Extra - E34 - Captain Jerry Roberts MBE

Bletchley Park

History

4.8 • 177 Ratings

🗓️ 28 March 2014

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

March 2014

Captain Jerry Roberts MBE, one of Bletchley Park’s last Codebreakers, died this week at the age of 93.

Jerry was one of the original members of The Testery working on cracking Tunny, the German High Commands code, used by Hitler & his top Generals.

Their work warned the Russian’s of The Kursk Offensive, allowing them to defend until the Germans called off, what would be their last major offensive on the Eastern Front. Winston Churchill said “Stalingrad was the end of the beginning, but the Battle of Kursk was the beginning of the end”.

In this Bletchley Park Podcast Extra, we bring you the interview we recorded at Jerry’s home, in February 2013 after being awarded an MBE. It is followed a short interview Katherine recorded on the day he received his MBE from Her Majesty The Queen.

Sir John Scarlett KCMG OBE, Chairman, Bletchley Park Trust, paying tribute to Jerry said:

“Captain Jerry Roberts MBE was a true gentleman and - to the last days of his long life - an outstanding ambassador for Bletchley Park.

In World War 2 he was a key member of the team who deciphered the most secret communications of Hitler and his top commanders, work of incomparable importance for the outcome of the War.

Unfailingly modest about his own achievements, he was committed to the end to achieving recognition for the work of his colleagues and the contribution of all those who worked at Bletchley Park. He will be greatly missed.

Our thoughts are with his devoted wife, Mei."

#bletchleypark, #bpark, #tunny, #ww2, #jerryroberts #wonder88

Transcript

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0:00.0	The
0:07.0	The From the home of the co-breakers and the birthplace of modern computing, this is the Bletchley Park podcast.
0:37.3	In tribute to Captain Jerry Roberts, here's the interview he gave the Bletchley Park podcast in February 2013,
0:44.7	after hearing he'd been awarded the MBE in recognition of his tireless campaign to raise awareness of his colleagues' achievements.
0:52.5	Sir John Scarlett, Chairman of the Bletchley Park Trust,
0:55.4	has described Captain Roberts as a true gentleman who was unfailingly modest about his own
1:00.7	achievements.
1:07.9	This is ITV, you understand.
1:10.8	I have endless questions I'd like to ask you, so we'll just be... This is ITV, you understand. Yes.
1:15.4	I have endless questions I'd like to ask you, so I will just pick a few.
1:22.4	So let's go back to 2003 when information about Tani started to become declassified.
1:27.7	What made you sort of prick your ears up and realise things were changing and you would start to be able to tell the story?
1:28.4	Well, I was quite astonished because for all that length of time, I hadn't thought about
1:36.0	blessed to bark at all.
1:38.2	I hadn't crossed my mind.
1:40.7	It was just something that happened in the dim and distant past, almost as somebody else, you know.
1:46.3	Must have taken on a sense of unreality those war years, almost,
1:50.4	within the context of the rest of your career, because it was so unusual.
1:55.7	It was very special. The fact that you couldn't tell anybody about it, and the fact that from
2:03.1	what you'd seen you realised it was so confidential and so important, it was strange not
2:10.3	to be able to talk about it, and of course I didn't. In that year 2003, my wife May knew that I'd voted, Blessly Park, but I hadn't
2:22.8	told of what I'd vote on, and otherwise on Tanny. That was still classified, but until
	...

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