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On many past Veterans Days, Joann Schlaeppi had to keep her mouth shut and let the boys tell their World War II adventure stories.

It's one of the most important holidays we have. Honor a vet at the new Debatables blog.

She, too, was a vet, a wartime member of England's Women's Auxiliary Territorial Service.

But in 1943, she signed a paper pledging never to discuss what she did in the war.

"I didn't even tell my husband for years," says Schlaeppi, 85, her British accent still keen after 55 years in America, most spent in the Greensboro area. She and her husband, Fernand, now live at the WellSpring retirement center.

She was finally able to talk in the 1970s, when the British made details public about "Ultra" and its famous Enigma decoding machine. Ultra was a joint-U.S.-

British intelligence gathering operation that cracked German war codes. The Brits have made a museum where most of the work was done: Bletchley Park.

Some 12,000 people — mathematicians, chess and crossword puzzle experts, and geniuses, as Schlaeppi calls them — worked at Bletchley's mansion and in huts on the vast grounds.

She doesn't include herself among the geniuses. She trained at Bletchley and then went to listening posts elsewhere. Wearing earphones, she intercepted and jotted down radio German messages sent in cryptic Morse code.

Motorcycle couriers rushed the dots and dashes to Bletchley Park for decoding.

Schlaeppi had grown up in London. When German bombing began in 1939, her family moved to the outskirts, but that was no escape. The neighborhood became "Bomb Alley." Enemy planes blasted as they approached London.

She spent nights in air raid shelters. Homes and buildings around her were destroyed. Mass transit was disrupted. She and others walked long distances to work. Death, injury and the homeless were everywhere.

She finished high school at a time when only bright students attended and got a good government job handling pensions for war widows. Schlaeppi divided her time between the building's air raid shelter and her desk.

"It was a nightmare,'' she says. "It was frightening and memorable."

She never felt hopeless, however. Like others, she drew inspiration from Great Britain's leader, Winston Churchill.

Deciding she wasn't doing enough for the war, Schlaeppi joined the military and was chosen to train at Bletchley Park before going to listening posts.

"It was very special work,'' Schlaeppi says. "If one made a mistake, they were unable to decode a message."

She got it right. Brainy Brits and Americans broke the codes that virtually stopped German U-boat attacks in the Atlantic. The code-breakers eventually duplicated Germany's encoding device, the Enigma machine.

Also, an Englishman created Collossus, the first digital computer. Breaking codes quickly, Collossus proved vital to D-Day's success.

Slackers needed not apply for Schlaeppi's unit.

"We were so dedicated,'' she says. "It was such a big responsibility. Churchill was really afraid that until we broke the Enigma code that Britain would lose the war and we would starve in a month."

After the war, Schlaeppi's military benefits paid for college. She taught school but continued spying. The Brits gave her a special radio to intercept messages from a new enemy: Russia. She sealed her reports each morning in envelopes with a funny address and slid them into one of those charming red British mailboxes.

In 1948, sailing to America to see a wartime friend, she met and fell in love with her future husband, Fernand Schlaeppi, a Swiss businessman.

After they married in 1950, his company sent them to North America. After many moves, they came to High Point in 1973. They had three children and became naturalized Americans.

Once free to discuss her war work, Schlaeppi joined a group of High Point women in 2005 in writing "Memoirs from Forward-Looking Women" about episodes in their lives.

In 2006, the British sent her a tangible reminder of her war service: a pin topped with the crown and inscribed, "Bletchley Park, WWII, veteran."

The pin came with a letter of thanks from the park museum director and the Duke of Kent, along with a lifetime museum pass.

She has been back and is delighted that the grounds feature the American Trail, a tribute to the United States' war help. The trail has each state's tree and flower, including the Tar Heel pine and dogwood.

She has been featured in the WellSpring newsletter and has spoken to college classes. She recognizes the importance of spying. Still, she fears the U.S. Patriot Act may be excessive.

"You don't know how far it goes," she says. "It's not necessary to interrupt telephone calls from someone who has nothing to do with the war. I wouldn't like to feel this room was bugged."

Make no mistake, though. She's now proudly a Yank but also remains proud of the contribution she made while she was British.

"We had a definite mission,'' she says. "We live in such a different world now."

Contact Jim Schlosser at 373-7081 or jschlosser@news-record.com