'Like most old people, I frequently go upstairs and then can't remember what I went up for,' says 81-year-old Alice Bridgewater. 'But my memory of the time in the FANY is very clear indeed.'

And it has needed to be. Alice has borne an enforced silence for more than 50 years, constrained by the Official Secrets Act from talking widely about her wartime exploits.

But a history of the disingenuously named First Aid Nursing Yeomanry published this year has lifted the lid off the organisation and freed Alice to talk about her own experiences.

Alice was a young woman when war broke out and with no particular training found herself as an RAF driver in Scotland. She didn't find that very exciting despite the parties and poker. So she joined the FANY, which promised to be a great deal more interesting than driving buses, and offered the opportunity to go abroad.

The FANY was conceived as a battlefield ambulance service during Kitchener's 1890s Sudan campaign, coming into existence in 1907. Until then soldiers left injured on the battlefield could not expect to receive treatment for their wounds nor to be evacuated afterwards.

Threatened with dissolution, defiant Great War FANY veterans formed the 'Free FANY' — willing to be sent anywhere and undertake any job. They were ideal for the purposes of the newly-formed Special Operations Executive (SOE), a clandestine organisation working to support resistance movements in occupied countries, and the forerunner to today's secret services.

Alice's first week was spent in London learning how to be a coder.

'I can't remember why it took a week because it was something that could be learnt in ten minutes flat,' she says. 'Then I was sent to a large house near Banbury and here we had to learn how to be good FANYs.'

This involved route marches, square bashing and exams, and those who did well were offered work at SOE HQ in Baker Street. Alice turned that down preferring to go abroad.

'It was a decision I really regretted later on!' she says.

Alice was posted to Buckinghamshire.

'Everything was so hush-hush we weren't even allowed to tell our families where we were.

'I enjoyed the work and I liked the girls I was with, but apart from that it was a horror story. The food was dreadful, the beds were wooden slats with an inch of horse hair mattress on top — and when it rained the place was a sea of mud and worst of all there was absolutely nothing to do.'

Alice excelled at de-coding 'indecipherables' — garbled messages sometimes sent by agents operating under immense pressure.

It was a great challenge, but also quite harrowing as many agents were captured, tortured and killed.

Alice's skills meant an overseas posting was unlikely and she was regretting turning down the Baker Street job.

'I got so depressed I started a poker school. It didn't go down too well and it might be a coincidence, but I was asked if I wanted to go to Cairo,' she said

Within three days Alice found herself in Egypt — 'It was absolute heaven, really lovely,' she recalls.

Egypt wasn't at war and the SOE used the country as a base to run agents in North Africa. Alice was back doing indecipherables, partying, racing, exploring the Middle East and mixing with royalty in the shape of the Saudi king.

'He told me he was very pleased to meet such an 'exquisite flower of English womanhood' — I weakly said I was pleased to meet him too. Perhaps I didn't play my cards right — there was no invitation to torrid Arabian nights, followed by lavish gifts of expensive jewellery, or perhaps he just preferred boys,' she says.

'It was really a dream world and sometimes it was hard to remember what was going on in Europe.'

By April Alice had followed some of her FANY friends to Italy and taken up residence near Bari, from where the SOE ran agents in Greece, Albania and Yugoslavia, organising partisan groups and supplying them with weapons.

SOE was now using a more secure code — 'one time letter pads' so there were no more indecipherables, but the girls were much closer to the war and were able to meet other SOE people.

'There were some very strange outfits, with very strange names. The commandos were probably the most orthodox. I don't remember what they all were, except for the SBS — the Special Boat Service, I got to know quite a lot of them. And then there were our own agents who periodically came back and then disappeared again, re-emerging about ten days later, red-eyed, dirty and unshaven.

'It was good meeting people who had previously only been known to you by a code name, but I lost a lot of good friends.'

Being closer to the war also brought personal danger. At various times Alice was bombed and torpedoed, and the girls had to work 'like stink', but it was very different to Britain.

'The sun shone, the sea was warm and there seemed to be very few rules — I had a boyfriend who commanded an MTB (Motor Torpedo Boat). He took me out on this and I steered it, quite successfully I thought until he showed me the wake — a line of s-bends.'

Alice seems to have had a string of admirers. One, a Commando Brigadier called Tom, had a permanent room with a bath at the Hotel Imperiale. Alice and the girls were able to use the room when he was on a raid, since the villas they lived in were rather primitive and lacked hot water.

He also put his staff car and driver at her disposal for a trip to Rome when she and some friends managed to get leave.

By then Italy was opening up again and Alice was able to go to the Opera at Naples, visit Pompeii and even meet the Pope.

The war ended the next Spring and the operation was moved to Sienna.

Alice narrowly avoided death when she was posted. Her aeroplane seat was requisitioned for someone with a higher priority. It crashed with no survivors.

There was nothing to do in Sienna, so Alice took more leave and visited Venice and Naples before returning to London to be de-mobbed.

Many of the girls were encouraged to make a career in the FANY.

'No one suggested it to me! but I have to say I was in constant trouble for having my hair on my shoulders — a crime second only to treason. I was very lucky to have had the opportunity to do all that. It was hard work and tiring, partly our own fault, but very interesting and I wouldn't have missed it for the world.'

Alice moved to Germany after the war. She joined the 'Malcolm Clubs' organisation, which provided entertainment for the RAF, as an accountant.

'The whole of the BAOR (British Army of the Rhine) was operating on the black market. The main currency was cigarettes. I think 20 cigarettes cost us the equivalent of one shilling in marks and a single cigarette could be sold for two shillings and six pence, so a packet was worth £2.10s.'

Alice's pay at that time was £3.10s a week — but no one drew their wages.

When this practice was eventually stamped out takings at the club dropped ten-fold.

She also attended the Ravensbrück concentration camp trials. Ravensbrück was the only all-women camp.

'They were absolutely horrendous and it really brought it home to me what would have happened to us if we'd lost the war, more than it did in the war,' she says.

'We were fighting with our backs to the wall and it was ten years out of our lives. The past shouldn't be forgotten or played down — my generation and my father's generation in the Great War had a very hard time of it.'

Alice married Alec, a cavalry officer, in Germany, where they lived until he was posted back to England in 1951.

'Compared with most people I had been very lucky in those ten years. There had been bad times and sad times and a few very frightening times, but never boring times.'