted by the commingling of language recruits from different services in similar training pipelines, which raises the question of how best to indoctrinate linguists in the practices and procedures of their home service. The fact that training is inherently linked to universities or relies on native speakers as instructors creates an additional set of problems when drawing on national resources that are generally beyond the control of military establishments. The education and training of a cadre of linguists ultimately is a national enterprise that requires years of costly and highly specialized training.

The Coder Special Archive is more a bundle of personal recollections, rather than a sustained inquiry into the practice, methodology, or institutional history of the coders who served in the Royal Navy during the early Cold War. Readers who expect to gain information about these matters might be somewhat disappointed by the volume. Nevertheless, Cash and Gerrard do offer many interesting and even entertaining insights into what was an important aspect of Cold War history that might have forever been lost in the mists of time. Their volume also describes the issues that continue to confront today’s militaries as they seek to train linguists to monitor opponents’ battlefield communications.