Patricia and Jean Owtram were sisters born two years apart in the 1920s. When World War 2 came to Britain in 1939, both sisters were eager to do their part in the war effort. It was the younger sister, Jean, who joined the Special Ops at the age of 18. She managed to get stationed overseas for much of the war. As the British and their Allies managed to push back the Nazis, the war took Jean to such places as Egypt and Italy and eventually Austria as the war neared its end.
But Jean was not able to tell her family about what she did during the conflict. She had to sign a state secrets contract that forbade her from telling anyone–even close family–about her wartime activities. She worked much of her time organizing and contacting guerilla activities in the places she was stationed. Jean also worked as a codebreaker for a time, and she had some work at Bletchley Park, the famous codebreaker headquarters and home of such people as Alan Turing. Of course, lives would have been put in jeopardy if she talked about her work, so she kept her secret faithfully.
And Jean wasn’t the only member of the family to go overseas. The sisters’ dad, Carey Owtram, served in the British Army in the Far East. He was captured after the Battle of Singapore. He served out the rest of the war in a Japanese POW camp. The girls’ dad was part of the group of British prisoners on the infamous River Kwai, and when the war ended, he returned home a hero.
The fact that Jean had top-secret clearance and no ability to tell anyone about her work didn’t deter her from writing to her sister Patricia. The two corresponded throughout the war, but absolutely no secrets were revealed by Jean to Patricia. Patricia’s newsy letters were filled with information about the family and the weather and what books she was reading and what boys she liked, and those letters made Jean feel like she was home. And even though Jean had the unique opportunity to work with refugees after the war, she chose to return to her dear sister and her loving family and care for her father who had only then returned from his ordeal as a POW. Life returned to normal for the family.
Jean worked as a social worker in Scotland for a time then was employed by a university in England for a time before retiring in 1980. Patricia gained some university degrees and worked most of her career in television production. The sisters both married and had families but remained close to each other always.
Then, several years after the war, the British Government decided to declassify information related to the state secret programs like the ones Jean had been involved in during the war. The family never knew anything about the details of Jean’s work; all she had told them was that she was deployed in administration work. But the declassification revealed the level of secrets that Jean had kept all those years. The family was amazed. Patricia was especially proud of her little sister.
And then, it was Jean’s turn to tell the family her surprise. It seems that when Jean was globetrotting around and helping to win the war, Patricia had been hard at work for the Allied cause as well. And what Patricia shared with her loved ones was that she had been a codebreaker associated with Bletchley. She had then worked directly under General Eisenhower for SHAEF in London and was privy to top secret information regarding such events as D-Day.
You see, unknown to anyone, it turns out that both sisters had secret lives no one knew about.
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