Margaret Hitchcock runs a private kindergarten in Basra

Margaret Hitchcock, 55, moved to Iraq 35 years ago after marrying Adil al-Rahmani, a young Iraqi who was studying electrical engineering in her home town of Plymouth.

The couple had three children, her son Ehad, 35, who lives in Qatar, and daughters Mai, 31, and Lena, 27, who live a short distance from her home in the eastern suburbs of the city.

Today she runs a private kindergarten, and is a well-known figure on the streets of Basra.

And since last summer she has followed talk of an imminent war on BBC World Service radio.

I told them I was Margaret from Plymouth, I've still got a bit of a Plymouth accent and I don't think they could believe what they were hearing Margaret Hitchcock

"It was really only a couple of weeks before the bombing started that I knew the war was for real," she said.

"It was when I heard that Britain was sending a hospital ship to the Gulf. I couldn't believe it, none of us could understand it.

"Britain and America are so powerful, their military equipment was so much better than Iraq's, it was so obvious it was going to be a massacre.

"When the bombing started I spent every night in my strong room, a room in my house with steel walls that was built during the Iran-Iraq war. Everyone had one.

The first British soldier she saw was a Royal Marine in the middle of the night.

"They had just entered the city and I could see them from my window crouching behind a corner at the top of my road.

"I went out of my house and up to them and told them I was Margaret from Plymouth, which is where they are based funnily enough. "

Margaret met her husband while he was in Plymouth in the 1960s

"I've still got a bit of a Plymouth accent, and I don't think they could believe what they were hearing."

She has been offering whatever help she can to the British troops patrolling the streets of Basra, and has been acting as an interpreter for the officers of 42 Commando of the Royal Marines.

When her husband died 18 months ago, at the age of 62, she decided against returning to Devon.

And even now the city has been liberated, Margaret said she is still in no rush to return.

"I have some family in England of course, and I am desperate to see my mother one last time.

" But what else does England really hold for me? I don't have any friends there any more, and no home to live in.

"But at the same time, and especially now the British have invaded Iraq, I don't feel very comfortable here either.

"All I want is a quiet, peaceful life. That is what most of the people here are praying for, and that's what they deserve."