"SHE was a proper devil," laughs old soldier, Eddie Straight, as he recalls his time with the 14-year-old future queen. "But she made me laugh...I liked her."

Mr Straight, 94, is chatting in his care home in Saltburn and is full of smiles as he recounts his memories of unrationed food in Buckingham Palace and fishing with the royal entourage in Scotland to lighten his darker recollections of the Second World War,

Not that there wasn't some difficult times in that period in late 1940 and early 1941 when Mr Straight, then a 20-year-old railwayman's son, was called up and sent to London during the blitz when German bombs rained on the capital night after night.

The young soldier was ordered to work with 60 prisoners from Dartmoor Prison and save as many people from burning buildings as they could. "They were good lads," he says, "they were straight in and saved a lot of lives."

It was during this period that Mr Straight was stationed at Buckingham Palace with six other soldiers. It was a brief period of a few months and the episode is hard to verify, but Mr Straight's memory is detailed.

"They had shelters underneath the palace," he recalls, "but for me it was a a death trap. I thought there was only one get-out.

"But I later found out there was two more and was a bit happier about it. I didn't want to go (to Buckingham Palace), I thought it would all be la-di-da, but they were straightforward. And they treated you well. There was all the food and drink you needed."

Mr Straight's wide smile returns to his face when he recalls his encounters with Princess Elizabeth, even during the time when Buckingham Palace itself was attacked. "She was a proper little devil at first. She'd tittle off all over. I found her looking out the window (during the blitz.) She wasn't bothered about the bombs. I said. 'you'll get killed here,' and she just grinned. I had to pretend to kick her up the backside a few times to get her in the shelter.

"One time I said, 'you know what will happen to me if anything happens to you, I'll get shot. She said, 'you wouldn't, I wouldn't let them' and I had to tell her she wouldn't have much say about it. She was good as gold after that."

Mr Straight, who the future queen called 'strat' also remembers with others taking the princess up to North-West Scotland for a period of evacuation and has an idyllic memory of fishing in a loch with other members of the royal staff. He met the Queen at garden parties after the war. His last invite was in 2009 but his wife, Ina, was too ill to go and he stayed with her.

"Of course she had an aloofness later on," Mr Straight says of the Queen, "which is right and proper. But for me, I'll always think of her as this canny lass."

A film about Mr Straight's war, called Eddie Straight - To Hell & Back is being shown all day every day (except Mondays) at Dorman Museum Middlesbrough until June 28 and details his time with the princess as well as the liberation of Europe and the war in Burma. For more details go to pancrack.tv

A Royal Night Out tells the story of the then Princess Elizabeth and her sister Princess Elizabeth sneaking out to celebrate VE Day in 1945.