大象传媒

I know the war brought great tragedy to many people but it affected us all in so many ways, I suppose you made what you could of it in your own way so it didn`t all have to be bad. Driffield was my home, I didn`t know much else, we were working people, Mam and Dad worked for others mainly in agriculture, Dad was a shepherd for one of the big farmers in the area and I went to the local school. Seems funny now describing someone as a shepherd, like a person from long ago, blacksmith probably sounds the same to younger people nowadays but then they were all important jobs and part of the local economy. I don`t remember the early part of the war affecting us much, we had RAF Driffield on our doorstep so there were always lots of blue uniforms about. We were used to the `drome` being there, that`s what we called it. It`d been there since the first war, our family had been connected with it since then, my Aunt was a cook in the officer`s mess, that`s what I was told.
As the war went on Driffield started to fill up with different uniforms and jobs, that`s how I met Ken my husband. He was a steel erector from down south. He was helping to build the new aerodrome at Cottam just up the road, anyway we met and soon were married.
When the war ended Ken got a job with a cement firm in Hull so we moved there. Our family started to grow and Ken did well at work, so well we were sent to Africa to one of the firm`s big factories out there. As you can imagine it was a completely different life for us what with the climate and people from all parts of the world, it was strange at first but I`m a great believer in change, it`s a good thing for everybody.
After Africa Ken`s firm moved us to Australia which is where we`ve retired to. Our children and their children are all Australians now, it`s a wonderful country with lots of opportunities for them, a different world to the one I knew but I suppose a lot of the changes would have happened anyway.
I used to visit Driffield more often but the flight is a bit wearing now.It`s a funny thing but some years ago on a visit home I was on the train and talking to another passenger, turned out he was a Farnsworth, one of the sons of a farmer my Dad used to shepherd for. He was a nice man but it made me think, and it still does, where we all would have been if the war, with all it`s sadness for many, hadn`t offered so much to people who normally would have stayed in their place. I do wish it could have happened another way.

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