At the outbreak of the Second World War Jacques became a nurse in the VAD; she served in a mobile unit in London, attending bombed sites during the Blitz. After a reorganisation in the VAD, Jacques sought new work and, in the summer of 1943, she became a welder in a factory in north London, a job that lasted until the end of the year. Around this time she became romantically involved with an American soldier, Major Charles Kearney. Jacques later claimed that the pair had been engaged and that Kearney had been killed in action, although her biographer, Andy Merriman, discovered that Kearney had a wife and children in the United States when he had proposed to Jacques, and had returned to them after the war.
At the outbreak of the Second World War Jacques became a nurse in the VAD; she served in a mobile unit in London, attending bombed sites during the Blitz After a reorganisation in the VAD, Jacques sought new work and, in the summer of 1943 she became a welder in a factory in north London, a job that lasted until the end of the year. Around this time she became romantically involved with an American soldier, Major Charles Kearney. Jacques later claimed that the pair had been engaged and that Kearney had been killed in action, although her biographer Andy Merriman, discovered that Kearney had a wife and children in the United States when he had proposed to Jacques, and had returned to them after the war.