A TINTAGEL pensioner has become one of the first in the country to be honoured for her work for the secret service during World War Two.

Penny Mendoza, 85, has been awarded the Bletchley Park Comme­morative Badge for helping decipher German codes.

Mrs Mendoza was part of the Government Code and Cypher School which helped crack the Enigma and Tunny codes.

Veterans no longer alive will be commemorated on a Roll of Honour.

A secret army of 9,000 from across Britain were recruited to help crack the German ciphers.

Mrs Mendoza, a former Wren, said: "It was a secret job. We had to sign that we would never speak of it for 30 years and I don't think anybody ever broke it because no one ever knew about it.

"It was rather hard having to keep that secret, because my parents didn't know what I was doing and my father never found out."

Winston Churchill described the work done by the secret army as: "The geese that laid the golden egg and never cackled."

At the end of the war the enigma machines were dismantled and Mrs Mendoza was told that the machines had been sunk in the ocean.