She gathered a collection of more than 100 military badges and buttons...
In June 1944, at the time of the D-Day Landings, five year old Betty White lived in Gosport, Hampshire.
Troops on their way to the fighting in Normandy (who included Canadians, Americans and other nationalities as well as British) often parked their vehicles outside Betty’s house while they waited to embark on landing craft that would take them across the English Channel.
Betty asked many of these men to give her a spare badge or button from their uniforms. She gathered a collection of more than 100 military badges and buttons, which her mother sewed onto an old blue coat.
This coat was kept by the family for 65 years, until it was donated to the D-Day Museum in March 2009.
The Hampshire/Isle of Wight area, and particularly Portsmouth and Gosport, played a huge part in the D-Day Landings, which is why the D-Day Museum is located there.
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