ABOUT GEORGE BARKER
At Halton George played trombone in the station band and saxophone in the Halton Orchestra, which he also led. He has pleasant recollections of working with "Theory of Flight" Kermode, who was as good a composer as aerodynamicist, on music for the pit and stage orchestra for musical Christmas shows.
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| Some 2 Wing brats. George bottom right with clarinet. Some other names are J Brown, W R Barber, A Griffiths, Tupper, G Carnon, A Parsons Presnart. C Carter, L/App L G Gratton. They are not all on the posting list so maybe some didn't make it. |
| Not a brilliant scholar, he passed out AC1 in 1936 and then joined 26 (AC) Squadron at Catterick, and became the proud guardian of a Hawker Audax and a fitter's mate. Maintenance of the Hawker biplane Furies (and later Spitfires) at 41 (Fighter) Squadron, also at Catterick, was by the new semi-skilled but well-trained Flight Mechanics and Flight Riggers, without whom we would have been in trouble during WW2. Below George and his Audax (or is it his Hector?) in1937 or 38 and on left of uniformed quartet in 1939. |
'N Wagter in die Lug A watcher in the sky |
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Some 26 Squadron Erks off
duty 1939 |
In 1937 the Audaxes were replaced by similar Hawker Hectors with 24-cylinder Napier-Halford Dagger engines instead of Kestrels, and then by Lysanders, which we took to Abbeville, France in October 1939. By this time all 29th fitters were corporals, supervising half a flight each. Luckily in late Spring 1940 we were not, as other squadrons were, in the direct path of the blitzkrieg and most of us got back to England unscathed, and Corporal Barker was posted to No 8 Air Gunnery School at Evanton, Ross-shire, helping to look after Harrows, Whitleys, Bothas and Battles, also ocasionally acting as sergeant i/c engines and hull and F/Sgt i/c everything for Sunderland flying boats which had landed at Invergordon due for an inspection before they could return to base. They carried their own flight mechanic and flight rigger.
| Bogus highlander with borrowed plumes and and silent piper from No 8 Air Gunnery School, Evanton. |  |
Next posting, now sergeant, was to an Air Navigation School at Wigtown, Wigtownshire, (Avro Ansons) and then to RNAS Yeovilton to help the new naval maintenance people servicing Sea Hurricanes. Whilst there he volunteered to become an engineer officer and after Heriot-Watt College and Cosford went back to Flying Training Command stations, Little Rissington (No 6 A.F.U. with 120 Airspeed Oxfords) and Bishops Court, before taking his discharge. He flew in style from Little Rissington to Bishops Court in a Wellington being delivered to an M.U. over there but returned home by ferry and train in his demob suit..
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A friend in Little Rissington Flying Control,, Bernard Giddy, member
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A very new looking F/O George Barker, Technical Adjutant at Little Rissington and Bishops Court |
He studied for his B.Sc. (Engineering) - now called B. Eng. - at UC London, where his sax playing in dance bands helped with the cost of living, and he worked for most of the next thirty years with ICI on Teesside. His last project was senior project engineer supervising the Stone and Webster design of ICI's last Ethylene Plant at Wilton, Teesside, now owned and operated by USA firm Huntsman.
The
Huntsman-ICI Ethylene Plant at Wilton.
During his frequent absence away on company business George's wife Mavis had to look after their four childen on her own, an achievement which benefitted both him and the Company. Their first projects after retiring in 1979 were to move to Hampshire from the cold North-East and then buy and customise a flat in Fuengirola where they could spend Winter. After seven years they decided to sell the flat but they still spent winters in Fuengirola for a few years until Mavis started to develop Alzheimer's disease in the 1990s. She died in 2006.
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| George and Mavis with grandson in Fuengirola, Costa del Sol. | A friend in Fuengirola, Graham Thomas, an "extras" actor and secretary to George Sanders. He had performed on stage dancing with Marjory Tiller, a niece of George's grandfather, John Tiller. |
George waves goodbye! |
Yes it is a balloon, not a cow!
Below a photo taken from our balloon. |
George taking part in the annual Balloon Fiesta held every October in Albuquerque, where George's younger daughter, Liz Keefe, is a professor in the University of New Mexico. |
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George now plays viola in the orchestra of the Bournemouth Philharmonic Society, of which he is secretary and webmaster - see www.baps-orch.co.uk- and in string quartets. Although no longer playing jazz on the sax, he does so on his tin whistles. whenever he gets a chance. He goes to two chamber music summer schools in August, one in Ullapool and the other at Dartington Hall, Devon.
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He also makes simple websites for other societies, e.g. Brockenhurst Music Society, New Forest Aviation Group, Sam Newgarth's Evening of Popular Classics and Parkstone Spiritualist Community, to name a few, and teaches the (other?) old folks computing at the Age Concern Hampshire UK Online Centre in Lyndhurst every Thursday.
As of January 2008 George is 79 1/2 and has four children, nine grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.