A 92-year-old code breaker from the Second World War has been given the highest French military honour.

Ruth Bourne of Green Bank, North Finchley, signed up to the Women’s Royal Naval Service (Wrens) when she was 18 in 1944 – last week, she was at the French Embassy in Kensington to receive the Legion d’Honneur.

The French government bestowed the honour to Ruth and several over ex-servicemen for their help in shortening the war.

Mrs Bourne worked alongside 1,800 other men and women to operate the bombe, an electro-mechanical device used to decipher German Enigma-machine-encrypted secret messages during World War II.

The bombe was created by the mathematical and computing pioneer, Alan Turing, in Bletchley Park near Milton Keynes in 1939.

Mrs Bourne said: “It was absolutely amazing to be at that wonderful ceremony in the beautiful French embassy.

“When I became an operator at Bletchley Park, I didn’t realise how difficult it was.

“You would have a tiny slit for windows and wouldn’t know whether it was night or day.

“When we were done with the war, we were all sworn to secrecy and I couldn’t tell anyone, not even my mum or dad – they died without knowing what I did.

“I think our generation of people just did what we were told.

“When the atomic bomb finally fell on Japan and the war ended, we had to hide the technology.

“We all looked at our time with the bombes as just another job.”

Mrs Bourne joined the codebreakers after studying German, French and Spanish and was recruited out of the Wrens – she wouldn’t know the significance of her job until 30 years later.

When the war ended, she was one of the Wrens responsible for dismantling the bombes wire by wire after the war had ended in 1945.

In all the Wrens dismantled five miles of wiring for each of the site’s 211 machines.