Dan Snow's History Hit - Life at Bletchley Park with Betty Webb

Episode Date: May 8, 2021

Betty Webb was heavily involved with the work going on at Bletchley Park. While she was not part of the code-breaking team, her work was invaluable to the success of Bletchley, and Dan talks to her about her life and wartime experiences.

Hello everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. Some big anniversaries this weekend. Today, on the 8th of May, 1945, Victory in Europe Day was proclaimed to the excited people of the world, desperate for news of the end of the war in Europe. Wild celebrations took place all around the planet as people celebrated the extinction of Hitler's Third Reich. Tomorrow, on the 9th of May, is the 80th anniversary of a very remarkable moment in the Second World War. In 1941, a brave team from HMS Bulldog boarded a sinking German U-boat in the Atlantic, U-110. As it was sinking, they managed to capture the precious Enigma encryption machine that had been left on by the captain, the officers who were sure that

the ship would sink and they didn't need to destroy the communication equipment. This proved absolutely essential to the code breakers at Bletchley Park as they attempted to break into German encrypted messages. This was an extraordinary moment. Now, I have got a terrible story to share with you all. When I moved to a new area of the UK 10 years ago, there was a man called David Balm living there. People said to me, oh look, he's a legend. He's the guy who went across in a small boat in huge waves, clambered onto U110 and led the boarding party. He was a sub-lieutenant then. And he stripped it of everything portable, including the code books and things like that. At the time, I just thought, well, that's great. I mean, I'd love to interview him one of these days. You know, you think these people are going to be

around forever. I even saw him once. I saw him crossing the road with his dogs. And I thought, I must make a note of this before the podcast, of course. So I couldn't just go around interviewing people at random. I had to wait for the BBC's permission, gatekeepers folks, the old media. Anyways, I thought I must try and get that sorted. And then he died. He died. I never even got to meet him, let alone interview him. Can you imagine that? I mean, I think about that all the time. Interview your grandparents, folks. Interview your grandparents, your great-grandparents, even if they didn't board U-110 and help change the course of the Second World War. They've got some pretty interesting stuff they've done, trust me. Always remember how Dan Snow failed to talk to David Balm. Anyway, one veteran I did talk to

was the very brilliant Betty Webb. I was traveling around the country a few years ago and someone on Twitter said, hey, you're passing Betty Webb's house. She was a code breaker who worked at Bletchley Park during the Second World War. So I pulled over, I screeched up to her house, and I interviewed her for the podcast. This is a repeat of that episode. To mark the anniversary of VE Day and the extraordinary capture of that Enigma machine on board U-110, it's a very great pleasure to repeat this podcast asking Betty Webb all about life at Bletchley and how she worked on particularly intercepted Japanese messages. She was very special. She was so good at what she did. She ended up going to Washington DC to help the Americans with the war in the Pacific. So she experienced the wild celebrations of V-Day and V-J-Day in Washington.

It was such a great pleasure to talk to Betty. She's one of the brightest and most wonderful 98-year-olds that I've ever met. And it's a huge honor on this podcast to commemorate the contribution that Betty and other women like her in the Auxiliary Territorial Service made to victory in the Second World War. Because of this huge weekend of anniversaries, we are doing one of our crazy sales on History Hit TV. You can watch interviews with wonderful codebreakers like Betty Webb on History Hit TV. We've got a Women at War program that's

done very well on the channel recently, interviewing some female veterans from the Second World War. We've got our Medieval Lives series doing well, and the hunt for the famous missing Roman Ninth Legion in Northern Britain is getting a lot of people's attention as well at the moment for the famous missing Roman ninth legion in northern Britain is getting a lot of people's attention as well at the moment so it's all happening on history hit tv if you use the code VEDAY V-E-D-A-Y you'll get 50% off your first three months you'll be paying peanuts folks peanuts for the world's best history channel please go and check it out use the code VEDAY at checkout the meantime everybody here is the wonderful Betty Webb. Enjoy. My name is Charlotte Elizabeth, but most people call me Betty, which is all very confusing.

And you want to know when I joined up. Well, let's talk about your childhood, because it's quite a long time ago now, and it's a bit different to how children might be brought up these days. Oh, absolutely. I was brought up in the country. I'm a Solopian, actually. And we lived in Richard's Castle, which is on the borders of Herefordshire and Shropshire. In the days when one didn't have telephones.

And I never went to school. My mother taught me what I know. And apart from a few months in Germany in 1937, yes, I spent three months with a family in a little village called Herrnhut in Sachsen near Dresden. When the Hitler regime was just beginning to boil up and the family with whom I was living, very religious people, and they were obviously very anxious about it all. But their two daughters, aged, I think, about 11 and 12, had to attend the Hitler thing called the BDM Mädels, which was a Hitler regime gathering every Sunday morning. But they never told us what they were doing there. But they were

obviously being indoctrinated, I think. So that was remarkable that you also witnessed life in Nazi Germany just before the war. So you mentioned these girls were going away and becoming indoctrinated. What else do you remember from that time in Germany? Well, I remember going to school with the daughters of the house. My German wasn't absolutely brilliant, but I was able to understand quite a lot. But the thing that bothered me was the practice was becoming usual for everybody to stand up and say Heil Hitler, the beginning of a lesson at the end. So I didn't quite know what to do, but I just sort of went like that and hoped nobody saw. It's like a royal wave and why did you even so you were only you're only sort of 15 or so at that stage but why did you

even at that age think I don't want to be part of what Hitler's got going on here? Well there was a certain amount of discussion in the household where I was you know they were obviously very worried about what was happening and not knowing the whole story but I was aware of food rationing and that sort of thing they were beginning to uh to get really worried about what was going to happen and this rather secretive thing for the the young girls to go to every Sunday morning we never heard what they did or what they were told about or anything like that it was all very secretive did you ever find out that family survived the war no i didn't no um sadly things moved on and i never got in touch with them again and so you grew up without telephones

televisions what other what other mod cons did you grow up without? Oh, we had a radio, but it was a crystal set to begin with. And then it became a wireless before it was a radio. And what do you remember from that, Charles? I mean, you did lessons with your mother, and then the rest of the time, what were you up to? Well, we were very fortunate in that we had a large area in the country and we had animals. And I had to help with those, of course.

And when the weather was fine, we didn't do lessons. We went for walks in the countryside. But we did work then because we picked flowers and then we were obliged to come home and draw them and give a description of each flower. I remember that very clearly. And I also remember the fact that if you needed to communicate with anyone, you walked and we were some distance from any other dwelling. So it was fairly primitive in a way. We didn't have any water, that had to be pumped up, and no electricity, oil lamps and candles. So it's, I mean, it seems like really a different world, the one that we're living in now. Absolutely different, yes. People can't envisage it, I think. Perhaps

even you can't, I don't know. But then I decided that when I got a bit older that I wanted to do domestic science. So I went to Shrewsbury, who's a college there at that time. This was the beginning of the war. But as the war rolled on, a lot of us felt that we were wasting our time making sausage rolls. So, well, I remember four of us leaving in midterm, which was a bit naughty. But anyway, that's how I came to be in the 80s. And what were the opportunities for young women in the Second World War? Because I think lots of people listening to this will think, well, the men all went off to fight, and the women could take their place in factories and as bus conductors.

There were opportunities to serve. What were they? Well, they were the ATS, the Auxiliary Territorial Service, the RINs, and the WAFs. So there was plenty of choice, providing you were physically fit and mentally able. And what did you end up doing in the ATS? Well, I did my training, basic training in the ATS at Wrexham, Warhol's Fusilier Unit.

And then I was sent to London to be interviewed by an intelligence corps officer in German, because I'd said at the time that I was bilingual. And the next thing I know, I'm on a train for Bletchley, never having heard of Bletchley, or certainly didn't know what was going on there. And that's how I came to be there, rather unceremoniously, really. Can I ask just quickly, I've talked to some other women from this period who said that their parents were a little bit worried about sending them off to join in the war effort.

How did your family respond to you bunking out of college and joining up? Yes, I think my mother was a little bit worried because she said, you know, dear, if you ever want to come out, just tell them. She recently had an operation for cancer, which of course in those days was not very sophisticated as it is today. And she said, I can always get the doctor to sign something and you can come home. But it was very exciting for you. Did you ever regret your decision?

No, no, I didn't. No, in fact, I think I probably grew up in Bletchley. And certainly it was a tremendous experience from the point of view of mixing with all walks of life. So you get to Bletchley Station and you thought, what do you think, where is this godforsaken place? It was dark, I couldn't see anything anyway. And we were taken straight to a billet in one of the railway towns.

I was with a girl actually who'd escaped from Belgium. She'd joined up, joined the ATS, and she and I piled up on the train as it happened. And we were then taken to this village in Bradwell and finding that we not only had to share a room, but we had to share a bed, which was a bit of a shock to both of us. And the facilities were very primitive indeed. And so the following day, I asked if I could be moved. But I went from the frying pan into the fire to another rather indifferent dwelling with four

members of the family, three of us, and there was no bathroom. It's lucky you had such a hardy upbringing. Absolutely, yes, yes. I mean, that didn't matter so much, but my next move was to a lovely house in Loughton, which is now part of Milton Keynes, where the family of five and three of us, I mention the numbers because with ration books, that was jolly good. It meant that we ate very well well and they also had a very

good garden and lots of fruit trees and so on so so we were compared with what a lot of people had to live on in those days we were very well fed and so tell me about bletchley i mean that secrecy was so important so quite rapidly they must have sort of had to had to get the paperwork done make sure you weren't going to tell anyone and to make it clear that this was a sort of totally totally top secret operation ultra secret operation absolutely yes well the first morning having been bussed into bletchley i was taken into the little office on the left of the entrance and faced with i think it was an intelligence corps officer with a gun on the table and the official secrets act there for me to read, which of course my age and experience was fairly formidable. But there were no two ways about it. I mean, you signed it and that was that until

the 60 years passed. And I remember saying to myself, well, Betty, you have no option, you just do it. Was this the beginning of a glimpse you thought actually this might be something rather exciting were you not a bit nervous that you might have? Yeah I was quite nervous about the fact that I did have to keep everything to myself because I didn't know what I was going to see or hear anyway but having told myself very strictly that that is what it has to be, it was. So once they'd got the paperwork out of the way, they'd given you a bit of a scare. What then?

Well, then I was taken into Major Tester's office, which in those days was upstairs. I don't know, it doesn't matter really, it's upstairs above the ballroom. There were three little rooms up there. I think they were servants quarters originally and my first task was to register all the messages that were coming in at quite a rate something in the region of i i didn't handle 10 000 but that's how many there were in the height of activities to be registered before the um code breakers could handle them so that was your job was was the top of the funnel, was it? Which was checking, sort of getting all the messages in and then...

That's right, and registering them in a not very detailed way, because apart from the date and a little call sign, everything was in groups of five letters or figures, which was totally unintelligible. Was it exciting work or a bit boring which was boring really and what date was what point of the war was this this was 1941 right yes so the war was going were you aware the war was going badly was were you nervous about that or do you not really see the big picture well we weren't told very much. I mean, the public knowledge was very limited. I mean,

sometimes you'd hear one of our planes is missing or something like that, but it wasn't detailed. The only thing we did know was whether or not we could spend our off days in London, and we'd be told whether or not it was safe to go. But apart from that, we knew very little. And Bletchley wasn't bombed, as you probably know, but a bomb dropped between the church and the mansion. But it was a jettison bomb that we've never actually attacked. So the work was a bit boring initially. Yes, it was boring because you didn't know what was going to happen to it next. And because we couldn't say anything outside our own offices, we didn't get to know the rest of the story.

Did you guess that it was German codes? Oh, I think we were told that it was, although it's only very recently, a couple of years ago, when Mick Smith told me that I'd been handling Holocaust material, but I didn't know at the time. You're listening to Dan Snow's History on the anniversary of VE Day. Use the code VEDAYHISTORYHIT to get 50% off your first three months. We're talking to Betty Webb more after this. to this. Spire, Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series, Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive,

but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week. And talk to me about the famous social life at Bletchley. What was that like? It was pretty good. Well, we had, well, actually, Mark will tell you about that. famous social life at Bletchley. What was that like? It was pretty good. Well, we had, well, actually, Mark will tell you about that.

He's got a splendid book about the drama group, which put on a play fairly often. Goodness knows how they did it with the shift system that we had. But anyway, yes, we had drama groups. We had a Bach choir run by Herbert Murrell, who was a professional musician. And then we had a magical society, which I enjoyed, and a gramophone group. We also had lectures from various people. I don't know who they were now, but we did.

So all in all, yes, it was a balanced life, but it was quite hard work, especially if you were on the three shift system which was um eight to four four to midnight midnight to eight which um is all very well except the uh one during the night isn't very good because you have to have a meal and one system doesn't like that in the middle of the night and sir bletchley park the giant code breaking exercise did it was 24 hours a day yes yes it was oh yes had to be and was that was there romance between all the various people there no there was a little but bear in mind that the we outnumbered the men three to one so it wasn't much scope really there were some romances so some famous ones. We were talking about them earlier.

What's their name? It's gone for the minute, but quite well-known people who met in the, when they were breaking codes. The Magical Society meetings. Yes, that's right. Where the magic happened. And did you then move on to other jobs within Fletcher?

I did, actually, yes. Bearing in mind I was very junior, I had a job in Hutford one time, which was a naval one, I think, and the gentleman I was working for had only a really primitive way of writing things down, and he wanted me to sort it out and type out what he'd written which was fine except that he wrote from the top to the bottom as most sensible people do and then he turned the paper around and I never knew where to sort of hang on to things it was quite extraordinary I remember

that very clearly. Did they move you around because there was a danger that you'd sort of get bored and sloppy in one position or did they move you around because you were very good and they kept promoting you? Well I don't really know why I was moved around and or why I was promoted but I ended up in the Japanese section block F which no longer exists and somebody discovered that I was good at paraphrasing decoded Japanese messages. So I did that for quite a long time until 1945 and then I was told that I was to go to the Pentagon and carry on with my paraphrasing, which I did. So at that stage you're looking at unencrypted,

you're looking at codes as they would have originally appeared to the Japanese operators. So did you have a sense that, did that connect you with a distant battlefield? Was that a strange feeling? In a way, but of course, a lot of the names that came up, this is after they'd been decoded and translated. The battle area between Burma and India, places like Kohima, Maktila was the other famous one. But anyway, all that borderline between the two countries, that came up quite a bit. And as I say, it was my job to paraphrase. And so when we hoped that when these messages went on to the commanders in the field, if the Japs had picked it up, they wouldn't realise that we'd actually decoded their messages.

OK, so you're saying paraphrase. Do you mean you're almost rewriting them? Rewriting, that's right, yes, yes. I do have an example here somewhere. Oh, yes. It might be helpful. It's not a very long one. I mean, most of them are very long.

The example, border areas near Kohima and in Oumphal expected to be attacked Monday becomes early next week attacks could be further west maybe Kohima area really yes so you that's a very very short one okay so you would you'd you would look at a a message from a japanese japanese field commander it said right we're moving we're going to go and attack in final kahima and you would set your decision as to what you wrote and sort of make it all subtle and suggestive and that's that's a very serious job. It was, yes, and I did that in the Pentagon as well. Only a short time, of course, because this was, I went out after the war in Europe finished and the atomic bombs dropped in August, August the 9th, I think.

And so that was it. That's all I had to do then. So why exactly do you have to paraphrase? Why can't you just send commanders in the field exactly what their Japanese opponent has written down and sent back to Tokyo? Well, the point of that was because we didn't want the Japs to know that we'd actually broken their codes. So if your message fell into the wrong hands, it would look like British intelligence sort of speculating. So if your message fell into the wrong hands, it would look like British intelligence sort of speculating? I guess so. But of course, again, being very junior and I was never given the full story, I was never able to follow it through. Did any of those messages that came across your desk at that late stage of the war give you real pause for thought and think, oh, there are men and people out there on those battlefields in the most terrible conditions?

Did any of those messages really arrest you? Well, no, because we didn't know very much about it. There were not news reports in the way that we have them today. We had very, very little information, certainly at my level. How did the male officers, the senior male staff staff how did they treat you women did they look on you as equals or was there a yes a tremendous esprit de corps it's very good very good indeed i don't remember any ill feeling between the men and the women we all worked together very amicably and at the end towards the end of the war being sent to the the Pentagon, I mean, that must have been extraordinary, that order to receive. That was something else, especially as there'd been a mix-up in the movement order.

I should have gone on a ship and the officer in Radnor Place, which was the area where you were sent here, there or everywhere, she'd gone on leave and hadn't opened the movement instruction for me, so I missed the boat. And I rang my boss in Block F and said, I'm still sitting here. So he sent me back to the war office, and they organized for me to go on a flying boat from Pool Harbor, which went to Ireland and then to Newfoundland and then down to baltimore took 22 hours to get there how old were you at that stage oh gosh well i was born in 23 this was 41 i was 18 19 so did you feel that you and your female colleagues were advancing the cause of women. Was there anything like that going on in your head,

or did you just, you just felt there was a job to do? Well, that's right. I think we accepted it because there was a war on, and this is what we had to do. Was there a pride, perhaps, that women could do jobs that previously had been sort of reserved for male intelligence officers? I'm sorry, that's a subject I really don't know anything about. Because, you see, I was only growing up in the country

and then joining up when I was, I've just lost track of how old I was. Yes, no, I was too young and inexperienced to know anything about the rest of the employment situation. And then where were you when the war ended? VJ Day, where were you? VJ Day, I was in Washington. And that was noisy. And the dropping of the atomic bomb, of course,

came as a total shock to you. Did you learn about it through your work or did you just hear about it on the wireless? No, I heard about it through an office in... I had moved from the Pentagon after my job was over and I went into British Army, no the British Joint Services Mission Office near the White House. I was with one of the staff who was Commander Dennison's daughter and she said, she told me that it was about to happen rather secretly. I didn't know it was going to to happen so you knew before the bomb was dropped

you knew it's going to happen i did actually yes and then did you when when japan surrendered did you all pile out onto the mall yes indeed and the residents of washington fixed their car horns for 24 hours you have never heard such a cacophony in all your life. And then we all went out and clung to the railings of the White House, shouting, we want Harry. Harry is Truman. Absolutely crazy. And the other interesting thing was that, while there wasn't much food rationing,

there was a certain amount of meat rationing, and suddenly the meat appeared. We think it had been saved up for the end of the war. You're talking about it now, you have clearly some fond memories. I mean, did you enjoy your wartime service? Oh yes, I did very much because having been tucked away in the country for so many years and not meeting an awful lot of people. It was a real joy for me meeting different people

and interacting with them. I really enjoyed it. Did you lose, I mean, did you think about those in your generation, men, women, civilians, who had different experiences and suffered on the battlefield or on the home front? I mean, did you have friends and cousins and in your wider network yes indeed i mean most most of my family at age they were they were in one of the services or others and quite we have quite a few regular army officers in the family so yes sorry i've lost no so so and did they all come back unscathed

yes they did yeah they did yes it was the first world war ones who didn all come back unscathed yes they did yeah they did yes it was the first world war ones who didn't come back unscathed no second world war they did fortunately yes i just well i've got you mentioned the first world war did you do you remember people in the 1920s from your younger days do you remember the first world war veterans particularly well i remember two uncles of mine and one of them was at gallipoli and had nightmares forever yes i remember that very clearly and after the war what what chair how did your life go differently so but how it might have done had you stayed up there and uh in shropshire um i would become a cabbage i think but um no it sounds awful to say this, but the war was good for me because it made me

interact with other people much more, which I wouldn't have done otherwise. And yes, and I found being out in the world very interesting. And I stayed out in the world. You stayed working after the war? Yes, I did. Well, I went home for a bit, as we all did, I think. I had to wait until February 46 before the mob group came up. And then I went home for a while. And the big difficulty was then prospective interviewers couldn't understand why you couldn't tell them what you were doing. Now, a lot of people have felt this, especially men. You weren't able to say, and people didn't understand. Was it a bit of an anti-climax?

I mean, you'd been in Washington DC, you'd heard about nuclear bombs getting dropped, but you'd stood on the railings of the White House and suddenly you're back looking for a job? A bit tame, yes. But I was lucky because I went back to Richard's Castle, which was near Ludlow, and the head of Ludlow

Grammar School was also a former Bletchley person. So we just looked at each other, said nothing, and he gave me a job. Yes, people can't understand that, but we never discussed it between, you know, I remember bumping into my Block F boss, who was a civilian actually, but I was in Cheltenham for some reason and I spotted him in a restaurant and he just nodded. He said, I thought it was you. And that was it. You see, the secrecy was still very much with us.

What was it like finally being able to talk about it in the 1970s? Yes, it was very strange. I was working in Birmingham at that time and out at lunchtime and there was another Bletchley person across the road. I didn't know her name. I just knew her by sight. And she said, it's out. I said, what's out?

She said, we can talk. I said, oh, bye. And, you know, I didn't. I didn't want to. It was years before I actually opened up. It wasn't until somebody suggested that I should give talks that I realised that I must dig into my memory and start talking, which I did,

and I've been giving talks ever since. And you've met royalty and been decorated for those talks. Well, no, yes, I've met most and been decorated for those talks. Well, no, yes, I've met most royalty actually, but that's another story. The citation when I had my MB simply said, for remembering and furthering the work of Bletchley Park, which is what I do all the time now. I always keep leaflets in my handbag. And you always go back to the reunions, don't you?

I always go back to reunions and many other times when I'm free to do so. Take people down and... Yes. They can take me down one day. I'd love that. Okay, will do. Thank you very much indeed.

Oh, thank you. I feel we have the history on our shoulders. All this tradition of ours, our school history, our songs, this part of the history of our country, all were gone and finished. I've got just a quick message at the end of this podcast. I'm currently sheltering in a small windswept building on a piece of rock in the Bristol Channel called Lundy. I'm here to make a podcast.

I'm here enduring weather that frankly is apocalyptic because I want to get some great podcast material for you guys. In return, I've got a little tiny favour to ask. If you could go to wherever you get your podcasts, if you could give it a five-star rating, if you could share it, if you could give it a review, I'd really appreciate that. Then from the comfort of your own homes, you'll be doing me a massive favour. Then more people will listen to the podcast, we can do more and more ambitious things, and I can spend more of my time getting pummeled. Thank you.