Bletchley - UPI
Queen Elizabeth II unveiled a memorial Friday to the top-secret British team that cracked German codes at Bletchley Park during World War II. The queen and her husband, Prince Philip, toured some of the surviving buildings at the estate in Buckinghamshire, The Sun reported. They also met some of the surviving codebreakers. "It is impossible to overstate the deep sense of admiration, gratitude and national debt that we owe to all those men and, especially, women," the queen said. Among those at Bletchley Park to meet Elizabeth were Sheila and Oliver Lawn, who both worked there during the war. Sheila was a language expert and Oliver a mathematician. The couple said that for decades after they met and married they were unable to discuss their Bletchley Park work. "It was wonderful in the Eighties to finally be able to talk to each other about what we had achieved in the war," Sheila Lawn said. "We are very proud of our work." The best-known Bletchley Park codebreaker, Alan Turing, took his own life in 1954 at 42 after an arrest for homosexuality. Turing was a computer pioneer and mathematician.