Author Description

Young, restless and stuck in a dead end job, Joan Rice longed for adventure. As WWII broke out, she enlisted in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force, hoping for the chance to see the world and 'swank around in uniform'.She started her life as a WAAF on a London airbase, then moved to a job in Intelligence and ultimately to postings in Eqypt and Palestine. She witnessed the 'phoney war' explode into battle of Britian, lived through the London Blitz, and was forced to flee Cairo by Hitler's advance.But her diary is the story of daily war life, and of a woman growing up amid the social whirl of service society. From the English countryside to the Eqyptian desert, Joan wrote of the young men and women caught up alongside her in the greatest war in history - and recorded her first encounters with the man who would become her husband.Written with flair and exuberance, Joan's diary is a compelling and personal account of life and love in the Second World War. Including additional material from her husband's own diary, Sand in My Shoes in a moving record of one woman's coming-of-age.