Second World War veteran Elizabeth (Betty) Harris, who served with Bomber Command, has died aged 101.
A trained secretary, she was drafted into the Women’s Royal Air Force and posted to Lincolnshire from where many of the heavy bomber flights took off.
Betty qualified as a wireless operator and in later years spoke of the many pilots and aircrew she witnessed taking off but never returning.
Born in Glasgow in 1922, Betty (Armour) moved to Perth at a young age because of her father Fred’s work as a tax inspector.
Growing up in Perth
The family, which included her mother, Ena, and siblings, Leta, James, Ena, twins Fred Albert, and Kathleen, lived at Hawarden Terrace and 95B Dunkeld Road in the city.
She was educated at Craigie Primary, then at Caledonian Road School before she went on to study shorthand, typing and bookkeeping at Ross’s Commercial College.
In the late 1930s, Elizabeth began work at the McIntyre furniture store in George Street, which later became Camerons and is now Gillies.
It was there she first met her future husband, Jimmy Harris, who was involved in soft furnishing sales.
They were forced to go their separate ways during the war years but were married in Glasgow in 1950.
They had a spelling living in Prestwick before moving to Glasgow where son, Graeme, was born in 1956.
Jimmy worked for the House of Fraser department store company and was often called upon to furnish some of the grand homes in and around the city and in other parts of Scotland. He also acted as a buyer for the firm.
Betty worked for an offshoot of British Petroleum and then moved to the Clyde Port Authority where she became personal assistant to the managing director.
Jimmy died in 1968 and Elizabeth remained in Glasgow for another two decades before returning to live in the Letham area of Perth then moving to a newer flat in 2003 at Raeburn Court in the city.
Aged 93, Elizabeth went to live at Beechgrove care home in Perth before moving to Parkdale in Auchterarder.
You can read the family’s announcement here.