SHAW, Elizabeth Anne (Betty)
Age at Death: 25
Rank Leading Aircraftwoman
Unit Royal Canadian Air Force Women’s Division
Service Number W305685
Place of Burial Wainwright Protestant Cemetery, AB
Date of Birth 1920.02.15
Place of Birth Neelin MB
Enlistment July 23, 1942, Edmonton AB
Date of Death 1945.10.13
Daughter of William John and Elizabeth Mary Shaw, of Wainwright
Brought up on a farm, Betty left school after Grade 8 to assist her mother at home, where she lived until her enlistment. Her parents were both elderly and in poor health; her father was a WWI veteran who had residual symptoms from exposure to poison gas. She was taken on to the RCAF as a Standard Messwoman, General Duties, and over the course of her service she trained at the Flying Training School in Windsor Mills, Quebec as well as the Bomb and Gunnery School in Paulson, Manitoba.
In the summer of 1945, she was admitted to hospital after noticing a mass in her abdomen. The unusual symptoms saw her transferred to a hospital in Toronto, where an evaluation described her as “a thin, underweight, chronically ill looking young lady” and concluded that “the prognosis is not encouraging.” Unable to afford a flight, her parents took a 2,700-km journey by train, the longest they had ever undertaken, but didn’t arrive in time to see her before her passing. The cause of death was myeloid metapala, a condition so rare that doctors noted the case study should be published in a medical journal.
