Canadian WWI Ace pilot. Interesting article about how he was lost to history. Please check out the write up in Wikipedia also
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_George_BarkerThe flying ace you’ve never heard of
Katie Daubs Staff Reporter
Lt.-Col. William Barker, a Manitoba frontier boy turned World War I flying ace, shot down 50 enemy aircraft, inspired a character in a Hemingway story, and married Billy Bishop’s cousin.
When he died in an aviation accident in 1930, six wartime flyers dropped rose petals on the crowd of 50,000 who lined the streets for his state funeral. “Solemnly the oak casket was borne inside,” the Star wrote at the time. “Eternal peace.”
But with eternal peace came decades of obscurity. For the last 81 years, William Barker, VC, has been largely forgotten, resting in the mausoleum at Mount Pleasant Cemetery. The only acknowledgement is a small marker inside his in-law’s crypt, an asterisk of sorts you have to crane your neck to see through the stained glass.
PHOTOS: Canada's WWI flying ace
John Wright, a senior executive with polling firm IPSOS, found himself at the crypt after reading about Barker’s exploits and searching for his grave. He was stunned that the most decorated war hero in Canadian history had such an understated resting place.
“It became a bit of an obsession,” he said of the next two years, where he contacted the family and Lieutenant Governor David Onley to correct the situation.
On Thursday afternoon, a memorial at Mount Pleasant Cemetery will be unveiled, identifying Barker as the “most decorated war hero in the history of Canada, the British Empire, and the Commonwealth of Nations.” During the ceremony, there will be a flypast of vintage World War I planes. Barker’s grandsons will also be there.
When he died at 35, Barker had been decorated 12 times for bravery. But as the years passed, Billy Bishop became the name most Canadians associated with “flying ace.”
“If he died at the end of World War I, he might have been (remembered as) a hero in a different way,” Onley said. “If he lived longer, as Billy Bishop did, maybe he would have been a squadron commander in World War II.”
The fact that Barker has been forgotten is “an accident of history,” Onley added.
Who could forget the brash pilot who, on Christmas Day, 1917, was part of an unauthorized attack against a German airfield? Wayne Ralph, who wrote a biography of Barker, said that after strafing the field, he reportedly threw a printed card out of the plane that read “Merry Christmas.”
It was an act that apparently caught the attention of Ernest Hemingway. In The Snows of Kilimanjaro, a character named Barker comes back from a Christmas Day attack on an Austrian officer’s leave train. An unnamed character calls him “a bloody murderous bastard.”
“Is that true? Nobody knows,” said Ralph. “Maybe Hemingway made that up because he didn’t like Barker.”
Ralph, who interviewed some of the men who flew alongside Barker, said he was loved by his colleagues.
“Some guys that are very good at that kind of work aren’t very pleasant. He was an emotional guy, he wasn’t a cold-hearted sociopath,” he said.
On Oct. 27, 1918, when Barker attacked a German plane, he found himself in a dogfight with 15 enemy planes. Wounded, bleeding and losing consciousness, he kept attacking while negotiating a crash landing. He was awarded the Victoria Cross, but his body was riddled with wounds, and his arm was shattered. For the rest of his life, in constant pain, he drank to cope, Ralph said.
When he returned to Canada, he married Jean Kilbourn Smith, Bishop’s cousin, and they had a daughter. Barker and Bishop then started a commercial airline, but it failed.
Before his death, Barker had key roles within the newly formed Royal Canadian Air Force, became the first president of the Toronto Maple Leafs, and the vice-president of Fairchild Aircraft. While demonstrating a Fairchild plane in 1930 in Ottawa, he was killed after losing control.
“Earlier today while the city slept a great warrior was brought home dead,” the Star reported. “The empire gasped at the news.”
And then, after the lean years of the Depression and another world war, the empire moved on.
On Thursday, the public is invited to the unveiling ceremony at 2 p.m. at the Mount Pleasant Cemetery Mausoleum
A hero’s dozen
Lt.-Col. William Barker was decorated 12 times for bravery:
Victoria Cross
Distinguished Service Order (twice)
Military Cross (three times)
Mentioned in Despatches (three times)
Medaglia d’argento al valor militare (Italy — twice)
Croix de guerre (France)
Published:
http://www.thestar.com/news/article/105 ... rd-of?bn=1
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