When innocent 18-year-old Jill Darby met dashing Euan Black on holiday in Scotland in the ‘60s she could not help falling for him.

But as an aspiring teacher she ‘hadn’t a clue’ about the life she was signing up for as their romance blossomed and she found herself married to an RAF pilot just before he was posted to Germany.

“He didn’t fancy going without me, so he says,” she laughs. “I knew he was in the airforce and that was it and we learned as we went along.”

The Harpenden grandmother talks about how young love quickly gave way to a sobering hit of reality in her new book Living in the Slipstream, which she has compiled with two friends who also had husbands in the forces.

The book brings together the sometimes funny, sometimes sad experiences of more than 60 RAF wives and has a forward by the Duchess of Cambridge.

Recalling the start of her airforce ‘career’ Jill says: “We left here on New Year’s Day and all we had was a Beetle with a trunk on top and we drove to Germany without a home to live in as we didn’t qualify for quarters as you had to be 25 to be recognised as married.

“There were no telephones really so we could only phone back home once a week and when we arrived my husband was called off to an exercise and disappeared.”

Over the next 46 years, Jill would follow Euan as he was posted to Scotland, Canada and back to Germany, and cope with moving house 26 times while raising their two children, Scott and Kate and juggling her growing responsibilities as an officer’s wife.

She says in the ‘70s Euan was being paid less than a London bus driver so she had to find teaching jobs where she could, but her career was ‘definitely secondary’.

The volunteer with Macmillan Cancer Support in Harpenden, watched as Euan flew the first aircraft into the Gulf conflict and when asked how she coped says: “It’s frightening, very frightening, especially when they are flying the fastest jets. At one time we lost three aircraft and four crew in six months.

“When you are lying at home at night waiting for them to come home you can’t help but think bad things and in those days there were no mobile phones.”

The 68-year-old says: “One of the hardest parts was standing on the doorstep with him in the middle of the night to break the news that someone’s husband had been killed.

“I would have to go in to do the mop up. It was awful and the one thing we dreaded, was seeing the official car driving around the quarters.”

Euan eventually left the air force in 1999 and then worked for the National Air Traffic before retiring, but the couple have stayed close to several other RAF families. It was while holidaying with Alison Bairsto and Holly Jeffers and their husbands that the idea for the book was born.

“We were sharing stories one evening and we realised some were very funny and perhaps had the makings of a book,” says Jill.

“I think we realised it is perhaps a bygone era we were remembering, back in the ‘50s and ‘60s when the Cold War was still on. Things are very different now.”

Available now on Amazon with 100 per cent of the authors’ profits shared equally between the Royal Air Forces Association and the RAF Benevolent Fund.