A FORMER radiographer who lived in the Netherlands and Africa before moving to Dorset 38 years ago celebrated her 100th birthday with her family and friends.
Joyce van der Graaf was born in Herfordshire and trained and worked in London before being evacuated at the beginning of the second World War. She remembers watching the V1 and V2 flying bombs going over her family home in Watford.
She met her husband-to-be, Andrew, who was Dutch, on holiday in Switzerland in 1937. After the war, Joyce went over to the Netherlands to x-ray soldiers who had been in forced labour in Germany and Jews who had survived the concentration camps.
She and Andrew married in 1946 and spent their early married life in Amsterdam. They moved to Angola in 1950 with their son and daughter and spent three years in South Africa before settling in St Leonards in 1974.
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