Bletchley Park heroes honoured for vital role
MORE than 80 veterans who played a vital but secret role in the efforts to end the Second World War gathered to mark the 80th anniversary of the start of the conflict.
Scores of former staff were reunited at Bletchley Park yesterday where they had helped crack German codes to unravel Nazi intelligence.
The sprawling site in Buckinghamshire, where the German Enigma
cipher was broken, welcomed the former workers, who are now well into their 90s.
Betty Webb, who joined the Auxiliary Territorial Service in 1941 – the women’s branch of the British Army at the time – said it was “immensely important” for her to attend.
The 96-year-old involved in registering the signals – made up of figures and letters – which had come in.
With September 1 marking the day Nazi Germany invaded Poland, a move which triggered Britain to declare war two days later, Ms Webb said she never had any idea she would play such a pivotal role in the conflict.
“People often ask me why I joined up, and of course the answer to that is that the whole country was involved and I felt the need to do something to help the war effort,” she said.
Some 10,000 staff – three-quarters of them women, including aristocrats and secretaries – worked at the mansion at the height of the war, while thousands more were posted overseas.
Staff had to sign the Official Secrets Act and could not talk about their work for decades.
The intelligence gathered is credited with shortening the war by two years and helped to save millions of lives.