During the Second World War thousands of Allied troops, including at least 10,000 Canadians, were billeted in Bournemouth, with many housed in requisitioned hotels.

Mrs Annie Cox ( nee Cardew ) who was a chambermaid in Bournemouth in the Great War, returned to the town from London to do hotel work just before war broke out for a second time.

In an autograph book she collected signatures, short poems and drawings of servicemen, many of them airmen, staying at the Madacas Hotel in Boscombe in 1941. She even had her picture taken with some of them.

Her grandson, Arthur Cox, who was born and brought up in Bournemouth, now owns the autograph book but knows little about who the servicemen were.

One entry is particularly intriguing. A page written in September 1941 has a poem dedicated to 'the men of the seventy third' with 25 signatures. Arthur thinks they could have been Canadian airmen.

Another entry mentions 'thousands of Yanks' turning the 'town upside down' but the Canadians also billeted here will 'stem the tide and keep it down side down'.

Annie lived in Victoria Road, Bournemouth, until 1955. She died in the early 1970s in a Basingstoke hospital.

Her son Cyril also served in the war with the RAF, serving and repairing Lancaster bombers at RAF Kermington, before moving to RAF Perthshire near Worcester where he met his wife Mary in 1943. After the war they settled in Bournemouth and Cyril worked on the railways. They had two children, Arthur and Susan.

Contact Echoes if you have any information on Canadian airmen and the 'men of the seventy third' or the Madacas Hotel.