Betty Webb

Charlotte Elizabeth “Betty” Webb, born on 13 May 1923 in West Midlands, England, was one of the last surviving women who worked at Bletchley Park during the Second World War. At the outbreak of the conflict, she was studying domestic sciences but quickly decided, along with her classmates, to contribute directly to the war effort. Fluent in German, thanks to her mother and a language exchange in Dresden at the age of 14, she was recruited into the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS), the women’s branch of the British Army. In October 1941, Webb was posted to Bletchley Park, the British codebreaking centre. Her initial work involved meticulously logging intercepted encrypted messages in the order they were received, a task requiring high concentration but minimal knowledge of the broader decoding efforts.

For security reasons, the work at Bletchley was compartmentalised, and she later recalled knowing “very vaguely” the true purpose of her tasks. Webb subsequently moved to paraphrasing decrypted Japanese communications, adapting the information into forms that would not alert the enemy to the breach of their codes. Her efficiency in this highly sensitive work led to her deployment in 1945 to the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., where she continued paraphrasing Japanese messages until the end of the war. Bound by the Official Secrets Act, Webb did not speak about her wartime role for decades, even to her family or close friends. After the war, she worked as a school secretary before rejoining the army in the 1960s, where she served in recruitment.

Freed from her oath of secrecy in the 1970s, Webb nevertheless remained discreet about her service until the 1990s, when Bletchley Park was transformed into a museum and she was invited to share her story. In her later years, she became an important witness to the vital contribution of the thousands of women at Bletchley, many of whom remained unknown to history. Betty Webb was appointed a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in 2015 and received the Légion d’honneur from France in 2021. She passed away on 31 March 2025 at the age of 101.