Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

An interesting Second World War and post-war campaign service group of six awarded to Lieutenant-Colonel A. J. Barker, East Yorkshire Regiment, a prolific author in military history, but a man with his own story to tell - namely his kidnapping of the German Consul General for Cadiz in 1942, a Nazi who had been passing on intelligence to benefit U-Boat operations: crossing over to neutral Spain from Gibraltar under the guise of being a merchant, Barker and his accomplice eventually returned with their captive trussed up in the back of their car - a relatively sedate captive owing to the fact Barker had given him a good thumping with a truncheon

1939-45 Star; Africa Star; Burma Star; Defence and War Medals 1939-45; General Service 1918-62, 2 clasps, Palestine 1945-48, Malaya, E.II.R. (Major A. Barker, E. Yorks.), very fine and better (6) £600-800

Arthur Barker, who was born in Hull in September 1918, was mobilised from the Supplementary Reserve of Officers on the outbreak of hostilities in September 1939, when he was appointed a 2nd Lieutenant in the East Yorkshire Regiment. Having then been attached to the King’s African Rifles, and seen action in Somaliland and Ethiopia, he was advanced to the temporary rank of Captain. But the most extraordinary chapter of his wartime career was yet to come - namely his time in Gibraltar in 1942, when he was enlisted to kidnap the German Consul General for Cadiz. The latter - an ardent Nazi spy - had been passing intelligence back to Berlin regarding British shipping movements.

Barker sets the scene:

‘This was a man called Walther, a German officer masquerading as the German Consul at Cadiz. Putting a stop to Walther's activities through diplomatic channels offered little hope of immediate success. The Germans held all the cards in Europe, and their influence even in the parts still unoccupied was such that any inconvenient request from a neutral state would have called forth a blunt reply with a hint that further allusion to the subject in question would be received unfavourably. So it was decided that Walther would have to be disposed of. Provided he vanished completely, there was little likelihood of the suspected outrage being pinned on to anybody's door. Moreover, as long as the Spanish authorities were not embarrassed by some occurrence which it was impossible to overlook, there was a very reasonable expectation of their closing an eye.’


Barker continues:

‘In due course a laconic instruction was sent to Gibraltar authorising us to deal with Walther in such a way that no trail remained likely to lead to tiresome enquiries. Walther was to disappear quietly and nothing must be known of his fate. The task was handed to me, and I selected as my colleague a certain lan Stuart, who was a large and extremely strong Scot. We discarded the obvious and possibly the easiest course, which was to go and shoot Walther. There were certain objections, the chief of which was the difficulty of explaining away the presence of a corpse if we were unlucky enough to be caught. Our final plan was to cross the frontier at La Linea as two merchants interested in buying oranges. Despite the fact that there was a war on, papers and similar details presented no difficulties, nor did our arrival and departure. At that time Franco was not pressing his claim to Gibraltar.



We crossed the frontier without incident and took up our residence in the little town of Algeciras. Our car, being a shooting brake, had the advantage of being easily recognised, and for three weeks we toured the surrounding country interviewing orange growers, drinking the local wines and generally having an amusing and interesting time. In due course the local people and the customs officials at the frontier became quite used to us and their examination of our car more and more perfunctory. When the time came for us to leave for Cadiz, we did all that we should have done. We called on the British Consul to ask his opinion about the placing of contracts for oranges, evinced a polite interest in the fiesta due to take place on the following day in honour of some saint or other and took ourselves off to the little village just up the coast where we proposed sleeping. On the way we passed Walther's house. It was isolated and lay at the end of a street looking out towards the sea. A low wall separated it from the road and it appeared empty. Despite the temptation to investigate further we did not stop.

On arrival at the village we registered our car and showed our papers to the local chief of police before taking ourselves off to the sixteenth-century hotel for the night. Our papers were in order, and we had done nothing then what we should not have done. The British Consul would have got us out if the police had been so unfriendly as to put us in prison. However had we been caught with Walther alive or dead, or become involved in some lawless activity, the situation would have been very different. It might have meant a protracted stay in a Spanish jail. Naturally if we had been caught with Walther and unable to make a getaway he would have had to be shot, as my job was to put an end to his activities at any cost. This would have presented an extremely awkward problem, and one difficult to explain away.

However, next morning whilst the local inhabitants were at Mass we drove up to Walther's house. As we hoped he was at breakfast. Frau Walther came to the door and I handed her an envelope addressed to her husband which contained nothing. We followed her in and as Walther, who was a fat, middle-aged man, stood up I pulled a gun on him. There were no others present, so nothing appeared to stand in the way of our simplest plan. This was to tie their wrists and then give them both an injection, sufficient to put them out for a couple of hours, allow time for a rapid search of the house, load them into the car and away. lan, however, instead of tying Walther's wrists together, told him to follow him out to the car. This left me with no alternative but to tell Mrs. Walther to follow, and to hope for an opportunity to inject them later.

Having reached the car Walther tried to bolt. lan grabbed him by the shirt-collar and started belabouring him on the head with a rubber truncheon. Astonishingly this had no effect; Walther only yelled louder. The Frau Walther started to scream and pandemonium ensued. So far there was no one in the street, but a number of windows were opening, and it was obvious that the sooner this unseemly performance ended and we left, the better. I ran Frau Walther down the steps by the scruff of her neck, bundled her head over heels into the back of the car where she collapsed conveniently on the floor, and went to Ian's help. I was afraid of Walther breaking away and having to shoot him as he ran. This in itself would have presented no difficulty, but the noise of the shot would have attracted even more attention than we were already drawing. lan and Walther were still circulating in the middle of the road, while bellows from Walther mingled with oaths from lan and the sound of thuds from the truncheon. Every second this affair continued lessened the chances of accomplishing our task without a messy finish. And the only thing I wished to avoid was a shooting affray. lan was making little progress, so I shouted in Walther's ear that unless he ceased struggling I would shoot him. This brought about some momentary lull. "Give me the truncheon and hold out his neck," I ordered lan. This he did and I gave Walther one behind the ear as hard as I could. This quietened him and we bundled him into the car on top of his wife who was still lying on the floor.

We were only just in time, as a crowd reinforced by a number of police, was advancing slowly and steadily but with little show of determination, down the street. lan had now to work fast to clean up the back of the car before we drove through the town. The car had been designed with ropes to go round the neck of each of the victims. These held them motionless in their seats and a tug would effectively prevent any undesirable movement or outcry. lan sat behind with a rope in either hand, rather like a bellringer, and we entered the main street of Cadiz. Down this we drove at a modest twenty miles an hour. Considering what we had encumbered ourselves with and the awkward explanations which might ensue, it was an unpleasant drive, and I was thankful that neither of the Walthers were corpses. Fortunately we were lucky at the traffic lights and neither had to stop nor go against them.

Once clear of the town I stepped on the accelerator, and as soon as we came to a deserted part of the road we stopped. Despite their remonstrations, I injected a dose into both Walthers, sufficient to put them out for several hours, while lan climbed a telegraph pole and cut the wires. We had to work fast as there was no certainty that we would not be pursued by the police, who by this time would have discovered that all was not well. There was also the possibility of being stopped at some village on the way. We did not consider this a serious threat, partly owing to the general inertia of everybody on a saint's day, and partly as we didn't anticipate any serious obstruction from a village policeman when he was confronted with the business end of a pistol. To cut a long story short we arrived at the frontier without incident. lan disappeared inside the Customs House while I waited outside in the car, my foot on the accelerator, a bag of silver displayed prominently on my knees, and my pistol handy and also prominent. The windows of the car were very dusty and only the outlines of the two passengers were visible. As we were such familiar figures to the Customs officials, we hoped that they would not examine the car on this occasion or query the presence of the Walthers. Had this occurred I should have tried the effect of the silver, and if that failed I should have had recourse to force. The Chief Custom Officer, however, having ordered his deputy to carry on, favoured the car with a long stare, made his excuses and vanished into the Customs House, saying that he was unwell.

lan was still inside and the situation looked unpromising. I made ready to crash the barrier which was no real obstruction and pick up Ian, who would have come running out as soon as he heard any untoward noise. However, nothing transpired and he reappeared with the deputy Customs Officer who threw up the barrier himself. As we passed he called out to us, "Goodbye - I see you have finished your business!" - a remark of somewhat dubious intention. The rest was easy. We drove across the no-man’s land which separates La Linea from the British territory of the Rock, and pulled up at the guardhouse. Walther and his wife - a little worse for wear but in better shape than they might have expected - were handed over to the custody of the guard while lan and I reported to Fortress Headquarters.’



Barker, who afterwards attended the Staff College at Quetta, saw further action out in Burma in 1944-45 as a Temporary Major and onetime Air Liaison Officer during the siege of Imphal.

After the War he attended the Staff College at Quetta, saw further active service in Palestine and in Malaya, and graduated from the Royal Military College of Science at Shrivenham. Placed on the Retired List as a Lieutenant-Colonel in 1958, he joined the U.K. Atomic Energy Authority and remained similarly employed for ten years, leaving to take up a N.A.T.O. Research Fellowship in 1968. Two years at the Illinois Institute of Technology followed, where he worked on the U.S. space programme, following which he embarked on his successful career as a military historian. He eventually settled in Cape Town, South Africa, where he died in the summer of 1981.

Sold with two original wartime photographs, both captioned on the reverse, and one of them depicting the recipient outside Neghelli Hospital after having his left stitched up in December 1941; together with a selection of his published titles on military history (20), including his acclaimed Dunkirk, The Great Escape.