A Soldier's Wife

<p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Margaret Ford has lived a long and inspirational life. From humble beginnings in a terraced house in Blackburn in the 1920s she has witnessed nine decades of change and challenge in contemporary Britain.</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>She has also travelled the world and been part of an era that is now gone: army life in Britain's colonies the end of a mighty empire and the tensions of the Cold War.</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>After a chance meeting in Blackburn a whirlwind romance and an avalanche of impassioned letters Margaret married Jim Ford in 1947.</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Jim was a British Army veteran of one of the Second World War's most ferocious campaigns against the Japanese in Burma and fought at the legendary Battle of Imphal.</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>For six decades Margaret became an army wife in Africa Asia and Europe. But she also forged her own career in finance and voluntary service.</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Their marriage was full of fun and frolics but ended in sadness when Jim came back from service in Northern Ireland a broken man.</span></p>