Hello and welcome to a new series of Family Stories, the podcast written by you, our

listeners.

This week's Family Stories take us from the unique morale-raising efforts of one of

the world's best-selling authors to the Crown Jewels, from the battle for the Pacific

to the struggle for survival in a prisoner of war camp.

We begin this week with this from Tracy Ridley.

I love Family Stories and I'm so pleased it's back.

This isn't so much a Family Story but is a connection with that famous author who liked

all things pink, Dame Barbara Carland.

The connection to her is via my granddad who was writing a book in the early 1990s about

the auxiliary territorial service, the ATS.

He himself had done his bit and was sent home after being wounded in Normandy.

He died suddenly in the 90s before he could finish the book.

After his death the book and all with it was stored in boxes in the family attic.

After so many years and because of my interest in history I adopted the boxes and found to

my delight in a ray of information about the ATS including correspondence between my granddad

and Winston Churchill's daughter Lady Mary Soames.

She had agreed to write the forward for his book.

That was impressive enough but I also found a small pink booklet tied up in Pink Ribbon

with a picture of a lady inside wearing her ATS uniform and three to four pages of

typewriter copy.

The lady was Barbara Carland and this is what she had to say about her time in the ATS.

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