Parish Personality - Soldier, Barrister and English Gentleman

You have to be up early to see John Watson-Baker in his distinctive red-striped woolly hat, as he collects his newspaper from the Post Office.  John is a familiar face around the village, where he has lived for the past thirty years after a varied life as a soldier and a barrister.

He was born in Hertfordshire in 1921 into a well-to-do family that owned a company manufacturing optical instruments in High Holborn in London.  Like many of his contemporaries at that time he was sent to boarding school at Aldenham in Hertfordshire where he remembers that he was “beaten regularly.  Life was hard. 

 We were brought up then to be tough and self reliant, which certainly stood me in good stead later.”  By the time when he left school, it was 1939 and Britain was already at war with Germany.  John volunteered for the Army, but first went to Baliol College, Oxford, to read law.  Because of the war the usual nine terms (three years) at university had been reduced to four terms and John received what was then called a ‘wartime degree’ in law.

In 1942, aged 21, he was commissioned into the Royal Artillery as a Second Lieutenant.  As a linguist, who spoke French, German and Russian, he felt certain that he would be staying in England, but the Army had other ideas and he was soon on a troop ship to Cape Town.  “I then travelled north” remembers John “by every possible means, including a raft, before eventually arriving at Moshe, Tanzania - or Tanganyika, as it was then known.  However, they weren’t expecting me there and at first no one knew what to do with me.  Eventually I was sent to 55 Tanganyika Battery in 302 Field Regiment Royal Artillery, which had British officers and some NCOs.  It was equipped with ’25 Pounders’, then the standard field gun for the British Army.  The African soldiers were wonderful – natural warriors – brave, loyal and with their own particular brand of humour.  I learnt another language – Swahili.  After some months we were sent to Burma via Sri Lanka and were then in action against the Japanese as part of 33 Indian Corps fighting our way to Mandalay, including during the very challenging monsoon season, which had not been done before in the war.  The Japanese were very scared of the African soldiers, believing that they would be eaten alive if captured and therefore their souls would not then find eternal rest.  Quite often we would find Japanese positions deserted in the mornings.”

By the time the war ended in August 1945 John’s regiment was in Chazubama, India, “where the temperature was 128ºF (53ºC) in the shade.  We lost a lot of people there to the deadly krait, known as the bootlace snake.”  He eventually returned to England in 1946, when he left the Army and returned to Baliol College, Oxford, for another five terms, gaining an Honours degree in law.  “I found it very difficult to settle down again after my experiences fighting in the jungle, but at least I wasn’t alone, as there were then so many others like me.  I suppose these days it would be called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.”

John was called to the Bar in 1948, working in chambers near the Middle Temple in London and “dealing with general common law, including quite a lot of divorces, for which we received two guineas (£2.10) (today the equivalent of £60.00) which was a laughably small amount even then.”  After several years John then advised the Institute of Shipping and Forwarding Agents and the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) on possible changes to company law.  During this time he also revised two reference books on law, including the standard ‘Halsbury Laws of England’, which consists of forty volumes covering the whole spectrum of English law.

For the next twenty five years John worked as a legal adviser to such large national companies as John Lewis, Formica Ltd, part of the De La Rue Group, and United Builders Merchants, based in Bristol.  After five years he was made redundant from United Builders in 1975, but shortly afterwards he was then appointed by the Lord Chancellor to be the Chairman of the local tribunal for south west England which dealt with cases involving all aspects of employment law.  Some of these cases made the national media at a time when the Trade Unions and the Government of the day were often at loggerheads, “It was a most interesting time” recalls John.

At the age of 72, John finally retired in 1993 after nearly twenty years as the tribunal chairman.  In 1967 he had married Anne, who came from South Somerset, but it was coincidental that they found themselves living in Curry Rivel.  Both John and Anne, until her death in 2007, were much involved in the local community, with John accumulating nine years as a Church warden and editor of the church newsletter.  “We have lived here longer than anywhere else.  It was still a village when we came here in 1974” says John “but now there are so many more houses and people that we no longer know each other in the community, which is sad.”

John’s advancing years mean that he can no longer get around the village as much as he would like.  But this genial, English gentleman keeps a close interest in what happens in the village and always welcomes a chat - if you are up that early in the morning to catch him.

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