Your story – Heather Scott

Have you lived through any wars?

The second world war ended seven years before I was born and for most of my life there were conflicts around the world that our armed forces were involved in but most of them did not impact me in any way. However, I joined the WRAF in 1972 which was during the troubles with the IRA in Northern Ireland which started in 1969. Although I never served in Northrn Ireland and neither did my husband Andrew it did affect us in a few ways;  we were told emphatically not to hitch hike in uniform and after we were married I remember checking under the car for bombs was a regular thing as was being careful with opening any parcels that you did not know where they came from, which is one of the reasons why,ever since, when I send a parcel to someone I put my surname, housename and postcode on the back.

The first actual war that really impacted me was the first gulf war, the build up to it started in August 1990, when my sons Gareth and Greg were small, Andrew’s squadron all deployed to the middle east and he was away for about six months. Greg actually started school that September so his dad was away for that, it was the first Christmas that he had been away for since the boys were born so we spent it down in Wales at my sister’s, not necessarily a good idea.

The war itself didn’t actually start until the New Year, we knew it was coming and I made sure that I didn’t listen to the news before taking the boys to school in the mornings just so that we a happy start but, unfortunately, the morning after it started Andrew’s mother thought that it would be a good idea to phone me up before taking the boys to school so that she could tell me, the last thing that I wanted. I don’t think it affected Greg too much but Gareth was that little bit older and knew what was going on especially as teachers in their school talked about it. Unfortunately they were the only children in the school that had a parent involved in the war, it was not an RAF school, and therefore did not really understand or maybe realise that they should be protecting them from talk about it. I did my best to keep them from seeing anything on the television about it but unfortunately Gareth saw a news clip where they were showing the pilot and navigator of a jet that had been shot down, they were prisoners of war and were being paraded for the media, he came to me and said, ” I hope daddy doesn’t get taken prisoner”. I also remember a time when one of his toys wouldn’t work and I couldn’t get it going so I said don’t worry daddy will fix it when he gets home he said, “But what if he doesn’t come home”, I couldn’t answer him as I knew it was a possibility.