Your story – Heather Scott

Where did you meet your life partner?

Andy, my husband, and I both joined the WRAF/RAF on exactly the same day, we both signed on the dotted line and swore allegiance to The Queen and her heirs and to the country on 15th August 1972 and then on the 17th we both started at our respective basic training stations RAF Spitalgate for me and RAF Swinderby for him, both in Lincolnshire just a few miles apart.  Dances were held at both places and and the girls  were bused to Swinderby  or the boys to Spitalgate but we did not actually meet until we went to our trade training base at RAF Shawbury in Shropshire, Andy had also signed up in the trade of air traffic control. The course was six weeks and we were on pool flight for three weeks, so nine weeks in all; pool flight was what you were attached to while waiting for your course to start, you would be deployed somewhere on the station to work/help out I was sent to one of the admin offices doing filing, our pool flight deployment  was a week longer than it should have been because they had to squeeze a course in for the navy.                                                           We didn’t start going out together until we’d been there for two or three weeks, in fact I did my best to avoid him as I thought he was an idiot and I also fancied one of the other guys who had a sports car. But, we eventually got together and then after six maybe seven weeks together our course ended and we were posted to opposite ends of the country, Andy was posted to RAF Northwood in Middlesex, it was a joint RAF/Navy command base, and I was posted up to RAF KInloss in Morayshire Northern  Scotland. Luckily both bases were part of Maritime Command so Andy was able to keep in touch over the phone link and also, as his base was a non flying base, persuade his boss to send him up on detacment for experience of a flying maritime base.    We didn’t see much of each other for the thirteen months that I was up there but eventually, I managed to get an exchange posting with a girl from RAF Medmenham near Marlow, it was a non flying command base, I was the only air trafficer there.  Unfortunately what the other girl didn’t tell me was that the post was being disestablished in six months which I found out within a couple of weeks of arriving but luckily a few months after I arrived Andy was posted to RAF Whyton in Cambrideshire so my immediate boss lobbied the postings people to post me to Wyton when the present post closed.

We were married in September 1974 and have been together for 51 years.   Up until Andy retired from the RAF we had never really had a coventional marriage because while I was still in the WRAF he worked days while I worked shifts, a three watch which meant that I worked a part of every day, the air traffic tower was manned 24/7 throughout the year, and we often passed each other on the way in or out of work. When I left the WRAF and went to college he was posted awayto Manston in Kent and then Finningley in South yorkshire while I stayed in Cambridgeshire. When we eventually shared the same residence again he had become an Air Engineer so his job took him away for days or even weeks at a time so again we saw little of each other and I became very independant. Living together permanently when he eventually retired from the RAF was not easy and at times still isn’t.