By Nigel Tisdall. On June 30, , a Berkshire housewife, who had never been abroad, bundled her three small children into a six-year-old Hillman Minx saloon and embarked on a 4,mile drive to Baghdad.
In the weeks that followed she met a cavalcade of colourful characters, from a former U-boat captain to a brace of teenage striptease artistes, and almost died after skidding off a bridge and plunging 10ft into a ditch. I know all this because the woman involved, Mary Tisdall, then 31, was my mother, and the highlights of her trip, poignant and dramatic by turn, are recorded in a 22,word memoir and close to a hundred handwritten letters that she exchanged with my father, Billy, an RAF sergeant who had been posted to Iraq.
Seventy years later, their deep love for each other still shines out of every word and missive. Mary Tisdall with her children Roger, Susan and Bridget, aged seven, five and two in Jordan as part of their trek across the world to see her husband. The trusty six year-old Hillman Minx saloon in which Mary attempted to drive 4, miles to Baghdad.
A letter sent from Billy to his beloved wife who was in Berkshire until she plucked up the courage to make their journey to re-unite her family. In response, Mary — living in the tranquility of RAF White Waltham, just outside Maidenhead in Berkshire — signed off with 'all my love always and always and always' followed by a long line of kisses.
Ten months after Billy had left for his foreign posting, they could bear the separation no longer and she resolved to undertake her intrepid odyssey. Over the course of six weeks, the couple hatched a secret plan to reunite, which they called 'Operation Magic Carpet'.
