Codebreaker Cecile Elaine Stout died aged 84 on Sunday but the World War II mathematician, who joined the British war machine to help break Nazi codes, leaves an "enigmatic" legacy.
Mrs Stout, who had retired to Featherston, was 18 when she joined the Imperial British Wrens in London in 1944. She was sent to the codecracking complex at Bletchley Park, where Britain's finest minds strove to crack codes generated by the German's U-Boat-cloaking Enigma machines.
She later said the posting was enabled by her life as a diplomat's daughter - her father was New Zealand's trade commissioner in Brussels when war broke out.
She had lived in Europe since she was a child and was fluent in several languages, bringing her to the attention of intelligence chiefs when she signed up as a cipher in 1944.
In 2001, a Mick Jagger-produced movie, Enigma, starring Kate Winslet, was released - the film premiered in Masterton in 2002 and Mrs Stout was there for what she suspected "might be a bit of a potboiler ... but that's all right; it's a film, not a documentary".
Before the screening, Mrs Stout spoke to a Times-Age journalist about her time at Bletchley Park, including the fact she had to keep her work secret from her husband and father until the decryption operation was declassified in the 1970s.
"I think it says a lot for the integrity of the people who worked there ... to keep something secret for so long speaks very highly."
The work done at Bletchley Park's Government Code and Cypher School, codenamed Ultra, is credited with shortening the war and saving many lives.
A celebration of Cecile Stout's life will be held in St John's Anglican Church, Fox St, Featherston, on Friday at 1.30pm.
Codebuster kept silent for 30 years
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