Betty Hollingberry honoured for vital wartime secret Enigma work

Oct 23 2009 by Barry Gibson, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

The code-breakers played a vital part in the war effort, particularly in the Atlantic.

Betty said: “There was a time when we were starving because the food ships from America were being sunk by German submarine packs. We had to break those codes, which we did, and gradually our ships were able to destroy the U-boats.”

But some of the information uncovered by the code-breakers was deliberately not used.

Betty said: “It all had to be done discreetly because the Germans would have smelled a rat if we were always ready for them.

“We knew about the plan to bomb Coventry, but we were told that nothing could be done. The Government felt that, if we had planes ready to defend Coventry, the Germans would have smelled a rat.”

Betty and her comrades didn’t talk about their work while off-duty. She said: “When I went to London I never spoke about it.”

She left Eastcote when the war ended in August 1945 – a few months after she had married her sailor husband Ronald.

Betty said: “I signed the Official Secrets Act. We were told not to talk about it. In those days if you were told to do something, you didn’t argue.

“Whenever my husband asked me about my wartime service I just told him I did special duties.”

The existence of the Bletchley Park code-breaking operation was only officially revealed in 1975.