Adding to the hardship experienced in the service, the last weeks of the war brought personal strokes of fate for Betty: her brother George was killed near Issum, Germany. He left a wife and his 6-month-old son, Betty's nephew

. 3 months after the war her mother

died, aged 66.

And his brother Richard remembers:

Betty's son John Humphreys comments on her service in the Auxiliary Hospital "

" at

:

"I always thought of Mum and Foi as VAD nurses, which of course they weren't - they were nursing auxiliaries. Mum mentioned pilot officers including a Polish airman, who read her palm (she swore his predictions later came true, though his reading sounded splendidly vague to me).

There is an album of Foi's that begins with a number of photos labelled thus: Burcote Auxiliary Hospital Burcote, Nr. Abingdon, Berkshire, and then "

1942-46". There's a view from the river, and others of the hospital garden. There seems to have been a big house (the hospital) and a nearby building, The Grange,  which looks as if it acted as staff quarters."

"I think this experience must have been a shock for Mum after a very ladylike upbringing in an environment where social interactions must have been limited to structured occasions with people of similar upbringing (she wouldn't have bumped into any of her social peers around Stock Park: it would have needed planning to meet them). I seem to recall that it was a hospital for officers, although I'm not sure about that, but the reality of the injuries of war and the discipline of working must have been tough for them."

During the war (WWII) Betty Dickson served for more than
3 years for the British Red Cross in the Auxiliary Hospital
"

" at

, together with her sister Frances ("Foi").