She was born Eileen Marion Jessop in Alexandria, Egypt, the second of four children of Albert Jessop, an Irishman, and the director of Barclays Bank DCO, her mother Muriel was English.
Soon she met an RAF officer, Squadron Leader Andrew Combe, whom she married in 1939, just months before the beginning of the Second World War; subsequently she travelled to London and America with him, and lastly to Iraq,[REF] and had a son and four daughters.