Older Obits A to K

Lieutenant Jack Balfrey-Bowker
As a midshipman of twenty years he attacked Taranto Harbour. They got two battleships and a cruiser, changing the balance of power in the Med thereby.

Brig Denis Ballantine
He saw an Italy without wine, women and beaches. It was lively though.

Tony Banks
A foul mouthed loony leftie but effective. It is a pity there aren't a few like him on the right.

Ronnie Barker
He was rather funny. Now he has proved something - we are all getting older.
 

Staff Sergeant Geoff Barkway DFM
Staff Sergeant Geoff Barkway, who has died aged 84, played an important part in the capture of Pegasus bridge, landing his glider only 100 yards from the bridge over the Caen Canal in Normandy on D Day. They were reinforced by 7 PARA who held it until Lord Lovat arrived with his piper. Staff Barkway was wounded soon after landing and lost an arm as a result.

 

Wing Commander Nicky Barr DFC MC
Wing Commander Barr was one of Australia's most successful wartime fighter pilots, credited with destroying at least 12 enemy aircraft. Shot down thrice and  badly wounded and was taken prisoner by the Italians. He then escaped three times, and remained behind enemy lines for more than a year conducting clandestine operations with the partisans and special forces.His philosophy in combat was simple: "The Tomahawk and Kittyhawk were not considered by us to be top fighter aircraft. I decided early on that any deficiency either type had could be offset by unbridled aggression. I had done some boxing, and had beaten better opponents by simply going for them, and I decided to use this tactic in the air. It paid off."
There is a lesson here for today's pilots.

 

Air Vice-Marshal Colin Coulthard
He gave up designing aircraft to fly fighters and that was his career during the war and after. He was lucky; they paid him to fly, not vice versa.

Maurice Cowling
Historian and an influential Fellow of Peterhouse. His view of politics was one that Machiavelli and Blair would have understood; playing to win is the name of the game. He was too much of an Old Tory for Beaverbrook. He served in the Queen's Royal Regiment. Unkind remarks were made about his sex life.

Vice-Admiral Sir John Cox
QUOTE
Officer who tackled smugglers and trained the fleet which went to the Falklands.
UNQUOTE
The Royal Navy can be fun.

Colin Craig
Was an English financier and on the Al Yamamah job of fond memory in Saudi Arabia. It was a seriously multi-megabuck contract and made lots of people very happy.

Dan Crawford
Invented pub theatre. An American in England on the building who took the King's Head when it was seriously decrepit and became the impresario. Some big names passed through his hands. A man of enterprise whose tailor was Oxfam.

Brigadier Paul Crook
D Day, Singapore, the Japanese surrender then he commanded 3 PARA when it jumped at Suez in 1956. A military success but a political failure. It made for an interesting life.

Maj-Gen George Crookenden
Commanded BRIXMIS which was our military mission in East Germany during the Cold War and became one of our few effective espionage operations. The Russians had SOXMIS, which was a nuisance but tolerated for the  sake of BRIXMIS. Military shorthand takes on a life of its own. He was a PoW and commanded the Buffs. Not just anybody.

Scott Crossfield
He was a life long pilot and the first man to fly faster than Mach 2. He bought it flying a little, single-engine Cessna 210 which pranged  in  Georgia. There is a moral there.

 

Captain Kenneth Cummins
QUOTE
Officer who served in the First World War and survived one of the worst sinkings of the Second.
UNQUOTE
He was in the Merchant Navy but the times were interesting.

 

Wing Commander Peter Cundy
He sank one submarine in the Bay of Biscay. Others followed. This was highly useful.

Wing Commander 'Bunny' Currant DFC
He got thirteen kills which is decidedly respectable and included Messerschmitts. He stayed in after.

Lady Cuthbert
She was the head fire woman before the feminists perverted women and turned them into their own enemies and ours.

Elma Dangerfield
Was in MI9 [ escaping ] rather than MI5 [ security  ] or MI6 [ intelligence ]. She was big in exposing Nazi concentration camps and the Russian gulags. Then there was the literature.

Lt-Col John Daniel MC
Gunnery on Yugoslavian islands meant moving the guns onto a beach at night and attacking at first light. It also meant working with Tito's partisans. After it was Italy.

Jack Daniels
He did the hard work in designing the Morris Minor and Mini. There were other interesting designs too. A classic English engineer, who learned by doing it. He could even work with Alex Issigonis.

Gwion Davies
Was a first class seaman with fluent Welsh and Danish. He was involved in protecting British sovereignty south of the Falklands and that means cold every time.

 

Brigadier Gris Davies-Scourfield MC
Was a platoon commander at the fall of  Calais in 1940. He made it out of Colditz but was recaptured in Osnabrück

 

John Davis DSO
QUOTE
Wartime member of SOE who worked behind the lines in Malaya
UNQUOTE
He trained CTs - Communist terrorists to operate against the Japanese. After the war the Army had to sort out the CTs who had bright ideas of their own. It is like poor little Saddam Hussein, once America's best friend and they are going to hang him.

 

Sir William Deakin
With Churchill before the war and during it. With SOE in Yugoslavia. He made history then taught history.

Capt Colin Dear MC
Led an infantry attack in Italy, the kind with a creeping barrage to discourage the enemy. He got malaria too. It was a hazard  there.

Bill Deedes MC
QUOTE
.... His nearest brush with death came right at the end of the war, on April 2 1945, when his company, attempting to cross the Twenthe Canal, near Hengelo, was caught in enemy crossfire. For his part in withdrawing his men from the bridge, Deedes was awarded the MC, though the melancholy of receiving this decoration when so many of his comrades had died did not escape him.

He was the only officer to serve in the King’s Royal Rifle Corps from the start to the finish of the war.....
UNQUOTE
Bill got about. Being sneered at by Private Eye made people like him better.

W F Deedes - pre mortem
He was a company commander with 12 King's Royal Rifle Corp and went from Normandy on D + 10, through Arnhem to Bremen. Being shelled gave men an interest in digging in.

Being there - Part II
Breaking out of Normandy and on to Paris.

Being There- Part III
Bill Deedes made it to Arnhem - a bit late but that is the way it went. He saw one of the drops go in. The problem was linking up in the face of strong Wehrmacht opposition.

Being There- Part IV
The Germans fought harder as they fell back and knew that they had lost.

Major-General John Deedes MC
He was in the fore front at Anzio and wounded there. Getting the last rites means that it was not a scratch. His father got a DSO so it was in the family.

John DeLorean
Tax payers will remember him as the man that cheated us out of £78 million and they will be right but it didn't make any difference. Once the tax man had screwed it out of us it was going to be wasted on something. It just happened to be a car salesman. Her Majesty's Government have made bigger cock ups. One of the more recent achievements of the Inland Revenue was to sell their offices to an off shore tax fiddling outfit. Ask them about Mapley Steps and see whether they look shifty or not. John later got done for moving a large consignment of cocaine and beat the rap. Versatile man.

Sir Roy Denman
Is one of the men who got us into the European Common Market fully intending to sacrifice our independence to a pack of unelected rogues with light fingers and a post Marxist agenda. Fool or villain I know not but effective and dangerous either way.

Captain Alexander Dickson
Captain Dickson served in destroyers throughout the Second World War and was the 2 i/c  of Keppel during the ill-fated PQ17 Russian convoy. This was a run from Iceland to  Murmansk and guaranteed to be cold.

He joined Relentless off the coast of Africa when it got the  Charlotte Schlieman, a U-boat supply ship. They complained about him using too many torpedoes at £2,000 each. He did things after the war too.

 

Sir Douglas Dodds-Parker
SOE officer who supervised Mediterranean operations. They also serve who only stand and wait. Resupply may not be glamorous but it matters.

Alvaro Domecq y Diez
Alvaro Domecq y Diez, was a bullfighter, horseman, pilot and scion of a distinguished sherry family. Look at the label next time you buy a bottle. You will know where the price is going. He flew on the right side in the Spanish civil war and fought his bulls on horseback. He was part of a long tradition; the sort that our politicians hate. Bullfighting on horseback, carried out by rejoneadores, is still largely the preserve of the landed class from Andalusia. Bullfighting on foot sprang from nobles' retainers drawing off the bull, a far braver but perhaps less elegant art. He retired from the bullring in 1950, a year after witnessing the goring and death of his close friend Manolete, the most famous bullfighter of his generation, at Linares. Only two of his nineteen children survived.

William Donaldson
Pimp, fornicator, drug addict and author but then he was a Winchester man. The pay off was that he had a sense of humour and wrote letters to various prominent people which made them look silly. He was published and made the top of the best seller list.

Inviting Maggie to make Mary Whitehouse our Home Secretary was a fair one. Abusing the Archbishop of Canterbury for failing to acknowledge a donation was good. Inviting Sir James Goldsmith to help  eliminate "scroungers, perverts, Dutch pessary salesmen and Polly Toynbee" was excellent.  Jim took the bait. Others did too. Then there were the actresses. His mother had sound views too. She sacked the chauffeur for voting Socialist.

Lord Donaldson of Lymington MR
Was with the Guards Armoured Division and emerged as a lieutenant colonel at 25. He became a barrister, judge and Master of the Rolls, the head of civil law in England. Good on cutting waffle which dragged cases out.

Denis Donaldson
IRA man, traitor and administrator. His background was solidly right for the modern IRA, if not the early one. Being caught with the wrong woman can be difficult. The Brits used him then the IRA caught up with him. Whoops.

He had had major dealings with ETA, Lebanese and NORAID. Terrorism is an international business.

 

The Marquess of Donegall
Genial Irish hunting peer who was a wartime PoW and a regular in the Lords.

 

Professor Sir Richard Doll
He proved a connection between smoking and lung cancer. Then he claimed that drinking was bad for you. Boring twerp but he made it to 92. Rather him than me.

Sub-Lieutenant Rod Dove DSO
He rode a human torpedo into Palermo harbour one cold and stormy night. Losing the limpet mines was a pity but the warhead was a 1000 pounder and did severe damage to the 8,500-ton Italian troopship Viminale.

Johnny Downes DFC
He originated the first children's programme on the BBC and it ran for 29 years. During the war he navigated a Mosquito and got three kills. So not all BBC wallahs are communist subversives, lefties or traitors.

Major George Drew
Made it to Colditz,  made forgeries, made a distillery and made a product which made men's teeth fall out. He stayed in after so he had a go at the Mau Mau in Kenya.

 

Major Henry Druce DSO, Croix de Guerre
QUOTE
SAS officer who ambushed a German column while dressed in corduroy trousers and a silk top hat.
UNQUOTE
 Being multilingual helps in these matters. So does having a free rein.

 

Peter Drucker  [  28 November 2005 ]
Was an Austrian economist who escaped from Germany to England who believed in good management and getting the best out of people. DT 28/11/V

Keith Duckworth
Designed engines for racing cars and did it very well. He founded Cosworths and produced Formula 1 engines in quantities big enough to let more men race at top level.

Neville Duke, the fighter ace sells medals to spare wife long wait for hip replacement
Another man who came back to a land fit for heroes and maybe wondered why he bothered. Neville Duke was a squadron leader and the RAF's  top-scoring ace in the Mediterranean theatre.

Sir Kenneth Durham
Bomber pilot, physicist, nuclear physics, Unilever's research department, then it was into management and up to the top. It nice to see someone with brains beat the patter merchants and time servers who run industry. Versatile too. A man should be versatile. Married once, married right which is all too rare in this foul age.

Major-General the Rev Ian Durie
Generals do not often become padres but if you have seen too much it can make sense. He was  a gunner so he was far enough back not to see the worst of it. He commanded the artillery in the Falklands and on Desert Storm and made a big difference.

 

Wim Duisenberg
Was the first boss of the European Central Bank and had a rough ride. The French wanted their man in the job so that they could screw the rest of us that much better. He was not good on public relations but was well thought of by other senior bankers. Dim Wim was a rather unkind name for him.

 

Squadron Leader Neville Duke DFC
Got at least 27 kills then became a test pilot when going supersonic was new and often fatal.

 

Commander John Eaden DSC
QUOTE
Commander John Eaden, who has died aged 97, was the first submariner to make contact with the enemy in 1939; later in the Second World War, while in command of a destroyer, he sank a U-boat; and by the end of the war he had won three DSCs.
UNQUOTE
He had a lively war and a dangerous one.

 

Rafael Eitan
QUOTE
Israeli Chief of Staff and cabinet minister noted for his uncompromising hostility towards the Arabs.
UNQUOTE. 
He was involved in the Shatila Massacre but went clear unlike Sharon who got a slap on the wrist for form sake. Competent and vicious sounds about right. Another one for Hell. He will get to meet Adolf, Joe, Lenin, Mao and Pol Pot.

 

Major Ian English MC
He got three MCs which is decidedly unusual. One was at El Alamein with the Durham Light Infantry. Italy and Normandy were later.

Graf Jakob Eltz
Was the head of a prominent family and a good one too. He managed to stay out of the Wehrmacht until 1944 when they were falling back. He helped in the reconstruction of Croatia.

The Marquess of Ely
He was a headmaster in Canada but liked going to the Lords when he was in England. The whole thing is becoming a little absurd these days albeit the House of Lords had a value that the Commons did not. They weren't just place men controlled by an evil prime minister.

Sir Peter Emery
No relation, was a leftie and backed Heath. Thatcher saw through him. A mixed record. Came back in 1944 and joined the RAFVR but saw no action. On the Scottish committee he turned up in a rented kilt so he had a sense of humour and got kicked out for his pains.  The House thought that he was light fingered. Where would he have learnt that?

 

Paul Erdman
QUOTE
Financier whose career as a best-selling novelist began in a 17th-century Swiss prison cell.
UNQUOTE
Got to go prison and meet interesting people - with luck - then learn. Brains help too.

 

Harry Errington GC
A fireman who saved two men and got a GC. There are not so many firemen who would push their luck these days after they have been worked over by the current management reforms.

Commander Angus Erskine
Explored the Antarctic and other cold places. He liked skiing too.

 

The Earl of Essex
The tenth Earl was a grocer in Lancashire and a sergeant in the RAF. Previous earls had more distinguished track records. He took his seat in the Lords but never spoke. The next one lives in California.

Air Vice-Marshal Geoffrey Eveleigh
He flew biplanes before the war and Nimrods after but his main contribution was in signals and navigation. He helped to improve the RAF's bombing aiming so that it was merely dreadful rather than even worse.

 

Gnassingbe Eyadema
Pronounce it how you want, if you want. Read this one for a clear illustration of French political corruption and cynicism next time they complain about American foreign policy. It tells you all that you need to know about why Africa is the Hell hole that it is since we left. Like Idi Amin, he made a good soldier albeit with le Legion Étrangère.

 

Theo Fabergé
QUOTE
Grandson of the Russian Imperial Jeweller who discovered his ancestry only in middle age and produced his own objets d'art.
UNQUOTE
The artistic gene ran true.

 

King Fahd
Was in charge when a desert kingdom became seriously rich. Modernising a country is not easy. Many wanted their snouts in the trough. Some got their snouts and  trotters in. Osama was keen on being a nuisance even though he did well out of oil. He was one of all too many. Lord Byron said that critics are born ready made. Lord Byron was right.

Major General Frantisek Fajtl DFC
QUOTE
Czech fighter pilot who fought in the Battle of Britain and during the Soviet advance on Slovakia.
UNQUOTE
Good fighter pilots are a rare breed. Flying with the Czechs, French, RAF and Czechs as occasion demanded meant that he got about. Being on the run from the Germans was interesting. Being a prisoner of the Russians having fought on their side was annoying. But when the Berlin Wall came down in 1989 all was forgiven.

Oriana Fallaci
Italian journalist who covered the Vietnam War and later berated the West for having appeased Islam. She would not approve of the current Pontiff and his pandering to mediaeval thugs.

 

Jerry Falwell - Zionist Front Man [ 21 May 2007 ]
QUOTE
On a Learjet to Hell
As Jerry Falwell heads down to meet his boss [ this would be Satan - Editor ], don’t forget that he is largely responsible for much of the mess in the Middle East caused by the Zionist infiltration of American politics... Falwell was the pioneer in tying American Christian Evangelism to the extreme Israeli right... it allowed Falwell to turbocharge the fundraising for his ‘Moral Majority’, leading eventually to the ability of the Christian Right to both influence American politics in an ultra-Zionist direction and provide (illegal) funds to help the extreme right be elected in Israel.  The most unlikely match in the world is largely the fault of Falwell, and is doing massive harm to the world.
UNQUOTE
The Very(?) Reverend Falwell is not universally admired but he was effective. So was Adolf.
PS Jerry got the Jabotinsky Medal, awarded for outstanding services to Israel. Falwell is the only non-Jew ever to receive the medal. They don't come any more Fascist than Vladimir Jabotinsky. which why he is a national hero in Israel.

 

Major Roy Farran DSO, MC, Croix de Guerre
Was the son of an Irishman who was big in  the SAS early on. He first saw  action at Sidi Barrani. He was in Crete when it  was all happening. Escaping was not easy. Their  caique  encountered severe storms but they made it to Egypt. He was  appointed ADC to General Jock Campbell, VC until he killed him in a car accident. 2 SAS came later. Raiding in Italy was lively. So was raiding in France.
He did many other things. Quality makes a world of difference.

Gen Sir Anthony Farrar-Hockley DSO aka Farrar the Para
He  went to Korea in 1950 as adjutant of the 1st Battalion Gloucestershire Regiment. They were attacked when guarding a crossing of the Imjin River. It was close quarter work.

He was with 6 PARA in Athens in 1944 fighting the communists in the opening phase of the Third World War. EOKA, Aden,  Suez, Borneo and Belfast came later. Being headmaster at Sandhurst meant having brains too. He was there on Remembrance Day too for the last time.  The Independent's offering is quite good.

Sir Robin Fearn
QUOTE
Diplomat who excelled during the Falklands crisis and later became ambassador in Madrid.
UNQUOTE
You might wonder why the Argies decided to chance their arm and invade the Falklands if the Foreign Office was so very capable. They were trying to get rid of them but you wouldn't think so from this little obit.

Freddy Fender
Made it to 69 so he beat the occupational hazards of sex, drugs and rock and roll. He served too with the Marines. Then there was prison [ marijuana ] and success. It came late but it came.

Joachim Fest
German historian and journalist who provided the definitive account of the Third Reich. [ I thought that was Bill Shirer - Editor ]. For some 20 years, he wrote for  the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, a German heavy weight newspaper. Left wing quasi-intellectuals and communist subversives didn't like him so he had to have gotten something right. Profound similarities between Nazis, communists and Zionists failed to amuse the Trots.

 

Captain Charles Fetherston-Dilke
QUOTE
Officer who sent the Navy to rescue the islanders of Tristan da Cunha when its volcano erupted without warning in 1961.
18 Jun 2007
UNQUOTE
He did things, lots of them.

 

Sir Colin Figures
QUOTE
Head of MI6 whose skilful leadership made a significant contribution to winning the Falklands war.
UNQUOTE
He had to find out about the Argies's Exocets. Given that they were made in England it should not have been too difficult.

 

Sir Henry Fisher
Was a High Court judge who knocked on it the head and went into banking. Criminal law was too easy and too boring. Banking is where the ackers are.

Tim Fitzgeorge-Parker MC
Was one of the few left who were genuine cavalry men. This was why he was with the Royal Scots Greys and went into  training  before becoming a racing journalist. He had fun as well as adventure with His Majesty's armed forces.

Brigadier Bob Flood MC
He made it back from Dunkirk then went via Ireland and Iceland to Belgium, the Rhine Crossing, with 8 PARA to Wismar on the Baltic just before the Russians. Wiltshire and cricket came later.

Ambrogio Fogar
Sailing round the world alone made him the fiftieth to make it.

Squadron Leader Desmond Fopp
Was the last of the Australians who fought in the Battle of Britain. Those days as a boy spent shooting paid off.

 

Air Marshal Sir Geoffrey Ford
QUOTE
Radar and guided missile expert who became the RAF's Chief Engineer.
UNQUOTE
The men who make them work matter too. It just isn't so glamorous.

 

Gerald Ford
Was the 38th president of America who took over where Nixon left off and tried to calm things down. He did until he pardoned Tricky Dicky. Then
QUOTE
Hell had no fury like that of the Washington liberal establishment balked of vengeance.
UNQUOTE

 

Maj-Gen Michael Forrester DSO, MC
Crete, Italy, France, 2 PARA,  Cyprus, Egypt and lots of action are the story.

Flight Lieutenant Jack Foster DFC
He got three Ju88s in one night near München Gladbach near the end. Did much of his courting in a ditch near a sewage farm while they were bird watching. He did well afterwards too.

 

Sir Michael Fox
QUOTE
St Clair [ a whore and one of his victims ]  was ordered to pay back tax totalling £58,781. After Fox's judgment she declared the Law an ass and compared the Inland Revenue to a pimp living off immoral earnings. Meanwhile, she brandished a whip and allowed her long coat to swing open to reveal a black miniskirt.
UNQUOTE
Judges please one side of a case but not the other. She was spot on though.

 

Reg Freeson
QUOTE
Was a housing minister in the Labour governments of Wilson and Callaghan, and an indomitable campaigner for the state of Israel, for peace in the Middle East and against racial injustice; ....
UNQUOTE
This might strike you as a contradiction in terms given Israel's track record of shameless brutality and ethnic cleansing.

Betty Friedan
Was a Jew, Marxist [ see Betty Friedan ] and subversive who did enormous damage. Her influence in feminism caused family break ups and single parent families which led on to young men running wild and doing extensive damage. See THE PATHOLOGY OF THE FEMALE-HEADED FAMILY  for an explanation.

QUOTE
Back in l963, when Ms. Friedan unleashed feminism upon us with her book The Feminine Mystique, she said that her ideas "may disturb the experts and women alike, for they imply social change." The change has gone on long enough to permit an evaluation. Are women happier? Are men? Are children better mannered, better socialized? Is there more premarital sexual activity? More venereal disease? More single motherhood? More shacking-up? More adultery? Is the family more stable? Is educational performance superior to what it was in the early l960s? (Remember that the original "new life plan for women" was a program of education.) Are there fewer school dropouts? Is the level of public debate more civilized, more mature? Are better young people choosing teaching as a career and providing youth with better instruction and better role models? Are the streets safer? Do the media reflect a growing refinement of taste and morality? Are more or fewer women living in poverty? In substance abuse?
UNQUOTE - see Amneus/garbage/g2.html
The Telegraph's offering [ Betty Friedan ] might lead people to believe that she meant well.

Monetarist guru Milton Friedman dies
He got a Nobel prize in 1976 and inspired the overturn of Keynesian economics in much of the west during the 1970s and 1980s.  Maggie  said: "He was an intellectual freedom fighter." The Grauniad's admiration is much more restrained. Their readers didn't like him either. See  Poll - Was Friedman a force for good? He was  a failure according to Richard Adams, a Grauniad wallah. The Australian gives the man his due.

Father Konrad Fuchs
QUOTE
Roman Catholic priest whose experiences at the front during the Great War haunted him all his life.
UNQUOTE
He was an infantry man on the same side as Adolf but lasted longer.

Wing Commander 'Moose' Fumerton DFC
He was a Canadian fighter pilot who fought in the Battle of Britain then flew a night fighter over Malta. He got nine kills there and final score of fourteen.  He was shot down once though. He was in mining after.

 

Air Vice-Marshal Jack Furner DFC
QUOTE
Jack Furner, flew wartime operations with Bomber Command and took part in secret electronic counter-measure sorties on D-Day; in peacetime he made a major contribution to the development of the RAF's nuclear capability during the Cold War.
UNQUOTE
He made it to Hamburg and Peenemünde. Cuba was later and much more dangerous than we were told at the time.

 

Air Vice-Marshal Peter Furniss DFC
He flew Hurricanes and Spitfires in Italy and the Balkans. Being head of the RAF's law department was later and less exciting.

Lieutenant-Colonel Andrew Gale
Looking confident and making the right noises when the natives are restless can make all the difference. It did and as a result a Jumbo with 400 bodies on board got out of Freetown in Nigeria.

Colonel Strome Galloway
He saw lots of  action in Italy then went  back to Canada and helped found the Monarchist League of Canada. He even ran for Parliament.

John Garang
Colonel Garang had a doctorate but only in economics. This is MUCH better that the average in the Sudan which could be why he got to be the Vice-President. He was also beloved of the American Christian right which tells us something about man's capacity for self-delusion.

Hank Garland
Met Elvis, Roy Orbison and fell foul of the occupational hazards of the music industry. Sex, drugs and rock and rock roll sound great. The death toll is great too. John Denver, Janice Joplin, John Lennon, Brian Jones, Jim Morrison and Mama Cass are just some of those who bought it ahead of time. They lived and they died. Hank came out as walking wounded.

Lt-Col David Garforth-Bles
Was a genuine cavalry man when it was horses not tracks. This was with the Guides Cavalry in India. They were pig sticking when the boar, his friend and his horse disappeared down a well. Getting them out was not easy but the villagers were delighted. They had the pig to eat. The Telegraph thought to translate nullah and other useful words. Burma came later.

Jozef Garlinski
QUOTE
Jozef Garlinski, who died on Tuesday aged 92, was a member of the Polish underground and an historian of ramrod integrity in defence of Poland's role in the Second World War.

While Communists maintained that they constituted the key opposition inside the concentration camps, and an American lobby bridled at suggestions that others shared the sufferings of the Jews, Garlinski wrote with the undeniable authority of one who had been held at Auschwitz and had spent two years in the sub-camp of Birkenau.
UNQUOTE
When it was all over various comedians came out of the wood work with their lies and fairy stories. He was not one.

 

Garry Garred GM
Defuzing eleven bombs in Lübeck was interesting and challenging but not fun. They were shoddy German bombs with shock sensitive fuzes. Six men had already been killed and there were another 1,000 tons of bombs waiting to go off. The squadron leader got a GC for being there. That is English democracy in action.

Litzi Gedye
She worked for the SOE in Turkey.  Friendly with Philby and Weidenfeld.

 

Vice-Admiral Sir Ian McGeoch DSO
QUOTE
Vice-Admiral Sir Ian McGeoch, who has died aged 93, was a wartime submarine ace and a serial escaper after being captured by the Germans in the Mediterranean in 1943.......... A day later - determined not to waste his one remaining torpedo - McGeoch took Splendid inshore, where he could see two merchant ships under the escort of two destroyers. Picking the larger and more modern of the destroyers, he scored a direct hit.
UNQUOTE
Join the Navy and see the world.  

 

Pierre-Gilles de Gennes
QUOTE
Physicist who won the Nobel Prize for elucidating the physical chemistry of liquid crystals.
UNQUOTE
If you read this you probably have Professor de Gennes to thank. He made little or nothing out of it.

 

Wing Commander Walter Gibb DFC
QUOTE
Test pilot who twice broke the world altitude record after an eventful war flying night fighters.
UNQUOTE
He flew Mosquitoes and went on the Dam Busters' raids. Damaging seven locomotives and a Junker 88 helped the war effort too.

 

Wing Commander Bobby Gibbes DSO
He got ten kills, shot down twice, recommended for a VC and went on strike. There was a lot more excitement too. Some men are just so much better than the rest of us.

 

Field Marshal Sir Roland Gibbs
Eton, Sandhurst, North Africa, Italy, D+1, the Somme; these made for interesting times. After it was the 60th Rifles, 7 PARA, 3 PARA and then staff jobs. He finished up in Wiltshire hunting and shooting. Married once, married well. He got it right.

Capt Lewis Archibald Gibson, MM LRDG
Was with the LRDG in 1939, right at the beginning. Yugoslavia was later  and exciting too. He had a sense of humour and an unconventional lifestyle that ended with a burial in a wicker coffin.

Vincent Gigante
Was big in the Mafia and tried to get away with it by pretending to be a lunatic. It worked sometimes.

 

Air Vice-Marshal Bill Gill
Commander of Mosquito squadrons which defended London against the V-1 and tackled German night fighters. A sound chap.

 

Maj-Gen Ian Gill MC
QUOTE
Officer who won an MC holding a position against Panzer fire, and a Bar at the Battle of the Ardennes.
UNQUOTE
Being with the cavalry sounds better than being on foot but means being a target every time.

 

Gerry Glaister DFC
He did a tour in bombers and flew reconnaissance aircraft too. He was with the BBC and devised the Colditz series among others. Another BBC wallah who wasn't a Trot. He even married.

Commander Pat Godber
From Darjeeling to Marlborough, Scapa Flow, Nagasaki, Trincomalee and back to Blighty. Another man who joined the Navy and saw the world.

General Vasco Gonçalves
He became the left wing dictator of Portugal in 1974 by replacing a right wing dictator. Portugal might have been a launching pad for a Russian conquest in the West. He was big on nationalization but never attacked the sources of his own wealth; stupid but not that stupid.

 

Major Cyril Gordon MC and Bar
He had a very lively time in Burma. Cyprus, EOKA, Aden and the BAOR  came later. He was fluent in  French, Italian, German, Malay and Urdu. Brains and brawn make a good combination.

 

Lance-Corporal Jim Glibbery MM
Lance corporals don't often get medals but then they don't write the reports. They are there when fighting gets close up  and personal though. He was and he performed very creditably. Getting casualties away with grenades going off can be exciting and even fatal. An officer would have been put in for a VC.

 

John Goodchild MC
Artillery officer whose courage under machine-gun and shellfire in Tunisia earned him a second MC.

 

Gen Andrew Goodpaster DSC
His main importance was in senior command. He was SACEUR after Czechoslovakia was invaded by the Russians and was the commandant of West Point. But he commanded a battalion of  engineers in North Africa and led a party through a mine field under fire; whence the DSC. He helped Eisenhower prevent weakening of NATO at a time of danger through paranoia.

Sir David Gore-Booth
A Foreign Office man; the post was not quite hereditary. He was an Arabist and no fan of Zion - he knew their track record rather better than they liked. A man with a forceful style which this obit does not bring out.

Bridget Grant
She was much more fun than a boring prof. The family was offered the throne of Albania but preferred Pixton Park, in Somerset. She was written up by Evelyn Waugh.

Ted Grant
Was the founder of the Militant Tendency which came close to destroying the Labour Party and a Jew with Bolshevik connections. Entryism was his speciality and it still is a Jewish speciality. They have wormed their way into New Labour and the Tories. Grant was originally  Isaac Blank and born in  South Africa.

Lt-Col Douglas Gray
Born in Peking, father in the Boxer uprising, served with Skinner's Horse. If it sounds like something from the past, well it was and none the worse for it. And by the way, pig sticking was not for softies.

The Reverend Alan Green
He was at Arnhem, commanding a platoon of the Border Regiment. It was Sicily before that. A PoW camp and holy orders came later.

 

Major-General Gerald Green
QUOTE
Officer who was private secretary to the Emir of Bahrain and a close confidant of Princess Andrew of Greece.
UNQUOTE
He was with SOE too.

 

Elspeth Green MM
Staying at your post when the bombs are going off is not always fun but can be important. This was at Biggin Hill in 1940 the day after they lost 39 dead.

Professor Dick Grimsdale
He mattered. He made a difference. He built the world's first transistorized computer and invented the ROM [ read only memory ] without which you would not be reading this. He sent the first transatlantic email and was big in graphics. Because he was an English scientist he never got to be rich or famous but he kept on thinking and having useful ideas.

 

Boris Gudz
QUOTE
Boris Gudz, who died on December 27 aged 104, was the last surviving member of the Soviet secret service team that lured the British [ a Jew from Odessa in fact - Editor ]  spy Sidney Reilly to his death; he also ran the Soviet spy Richard Sorge, gatherer of Moscow's best intelligence on Japanese and German intentions in the run-up to the Second World War. Gudz was a junior member of the group led by Artur Artusov which, in the 1920s, set up the Trust, a bogus anti-Bolshevik organisation used to entrap Sidney Reilly.
UNQUOTE
There is a lesson for conspirators here. Treachery is normal.

 

Colonel John Gunn MC
Served with the Seaforths in Burma. This meant mud, Japanese and swords at close quarters.

Gen Sir Roland Guy DSO
Commanded the Green Jackets in West Belfast when things were lively. Good intelligence and good contacts with the locals paid off. It was Mau Mau before which was training of a sort.

Richard Hadcock
Designed aircraft fuselages. He is part of why we can fly so easily. Bridges are easy. Just make them stronger. Weight matters in the air so it is not the same. The Americans took him on. Buying expertise makes a lot of sense. Sense that they have and we do not.

 

David Halberstam
QUOTE
..was a controversial American correspondent and author, always suspicious of the official version of events during the Vietnam war, and regularly at odds with US Army brass, the Saigon authorities, Washington officials and, on occasion, his employers..
UNQUOTE
We were being lied to then and now. Iraq is nastier than Vietnam but at least we know why; the Israelis want it and oil.

 

Henry Hall
Being an admin wallah in the Empire could be interesting. One of his jobs was ensure that the right man got hanged.

 

Virginia Hall - Finally honoured, the female spy the Gestapo dubbed 'the most dangerous of all'
QUOTE
Gestapo chief Hermann Göring put out Wanted posters offering a reward for the capture of the woman he viewed as the most dangerous spy in war-torn France. But Virginia Hall ignored the Nazi secret police, and, working for Winston Churchill's SOE, the Special Operations Executive, forerunner of MI6, she slipped back and forth between London and France, wreaking havoc behind enemy lines.

In 1942, she moved to Lyons, organising the underground network that helped downed aircrews and escaped PoWs back to England.
UNQUOTE
Being multi-lingual always means that you are going to be in line for Secret Squirrel things. She was. She did.

 

Jimmy Hamilton MP
A Labour MP who did work for a living is a rare beast. This one was honest too and the kind of example that Her Majesty's Government are not shamed by because they are too vile. He spoke against the murder of the unborn child.

Surgeon-Commander Sidney Hamilton
QUOTE
Doctor in Repulse who tended tirelessly to the injured among the 800 survivors of his ship's crew.
UNQUOTE
He was a follower of death. His ships were ones to keep clear of. He was keen on the National Health Service too; not a good sign.

Lord Hamilton of Dalzell
QUOTE
Peer who opposed the removal of hereditary members from the Lords and challenged EU integration........ Hamilton was one of four hereditary peers who petitioned the Queen against the Treaty of Nice on the grounds that it breached the terms of Magna Carta; his pamphlet Manifesto for Sovereign Britain was published by the Freedom Association in 2004.
UNQUOTE
There are people who disliked the Lords because of their feudal antecedents. They were a force for good which is why Blair destroyed them.

The Rt Rev David Hand
The simple life appeals to people who have never been anywhere near it. He lived it in Papua New Guinea. That means mountains, jungle, heat flies, diseases etc. Head taking and  cannibalism were part of the fun too. I wouldn't but he was saving souls and even making the world a better place.

Squadron Leader Ray Hanna
Led the Red Arrows and made it the display team. He started in flying early enough to know piston engined aircraft and never looked back.

Lord Hanson
Entrepreneur, an unglamorous war but he made up for it later - he had the money to do it in style.

Robert Hanson
Flew with Memphis Belle, the first Flying Fortress to do 25 operations and get back to America. This was when lots were being shot down. The propaganda machine used the survivor to great effect. The propaganda machine lives on as the enemy of America and civilization but that is another issue.

Malcolm Hardee
A comedian and thief from Lewisham and a family of lightermen. You wouldn't have taken your mother to see him but he launched some biggish names in show biz. Played in The Tramshed. Drowned drunk. The Thames got even in the end.

 

Wing Commander Hardwicke Holderness DSO, DFC
A Rhodesian who served England well by attacking Kriegsmarine U boats. He was an MP in Rhodesia later and keen on integrating blacks into civilization.

 

General Sir Charles Harington DSO, MC
Join the Army and see the world meant something when he was in and it was a lively place too.

 

Heinrich Harrer
In 1938 he was on the first climb of the  North Face  of the Eiger, in the Swiss Alps. Later, after escaping from a British PoW camp in India, he traversed the length of Tibet, reached the "Forbidden City" of Lhasa and became tutor to the young Dalai Lama. He was there to do the first climb of  Nanga Parbat, the world's ninth highest peak, for 1940.

Getting to Lhasa took 20 months of walking a 1,000 miles in mountains over 16,000 feet  where winter temperatures dipped below minus 40C. The Dalai Lama was an excellent pupil. He stayed until the Chinese invaded in 1950.

 

General Sir Charles Harington DSO, MC
Join the Army and see the world meant something when he was in and it was a lively place too.

 

Lord Harris of High Cross
QUOTE
General director of the Institute of Economic Affairs, which provided Thatcherism with its intellectual foundation.
UNQUOTE
Free markets are good in principle until capitalists get too greedy and politicians get too corrupt. Then people get screwed. See what Blair's mob are doing to us and weep.

Herbert Harrison MC
He captured a hill in Holland - there is another hill near Arnhem - under demanding circumstances. He was a battalion CO with the Royal Scots Fusiliers as a major.

Domino Harvey
Model found dead in bath. It makes a good head line and tells you that if you have money sloshing around you still need a bit of moral fibre to cope. Or perhaps it is just takes a bit of brain. Having a drink is fine. Getting drunk every night sounds better. It ain't. Ditto for drugs and over doing it. Herewith endeth my lecture.

Lieutenant-Colonel 'Tich' Harvey MC
He became  the OC of  all four companies in the 5th Gurkha Rifles in Italy as  the previous officers became hors de combat. When he got his MC one of his men got a posthumous VC. He went to get another fighting CTs in Malaya. Being in Abbottabad as India and Pakistan became separate was difficult. Then there was the confrontation in  Borneo. Truly you join the Army and see the world.

Arthur Hailey
A writer who churned out pot boilers that were despised by the critics. The ignorant peasant masses bought 150 million copies. Then they became films. He was an Englishman who served in the RAF as a flying instructor; a better man therefore than those who knew better.

Rafik al-Hariri
Was the prime minister of the Lebanon then he was dead. A billionaire and philanthropist; he put 30,0000 lads through university,  but he still had his enemies. Politics in the Near East is like that. It has a virtue. Politicians are less likely to screw the peasants for the fun of it. Now we can all play a game of Who Done It? Mossad is on the short list.

Charles Hargreaves
A New Zealander who joined the King's Royal Irish Hussars, Parachute Regiment and the SOE. Being in Colditz was much nicer than being tortured by the Gestapo. Yugoslavia with Mihailovic was interesting and lively.

Jenifer Hart
Was an arrogant academic who claimed that she was not a traitor although she had the opportunity and quite possibly the inclination.

 

Billy James Hargis
Was a Bible bashing preacher. Sound on communism and The Beatles. Then it turned out that he was a bit too intimate with the punters. Whoops. There have been a couple of American Bible bashers who came unstuck like that.

Harry Hargreaves
He did the pictures for Paddington Bear. He was even trusted with The Wind in the Willows. A good cricketer.

 

Squadron Leader Jimmy Harrison
QUOTE
Test pilot of exceptional skill who was forced to eject from a Vulcan bomber and who later tested the Nimrod.
UNQUOTE

 

Sir Stephen Hastings MC
Eton, Scots Guards, SAS, SOE, MI6 and Parliament. He got about. A hunting man and a real Tory unlike, well, let's just say most of them.

Commander Christopher Havergal
Being in the Med was always going to be lively. Capturing an Italian submarine was a good move. He had the nerve to surface and use his gun; a bad mistake. An irate Brit killed every man on the conning tower. Capturing the code books paid off big time too.

 

Sir Vice-Marshal Freddie Hazlewood
QUOTE
Wartime wireless operator who later became a pilot and commanded one of Britain's first V-bomber squadrons.
UNQUOTE
From Wellingtons to Valiants was interesting.

 

The Marquis of Headfort
Tried to get Wilson murdered for £5  but became an honorary policeman later. He was a drinking man too.

 

Sir Edward Heath
We have lost a leftie. I am not going to mourn. He was in Spain as an enthusiast for Stalin's lot. Serving for real with the guns was one good thing that he did. He commanded the Honourable Artillery Company He got us into Europe with the connivance of the FO, BBC and other communist subversives. One trick was to give away our fishing grounds some years after he left. They have been raped by foreigners. Choir boys in Salisbury will be safer now.

QUOTE
But he retained friends and influence around the world, not least in communist China, where his willingness to defend the regime, especially after the Tiananmen Square massacres of 1989. triggered controversy and criticism. He also flew to Baghdad to mediate with Saddam Hussein.
UNQUOTE http://politics.guardian.co.uk/conservatives/story/0,9061,1530788,00.html

Lie down with dogs and catch fleas. The Graun has a relaxed view of mass murderers of the left. Britain would be happy to scrap the pound, Heath told French Heath lied to the French and he lied to us - by omission if not directly. He is not the first prime minister to lie to us and he is certainly not the last.

Sir Mark Heath
He was the first  Ambassador to the Holy See since  Henry VIII broke with Rome in 1534 over his divorce from Catherine of Aragon. The Vatican posting was a nice little jolly where Maggie Thatcher could not bypass the ambassador and go direct to the head man.

Anderl Heckmair
He was the first man to climb the North Face of the Eiger which is far more of a technical challenge than Everest. This was in 1938 and he got to meet Adolf. He also guided Leni Riefenstahl who was very good. His service was in Russia on the Eastern Front and not much fun. As a boy in an orphanage he robbed the pigs from hunger. Good practice for later.

Chet Helms
He started Janice Joplin off and was big against the war in Vietnam.

Val Hempleman
QUOTE
Naval superintendent whose research into preventing 'the bends' saved the lives of countless deep sea divers.
UNQUOTE
Things can go badly wrong down there. His work mattered. He lived to tell the tale too and that was not just luck.

 

Alex Henshaw
QUOTE
Alex Henshaw was an outstanding test pilot whose name will forever be associated with the Second World War's most famous aircraft, the Spitfire; between 1940 and 1945 he test flew some 2,360 individual Spitfires and Seafires (the naval version of the aircraft), amounting to more than 10 per cent of the total built.

It could be dangerous work. Henshaw suffered a number of engine failures, and on one occasion, while flying over a built-up area, he crash-landed between two rows of houses.
UNQUOTE
A good man who deserved more recognition.

 

Hermione Lady Cobbold
Read how the other half lived. Doing the Himalayas with 200 servants was doing them in style. Churchill proposed to her. She got about.

The Dowager Lady Hesketh
QUOTE
Christian, Lady Hesketh, who died on April 7 aged 76, personified the principle that private privilege conferred an equal obligation to public duty; she was also a gifted writer and historian.
UNQUOTE

Sense of obligation is not an idea that Blair and his mob have ever heard of and wouldn't care for in the slightest if they did. The slimy bunch of rogues who constitute today's Tory party are little better. She was an example to the lot of them.

Robert Hesketh
Was big in coursing and helped run the Waterloo Cup which may well be finished due to malicious politicians. His people held to the True Faith when that was not an easy option.

 

Sir Thomas Hetherington
QUOTE
Director of Public Prosecutions who oversaw the establishment of the Crown Prosecution Service and prosecuted Jeremy Thorpe.
UNQUOTE
The CPS cramps the style of bent coppers somewhat. So does PACE. Police custody officers mean that the filth have to beat a man up before he gets to the cells - usually.

 

George Heywood DCM
Served with the Cheshire's and commanded a machine gun platoon under fire. He was commissioned a bit later.

Tim Heywood
Was the chief signals officer of the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG) during the Second World War. This was in the days of valve sets and getting the best out of them was not easy. His father steered him directly to Cairo and Ralph Bagnold who had spent a lot of time exploring deserts. He learned about these things at Eton where technology had a very low priority. Sailing came after the war.

Brigadier Tony Heywood MC
QUOTE
Guards officer who won an MC in Malaya hunting down Communist terrorists in the jungle.
UNQUOTE

Myles Hildyard MC
Escaped after the fall of Crete and made it Turkey and back to the regiment. El Alamein, the Mareth Line, Enfidaville, D Day and the taking of Hamburg followed. He spent the rest of his life running the family estate.

 

Brigadier 'Speedy' Hill MC DSO
We lose another of ours. He commanded 1 PARA at the jump on  Souk El Arba  in Tunisia so that aircraft could land and to convince the French to fight. This got lively. He was one of the last out of Dunkirk and one of the first in on D Day.

The Meuse Crossing and the Rhine Crossing came next. He got to Wismar on the Baltic just before the Russians.

 

Stanley Hiller Jnr
Was big in helicopter design and building. He designed and flew his first when he was twenty and his helicopters played a significant role in  Korea in  the early 1950s.

Hiller designed and constructed the XH-44 (Experimental Hiller) helicopter in 1944. It was the first co-axial helicopter in America, and the first anywhere to fly with all-metal blades. He was the  company president,  chief engineer and  - still a teenager and without any prior helicopter experience - the chief test pilot.

He was very sound on  American capitalist malpractices  which undermine companies - asset-stripping; excessive payouts to executives not matched by performance; and the "feudal" system of corporate governance residing with a few individuals at the top. He believed in motivating all employees, enabling them to contribute and perform for the common good.