Memories of George, a family war hero

Jan 24 2008 by Hudd Student1, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

THE story of the organ restoration at a moorland church has sparked family memories from a former Colne Valley resident.

Alex Clarke, now living in Lindley, was born and bred in Linthwaite.

He has told the Examiner how he used to pump up the organ bellows at St Bartholomew’s Church, Deanhead, for his cousin, who baled out over France in the Second World War and fought with the resistance.

Mr Clarke said: “My uncle, Herbert Hirst, was the publican of the Brown Cow at Scammonden.

“His son, George, took piano and organ lessons from renowned Edgar Walker Baxter, who was our great uncle and the organist at New North Road Baptist Church in Huddersfield.

“When we visited them George used to put me on the back of his motorbike and take me from the pub to St Bartholomew’s, so that I could blow the organ for him while he practised. This was around 1937.”

Mr Clarke had to pump the organ by hand, ensuring that he kept up the pressure in the bellows so that his cousin could keep playing.

But once the war came George Hirst went into the RAF as an air gunner and his talents as an organist had to be abandoned.

“He could have gone on to be a really great player,” Mr Clarke said.

Mr Clarke said that during a fierce air battle over France George parachuted out of a burning aircraft.

When his chute opened his boots fell off, resulting in him landing bootless in a freshly-cut corn field.

In agony, yet undeterred, he spent three days with his gauntlets protecting his feet.

Mr Clarke said George’s first reception by the French was less than welcoming.

“He asked for some food at the first farmhouse he came to after he’d landed and the woman said she’d give him some eggs,” he said.

“She gave them wrapped in a cloth and he took them away to eat in hiding. But when he unwrapped them he found they were ‘pot eggs’, the type they put in nests to encourage hens to lay.

“Fortunately the people he met after that were kinder.”

After some time George was taken in by the Maquis – the French underground resistance forces fighting the Germans – and fought with them in the Ardeche in south-east France.

They gave him false papers which named him as Georges Hirsoil, a deaf and dumb agricultural seedsman.

This identity helped him make his way over the Pyrenees on foot to Spain. He went on to Gibraltar, from where he was repatriated. He had been missing for two years.

During that period George’s mother spent every Sunday evening listening to the German radio broadcast of names and numbers of British military they had caught, not knowing that he had evaded capture.

Mr Clarke said George never returned to France after the war.

When he returned to England George was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal, which was buried with him when he died 13 years ago.

The organ at St Bartholomew’s will always remind Mr Clarke of his cousin, the family days spent at Deanhead and those times spent pumping the organ bellows full of air.

“The church has the most marvellous setting, better than any other church I know, and I’ve seen a fair few.

“It has some of the best acoustics too,” added Mr Clarke.

“I last sang at Deanhead on November 25, 1993, and the blowing arm on the box was still there, despite the organ being pumped electrically.

“I really hope that they keep it. It’s a part of history.”