Mabel Dymond Peel

Mabel Dymond Peel (1879 – 1938) was an English codebreaker who served with the Hush WAACs during World War I.

Two of her siblings, Alice and Harold, had already joined the war effort as a British Red Cross nurse and an Australian Imperial Force chaplain respectively.

Within three months, she was approached by Military Intelligence GHQ, which was seeking women with German language skills to work as codebreakers and free up men to go to the front line.

[1][3][4] By September 1917, Peel and her fellow 'Hush WAACs' were stationed at Saint-Omer, France, close to the front line, without having been told what their work was going to be.

[1][5] When the office at Saint-Omer was endangered by German advance, Peel and her fellow WAACs moved to a new base at Le Touquet in April 1918.