A TEENAGER played a daring prank on Burtonwood airbase bosses and began a double life to be close to the American GI she loved.

Teresa Smith, who was smitten with an airman based at RAF Burtonwood, cropped her long blonde hair, donned a uniform and bet her pals she could walk around the base undetected.

A cutting from The American Weekly newspaper revealed how she adopted the name Terry and became a room orderly at the base after she was sacked from her job in a nurse's home. She sneaked onto the base and the deception began.

Teresa told the paper: "As soon as I was sacked I returned to the base and got through a back entrance.

"Then I went straight to hut No. 253 where they all knew me and I sat on a locker and joined them in a game of cards.

"I had the devil in me then and I was wild."

Teresa's dare was discovered after a week and she was escorted off the base, but she soon returned and lived there, undetected, for six months until she split up with her fiance. In that time she became good friends with the American airmen, even covering for them when they were absent from roll calls.

Despite the broken engagement she went on to marry another GI, Corporal James Garfield Viars, and made plans to move to Ohio.

She told her story to the American newspaper in 1954, four years after the escapade, and her tale has become a legend more than 40 years on.

The Burtonwood Association, an international organisation made up of men and women who served at RAF Burtonwood, received the newspaper cutting and are desperate to trace Teresa.

Anyone with any information should contact association secretary Ian Murphy on 229898.

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