A WAR artist whose work has been shown at the Pentagon has accepted a commission for a mural in New Zealand - just weeks before her 90th birthday.

Evelyn Cooke was seconded to the US army and spent two-and-a-half years in France following the liberation of Paris.

Now living in Blandford in a house adorned with her work and that of her husband Jerry Cromwell-Cooke, Evelyn was conscripted for war work.

She had plans to join the Land Army and drive a tractor but her art school training destined her for work as a technical draughtswoman - the only girl in a man's world.

Car engines sliced in half had to be drawn so accurately that pieces of other engines could be made from her work.

Then came the secondment and she left Jerry at the Air Ministry while she went to war in Paris.

"We were under curfew and we only had hot water for two hours a day," she said.

"We would rush home at lunch time, fill hot water bottles and wash in it the next day - it wasn't very romantic!

"We went six months with no stockings and no overcoats and it was cold.

"I swapped a drawing for an officer's overcoat."

On trips to the beauty salon, Evelyn vividly remembers someone in the cellar madly cycling to keep the generator going to work the hairdriers.

Her creative drawing was noticed by the US art director of Vogue - also a conscript - who commissioned her to do her first creative work for the army.

"She wanted all the fashion houses drawn from the outside - they weren't open yet - and sent back to the States," Evelyn said.

The work got decidedly more interesting after that - although she never saw any action, she was commissioned for pictures to go in military papers.

"They would tell me the story and I would illustrate it," she said.

Posters advertising gigs for stars coming over to entertain the troops followed. She met Marlene Dietrich and shared a lift with an unmade-up Ingrid Bergman, whom she described as "absolutely stunning with skin like honey".

Mickey Rooney was another - "We decided we looked like each other", she said.

Evelyn's work was exhibited at the Pentagon in 1944. The exhibition then travelled to New York and right round the US.

Back in Britain, Evelyn taught art at a college and pottery at a convent school while her husband lectured in the subject.

The marriage was extremely happy but Jerry died at the age of 65 and Evelyn moved to Dorset in 1983.

She celebrates her birthday on May 12. Meanwhile, the painting goes on.

"I would die if I didn't work," she said.

First published: May 6