An experimental messenger system in the UGHQ under Fort Southwick, Portsmouth, Hampshire

A complicated system of wire runners, metal strip bends and pulleys in a cypher office in the UGHQ, Fort Southwick, Portsmouth. A crude hole has been punched through the wall to provide access to the adjoining office, which is a coding office. A man is standing at the closed door to the coding office. The UGHQ was the Underground Headquarters for Operation Overlord and the complex was excavated about 100 feet below ground between Feb. and Dec. 1942. It contained well over 100 rooms and over 700 staff worked in the complex. None of this wire and pulley system can be seen in photographs taken in the complex in 1944.