Being a code-breaker beat baking says hero Betty, 97
A FORMER code-breaker has told how she was catapulted into the crucial Second World War role as a teenager because she wanted to “do more than bake sausage rolls”. Betty Webb, now 97, was just 18 when she signed the Official Secrets Act in 1941 to take up a post at Bletchley Park, Buckinghamshire. Now 75 years on, Betty is he cover star of next month’s National Geographic Magazine which features powerful interviews of wartime experiences. Contributors sharing incredible stories include holocaust survivors, refugees, plane builders, navigators, medics and pilots. Recalling her first day at the code-breaking HQ, Betty said: “There was a senior intelligence officer seated behind a desk and I remember he had a handgun lying casually beside him. I was told to sign and made to understand in no uncertain terms that I could never discuss anything about my work here with anyone. I signed. It was a sobering moment.”
Betty had been taking a home economics course but joined the Auxiliary Territorial Service because “I wanted to do something more for the war effort than bake sausage rolls.”
She was bilingual having grown up in London with a German au pair and had been an exchange student in Germany, so was ordered to report to Bletchley. She added: “It was so secret I had no idea what it was – nobody did – let alone what I was getting into.”
She initially deciphered German radio messages British listening posts were intercepting but moved to a creative role paraphrasing the priceless nuggets of intelligence gleaned by code-breakers of the Nazis’ Enigma machines.
Betty said: “We had to make it sound as though it was information we’d picked up from spies or stolen documents or aerial reconnaissance. The fact that we’d broken German and Japanese military codes was a closely guarded secret.”
Betty enjoyed the “deviousness” of the work and in June 1945, after the war in Europe ended, she was sent to Washington to help the American war in the Pacific.
She added: “I sent my parents a postcard from Washington.
“I’m sure they must have wondered what I was doing but of course they never asked – and anyway I could never tell them.”
●●The June issue is out on Monday.