DB EBAZ ONS CLULINE BN ee ee tg ee De ee Charles Aldridge finally free to tell his story | Veteran honoured oath to conceal secret mission from family and friends Some people just can’t keep a secret. Charles Aldridge kept his for over 50 years. He kept his wartime experi- ences confidential from those he loved the most and who would have been the most proud of him. And now, unbridled from his wartime oath, he speaks- passionately of his unrequit- ed achievements that saved. the lives of many and helped the Allies obtain victory. Charles Aldridge was born in Caledonia into a promi- nent family. His great- grandfather had been one of the original settlers in the area having arrived from England in 1845. His dad, C.N. Aldridge and his uncle Tom owned a lumber yard, feed store and mill in town at the time of his birth. But when Charles graduat- ed from Caledonia High School in 1936, he wanted to see if he could succeed on _. his own instead of settling in with the family business right away. He moved to California to study engineering. After graduation, he found employment as a sales man- It was at this time that Charles was sworn to secre- cy and went to work on a top-secret classified mis- sion. He remembers old friends in Caledonia being inter- viewed by wartime person- nel before he was admitted into the secret project - but nobody from Caledonia ever really knew what Charles Aldridge was up to during the war... until now. When Charles started with Operation Colossus, the Germans had a_ superior code machine than the Allies called’ Enigma. It would be Charles’ team’s iob to break the code. And communications, and devel- oping superior codes for the Allies. The Allies often changed their-secret code more than once a day to keep the Germans guessing and. would also put out false messages that they hoped would fool the Germans. During this time, Charles and his teammates had many adventures including landing into Belgium. Charles’ partner was even arrested for being a double- agent. “We worked in teams of two,” he recalls, “and they came into class one day and arrested him. I never saw him again.” It was also during this time that Charles began to have health problems. He started to lose his hearing and wrote often to his mother back home in Caledonia about his deteriorating health but never spoke a word of what he was actually doing. He could only write about the weather. After the war, still sworn to secrecy, Charles returned to Canada but found that he could no longer work at the Se EE wa DOS nr ae It was at this time that he met and married his wife, He applied for his disabili- ty pension nearly 20 years Charles Aldridge with his wartime cr nol at the Sachem office last week. Sachem pho ' that Operation Colossus h been de-classified, he w cautious. He wrote to t