The Second World War was a difficult time for most. Harold Heard was a despatch rider, speeding through pitch-black war zones to deliver messages, with the constant risk that an enemy sniper might use him for target practice or a bomb crater swallow him up. In 1940 he almost died at Dunkirk but survived to take part in some of the greatest post-D-Day battles. He joined up in 1939 as a fresh-faced youth but was demobbed with the lines of war etched on his embattled face. Back in England, though, his young wife was having a marvellous time. In a time of rationing and austerity, her diaries show an extraordinary social life, going out drinking, dancing or to the cinema most days. The war years may have been the best years of her life but were tinged with tragedy through the loss of a much-wanted baby girl whom she never forgot. The War Diary of a Despatch Rider's Wife is the true story of a young woman who thrived in dark circumstances on the home front while her husband lived in fear of death abroad.