One of the last surviving female Bletchley Park codebreakers, who worked helping to decipher enemy communications during the Second World War, has died aged 99.
Margaret Betts, of Ipswich, was 19 years old when she was headhunted by “men from the ministry”, having performed well at school.
Her son Jonathan Betts, 68, who lives outside Salisbury, said his mother agreed to help soon after losing her brother as his ship was sunk by a German U-boat.
This was "absolutely tragic" and the whole family was desperate to do something which inspired Mrs Betts to help 'any way she could'.
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“She wasn’t told what it was, she was just told it would be highly secret work and that eventually she would be told what it was but meanwhile she was to pack her bags and go to a clearing house in north London," Mr Betts said.
Codebreaking from the summer of 1943 through until Victory over Japan Day in 1945, Mrs Betts was proud of her work but "always played down her role".
“She said yes, I know it was incredibly important, our part in it, and I know it was highly secret, but please don’t come away with the idea that we’re all Alan Turings, because we’re not.
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“We were there operating the machines, we were obeying orders, we were applying logic to do what we were told to do, and we were doing so efficiently and intelligently, but we didn’t design the machines for decoding.
“We were the service staff who were operating them.”
Mrs Betts programmed machines, called bombes, and set them running to identify encrypted code.
At the beginning of Mrs Betts' career she was told she must never tell anyone about it, which she didn't for more than 40 years according to her son.
"All she told us was she worked in an office in the Royal Navy’s service at home.
“It was only when documentaries started to appear on the TV and books started to be published that eventually she said ‘you know, I was one of those’,” said Mr Betts.
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Mrs Betts told her son: "We were operating machines night and day and it was incredibly boring work most of the time.
“You just had to stand by the machines, you had to concentrate when you were programming it and make sure it was set up correctly, and the rest of the time you were there watching it, waiting for it to come up with something.”
Mrs Betts, who had five children, three grandchildren and three great-grandchildren, died aged 99 on August 26 while in a nursing home in Minehead.
Mr Betts said his mother "kept her sharp brain right until the end".
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