Breathe
By Pamela Sandoval
Betty Webb died at the age of 101, and with her goes another piece of the 20th century that is so hard for us to look at honestly. She did not die a celebrity, nor a politician, nor an influencer with millions of followers. She died a woman who, from the imposed anonymity, helped change the course of world history by deciphering Nazi and Japanese messages while the whole world was unaware of her existence. She was part of the legendary Bletchley Park team - that place shrouded in secrets where enemy codes were broken - and later worked at the Pentagon during the darkest days of the war. And what did she do about it? She kept quiet. For decades. Because her country told her to, and because that was the way of the world: a woman served, obeyed and, above all, did not speak.
But before we move on, let's put it in context: what was Bletchley Park? It was neither a battlefield nor a trench, but it was, without exaggeration, one of the most decisive fronts of World War II. It was a mansion in Buckinghamshire, England, converted into the intelligence center where Axis military codes were deciphered. It was there that Enigma, the complex German cipher machine that protected Nazi communications, was broken. What was done at Bletchley was equivalent to reading the enemy's mind: knowing when and where they were going to attack, anticipating movements, saving lives without firing a single bullet. Alan Turing is the best known name in the place, for his mathematical genius and his tragic end, but Bletchley Park was not the work of one man. It was an operation of thousands of people, and more than 70% were women. Women like Betty.
Betty's story is uncomfortable because it reminds us of everything we don't want to accept about women in war. We like the narrative of the soldier returning decorated, the masculine epic of the battlefield. But what do we make of the women who also fought, only from dark desks, breaking codes and carrying the weight of a secret they couldn't even tell their mother? Betty was drafted at the age of 18. She spoke German because her mother taught it to her, and rather than stay making "sausage rolls," as she said with fine irony, she decided she had to serve her country. He went to Bletchley without even knowing what the place was. No one explained anything to him. They read him the Official Secrets Act and that was it. From then on, his life was no longer his own.
After the Allied victory in Europe, Betty was sent to the Pentagon to decipher Japanese messages. She was the only woman in her unit to receive such an assignment. How did her country repay such an honor? By making her invisible. When she returned to England, she sought work like any other post-war woman, but she could not explain what she had worked on. How do you convince a headmaster that you are competent if you can't tell his most important experience? She succeeded because another woman, also ex-Bletchley, was there. Another Betty who could read between the lines.
Today they celebrate her with posthumous honors, with tweets from historians and institutional tributes. She was awarded the French Legion of Honor. They invited her to the coronation of Charles III. They took her back to Bletchley to celebrate her 100th birthday with a Lancaster bomber flyover. All very symbolic, all very nice. But isn't this recognition too late, and isn't it also a fancy way of evading the central question? Because Betty Webb represents all the women who did the heavy, silent, essential work, and were treated as if they were nothing. The ones who didn't fit into the war hero narrative. The ones who held the story in secret.
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