Brenda Lang, Wren at Bletchley who decoded messages on submarine and ship movements

Yahoo

01-04-2025

Brenda Lang, who has died aged 100, was a codebreaker at Bletchley Park from 1943 to 1945.
Having joined the Wrens (Women's Royal Naval Service) from school, she was selected – along with her identical twin sister, Naida – for possible deployment to Station X (as Bletchley was then referred to). The interviewer told her it was important and secret work: 'It's also nowhere near the sea, you won't get any promotion and you won't see many sailors.'
Owing to the Official Secrets Act, years later even her future husband did not knew what she had done during the war. But in old age Lang recalled some of her routine work. 'The submarines and [Admiral] Donitz was my particular thing. Most of it was boring: 'To so-and-so. Your wife has given birth to a baby girl. Heil Hitler.' '
The interesting work might involve tracing specialist technicians being posted from Paris to Brest, so a deduction could be made that a major German ship was in port and there was an opportunity to attack it.
Brenda Lang's time at Bletchley was enlivened by the informality of the place, the inspirational boss of the Naval Section being Frank Birch, an Old Etonian and West End stage actor noted for his Widow Twankey. Her time was enhanced by having a sister as a co-worker on the same watch, both living (because they were Wrens) at Woburn Abbey, a cushy billet where there were revues, dances, and off-duty jaunts on bicycles to drink cider in local pubs.
In 1945 Brenda Lang was relocated to Ceylon, where she looked after liberated prisoners from the war in Japan. These broken, emaciated young men worried that they would never get a date once they got home. Lang instilled in them a rosier assessment of their future love lives, saying: 'Look, you are a returning hero and there'll be a ravening horde of girls waiting to catch any man who's still alive.'
Her duties in Ceylon involved finding and rerouting mail to widely dispersed servicemen from their mothers, wives and sweethearts. A girl in the Land Army wrote a love letter to a man: 'I've never done this before but I promised at that dance I would write to you. But if you don't reply I'll know it was just a passing thing…' Lang pinned the letter to the wall, writing above it: 'This man must be found!'
Brenda Lang, née Bentley, was born on February 26 1924. Her father, Frank, a teacher, who had won the Military Cross in the First World War, had moved to a post in Nottinghamshire where the twins went to school at Long Eaton.
Demobbed in 1946, Brenda and Naida took up deferred places at Cambridge. It was university policy to separate twins, so Brenda went to Newnham College to read English and her sister Naida to Girton. Being identical twins caused inevitable confusion.
Armed with vouchers for civilian clothing, Brenda picked out a nice dress in a local shop and got an odd look from the assistant, who explained that she was a bit surprised – 'because you bought the same dress yesterday.'
She captained the university women's cricket XI (Naida kept wicket) attended lectures by FR Leavis, and took a shine to a good-looking South African student reading law, John Lang. Her mother could not believe she had picked a 'foreigner', given the legion of Englishmen she had known at Bletchley. But in 1951 the couple went to Pretoria, where they married, and then raised a family in Johannesburg.
A Presbyterian lawyer very involved in the anti-apartheid movement, John Lang became part of a circle with Nelson Mandela, Joe Slovo and Ruth First. He was jailed twice. Brenda kept the fort at home with calm courage. She joined the Black Sash movement of white ladies, who conspicuously opposed the Pass Laws and the apparatus of apartheid.
When life in South Africa became impossible, the family moved to London. They moved back to Africa, to Nairobi, in 1968. After her husband's death in 1996, Brenda Lang lived with her widowed twin in north Oxford for the best part of 30 years.
The pair shared a bed, did crossword puzzles and shared an enthusiasm for watching televised cricket, tennis and heavy-weight boxing. She outlived her twin by seven months. She is survived by her children, Simon, Jonathan and Hilary.
Brenda Lang, born February 26 1924, died February 14 2025
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