Last of Bletchley’s hero eavesdroppers dies at the age of 97
THE last surviving “listener” who intercepted and passed Nazi messages to Allied codebreakers at Bletchley Park has died.
Wren Alison Robins, 97, taught herself Morse code and German during the Second World War and stayed up all night eavesdropping messages from U-boats around Britain’s coast.
The mother-of-three told her children “anyone who thinks black coffee keeps you awake is wrong – the only thing that keeps you awake is the thought that if you fall asleep people will die”.
In her wartime career she dressed as a civilian and had the job of passing on messages to Station X – Bletchley Park Buckinghamshire.
She rarely spoke about her years spent in isolated points around the coastline, intercepting messages from enemy fleets, but her daughter believes it was the most Alison monitored Nazis exciting time of her life. Jill Hazell, 69, said: “She was the last one left – very few had Morse code and German, there were only a handful of them.
“I think she must have been quite intelligent, she left school with almost nothing.
“She trained as a riding instructor and then when the war broke out she became a Wren, and worked as a stewardess.
“She taught herself Morse code and sat at the back of a classroom during her time off. The Morse code and German were two totally different things – if you listened in German, you wrote it down and translated it.”
Alison, who had seven grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren, died at a nursing home in Bristol.
Jill added: “With that generation there was never any question of where the information was going. They kept to the Official Secrets Act.
“Even after the Bletchley Park film came out, she didn’t talk about it.”