Piccadilly Incident 1946

During an air-raid on Piccadilly in World War II, Chief Wren Diana Fraser, Anna Neagle who is on active duty with the Women’s Royal Naval Service, meets Captain Alan Pearson, Michael Wilding, a Royal Marines officer on sick leave after the evacuation from Dunkirk. He invites her for a drink at his house. They dance and fall in love. Impulsively, he proposes to her and they marry.

Alan is posted to North Africa and Diana to Singapore. As Singapore falls to the Japanese, she is evacuated, but the ship in which she is travelling is attacked and sunk, and all aboard are presumed drowned. However, she and four other passengers survive, including Bill Weston, Michael Laurence.

Two years later, they are rescued after their boat is spotted by an American aeroplane. Diana returns home to find that her husband has remarried to an American Red Cross nurse, Joan Draper, Frances Mercer and they have a son. She is devastated and flees the house after meeting the wife.

Later, Diana approaches Alan backstage at a Navy show. She tells him that their marriage meant little to her and that she has another man with whom she became involved when stranded on the island. Then, the theatre is bombed and both of them are wounded. Diana dies in hospital, just after Alan visits her and she confesses her lies and they again declare their love for each other.

Later, a judge, Reginald Owen, rules that Alan and Joan can remarry, but because they were not legally married at the time of the birth of their son, he will still legally be regarded as illegitimate.