A 104-year-old former World War Two nurse who treated soldiers at the Battle of Alamein has died.
Betty Haslam survived her four husbands and two children and died from natural causes on July 29. At her funeral she was honoured by the coffin being covered with the Pall of Queen Alexandra's Royal Army Nursing Corp.
She lived in an apartment in Sandside until the last months of her life when she moved to nursing and residential home Elmsfield House near Carnforth. Her daughter-in-law Denise Challenor said the staff were kind to her there.
Betty was originally from a village near Droitwich and trained as a nurse in Oxford. She served with the Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service in Egypt and Palestine.
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Betty told the Gazette in November last year that she volunteered because she 'wanted to be useful.' She was made into a Lieutenant at 21 years old treating service men with severe injuries, which she never forgot.
However she said that it was a 'great life'.
She told The Gazette last year: "I saw a lot of places at government expense when in those days I wouldn't have afforded to go away. I went to the Valley of the Kings and the Pharaohs, I used to go to the Sphynx and the Pyramids, I went all around there on a camel. I went to the Dead Sea - I had a photograph of myself reading a newspaper in it because of course, you can't sink because of the high concentration of salt."
She married her first husband Leonard Challenor in Palestine and her first son was born in Jerusalem. She told this publication in a previous article that she will hoped there would be a great party when she moved on.
Mrs Challenor said: "Her nursing career lasted for many years and she learned how to keep healthy herself, still living at home and exercising into her 104th year. When asked 'what's the secret of a long life she'd answer 'keep breathing.'"
Betty was a religious woman and she maintained a wide circle of friends to the end through her Methodist church.
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