Still in cracking form, the Bletchley Park codebreakers who thwarted Nazis

 More than 80 veterans who played a vital but secret role in the efforts to end the Second World War gathered yesterday to mark the 80th anniversary of the start of the conflict.

Scores of former staff were reunited at Bletchley Park, where they had helped crack German codes to unravel Nazi intelligence.

The site in Buckinghamshire, where the German Enigma cipher was broken, welcomed the former workers, who are now well into their 90s.

Betty Webb, 96, who joined the Auxiliary Territorial Service in 1941 – which was the women’s branch of the British Army at the time – said it was “immensely important” for her to attend the reunion.

She worked in the estate’s mansion and was involved in registering the signals – made up of figures and letters – which had come in.

Asked if she has a favourite memory of her four years at Bletchley, Ms Webb said: “No, it is all favourite. For me it was all great, because it was a mix of people that I wouldn’t have found unless I’d gone to university. It was an education for me.”

With Sept 1 marking the day Germany invaded Poland, Ms Webb said she never had any idea she would play such a pivotal role in the conflict.

Some 10,000 staff – three quarters of them women, including aristocrats and secretaries – worked at the stately mansion at the height of the war, while thousands more were posted overseas.

Bletchley was chosen as the main intelligence site as cities were more likely to be bombed.