One of the last of Bletchley Park's quiet heroes, Betty Webb, dies at 101

Obit Betty Webb MBE, one of the team who worked at the code-breaking Bletchley Park facility during the Second World War, has died at the age of 101.

In a 2018 interview Webb said she was very proud of her work, but horrified when she saw far-right protesters giving Nazi salutes

"On Monday 31 March 2025 we lost a proud ATS and Women's Royal Army Corps veteran, Bletchley code breaker, Knight of the Légion d'Honneur, WRAC Association member, and President of our Birmingham Branch," the Women's Royal Army Corps Association (WRAC) said in a statement. "Betty inspired women in the Army for decades and we will continue to take pride in her service during WWII and beyond, and as a champion of female veterans."

Charlotte Elizabeth "Betty" Vine had a middle-class upbringing in Worcestershire. Her mother was a teacher and was a big believer in her child learning foreign languages, so the family always had a Swiss or German au pair.

"I was 18 and at domestic science college near Shrewsbury, and several of us decided that we ought to be serving our country rather than just making sausage rolls," she said [PDF]. "We left before the end of the course, which must have caused our parents a lot of angst."

She joined up with the Auxiliary Territorial Service in 1941 and was assigned to Bletchley almost immediately, she guessed because of her language skills. There she was tasked with putting German messages in order as they came in, some 10,000 of them a day.

In 1943 she moved to a new role in the Japanese section. Her new job was to take decoded transcripts and paraphrase them, so that if they were ever intercepted, Japan's forces wouldn't realize that their codes had been broken.

She was so good at it that she was one of the few Bletchley workers to be sent to work at the Pentagon in Washington DC. After taking a Sunderland flying boat across the Atlantic she spent six months in the city, enjoying both the work and the relative freedom before returning home.

Yet when she began trying to get a job after the war was over, there was a problem - she couldn't tell anyone (not even her parents) what she'd been doing, since the work was classified under the Official Secrets Act, as she recounts below.

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Luckily a fellow Bletchley alumni was the headmaster of Ludlow Grammar School near her home, and he gave her a job with no questions asked. She worked there as a secretary until marrying.

For 30 years she never told anyone about her wartime experiences and it wasn't until the mid-1970s that she ran into a former member of her team, who informed her that the prohibition on discussing Bletchley had been lifted.

"I suddenly realized that, yes, I could, I'm free, I don't have to worry any more," she said. "I hadn't let it worry me previously because I had put it behind me but I was never able to tell my parents as they died before 1975 and my husband wasn't particularly interested."

After that she began attending reunions of the Bletchley workers and eventually, by the 1990s, gained a following by giving talks on what it was like to work there during the war. When the work was done to turn the former code-breaking site into a museum, Webb was one of the former staff who would go on site to give presentations to visitors, and wrote a memoir.

"The Trust was very sad to learn of Betty’s death. She will be remembered, not only for her work at Bletchley Park during World War Two, but also for her efforts to ensure that the story of what she and her colleagues achieved is not forgotten," said Iain Standen, CEO of the Bletchley Park Trust.

"She was an unrivalled advocate and supporter of the heritage site that Bletchley Park is today. Whether through media interviews, events or books, Betty has been involved in spreading the word about Bletchley Park for many, many years. Our thoughts are with her family, friends, and all those who were touched by her warmth, dedication, and exceptional work."

In 2009 the British government issued a medal for all remaining members of the Bletchley team and in 2015 Webb was awarded an MBE for services to remembering and promoting the work of Bletchley Park.

In a 2018 interview she said she was very proud of her work, but horrified when she saw far-right protesters giving Nazi salutes celebrating Donald Trump's win of his first presidential election term in 2016.

"I am disappointed, which is putting it mildly," she said. "I thought we had done away with the Nazis – finished, kaput – but it [fascism] is coming back. What is going on?! Horrendous. You do feel rather let down."

In 2021 Webb was awarded France's highest decoration, the Légion d'Honneur, for her wartime work. She celebrated her hundredth birthday at Bletchley with a Lancaster bomber flying overhead in tribute and was in the front row at Westminster cathedral for the coronation of King Charles in 2023. ®