Horn Blower

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27 Squadron Update The start of 2010 was heavily disrupted by the weather and a record snow fall at RAF Odiham. It took a massive clean-up job involving the entire station to make the airfield suitable for any sort of flying, but after a couple of days of hard work crews braved the conditions and managed to get up in the air again. It was actually very good training for A Flight, who are heading out to Afghanistan in February, as the snow on the airfield replicated the dusty conditions found out in theatre very well and provided a great opportunity to practice dust landing techniques. Therefore, despite the conditions they enjoyed a successful period of Pre Deployment Training (PDT) and are now on their final work up before taking over from C Flight later this month. B Flight also made use of the snow conditions and were able to get some opportune practice at snow landings before heading out to Norway in February as part of Exercise Clockwork. This is an exercise focussed on improving the skills needed to fly in unforgiving arctic conditions as well as arctic survival training which includes living in snow hole for 3 days. In the meantime the Flight continues to hold National Standby which involves one crew on 2 hours notice to move and can be called out for a number of things including flood relief, long range search and rescue and response to terrorist attacks. Fortunately the Flight has been quiet on this front. The last week of January and first of February has been dominated by the Mission Rehearsal Exercise on Salisbury plain. This is a massive Army run exercise to prepare the next regiment due to go to Afghanistan and is heavily supported by Odiham for troop and equipment movements as well as simulated Air Assaults in an attempt to replicate theatre as much as possible. C Flight have been in Afghanistan since the middle of December and are due to return home in February. The tour began with a number of dangerous Air Assaults involving a number of multi aircraft inserts into enemy positions. Unfortunately the IRT (medical evacuation) aircraft has also continued to be very busy recovering badly injured coalition troops from the battlefield. Due to the nature of this task the landing sites are not always the most suitable as one crew found to their detriment when they landed to pick up a casualty and stuck a tree damaging the rotor blades. The crew and passengers were fine and the engineering team did an incredible job to fix the aircraft in situ and it was recovered to Camp 14 Bastion that afternoon. The crews continue to work very hard on daily tasking, moving troops and equipment and delivering vital food, water, ammunition, morale-boosting mail from home, and more, to the soldiers on the ground. They will be deserving of a much needed rest when A Flight take over at the end of the month. Fl.Lt. Phil Nuttall Common Hall 2010 Common Hall 2010 broke new ground when the event was held for the first time at the National Liberal Club in Whitehall Place. The Master began proceedings with an introduction in which he first welcomed our new Chaplain-Elect, Revd. Alan Griffin and then reflected on his year in office, making particular reference to the review of the Communication Strategy and the unfortunate effects of snow and heavy rain. Court Assistant, Georgina Scott, the Honorary Keeper of the Horn, delivered a very interesting address on the Narwhal Horn explaining the history of the Company‟s Horn and how it came into the Company‟s ownership in 1948. Her address included a detailed account of the Narwhal Whale – the Unicorn of the Sea. Due to the unavoidable absence of the Renter Warden, David Williams, the Chairman of the Polymer Committee, Court Assistant Clive Thompson, gave a presentation on the various awards made by the Company during the past year. The Upper Warden, Colin Richards, outlined the programme for the forthcoming year details of which appear on page 16. He also introduced Meg Flanagan from his chosen charity SmileTrain. She explained that the purpose of SmileTrain is to provide cleft surgery to millions of children in 78 of the world‟s poorest countries. Each operation lasts
approximately 45 minutes and costs just £150. So far the charity has funded 500,000 such operations and the ultimate aim is to totally eradicate the problem of clefts so that by means of training and education there are no more children in the world needing this surgery. The guest speaker Peter Nelson, the Assistant Town Clerk of the City of London, explained the interface between the Liver Companies, the Lord Mayor, and the Corporation of London. There are currently 107 livery companies with 25,000 liverymen. The earliest of these livery companies can trace their history back to the 12 th Century. Before the Master‟s closing remarks, Honorary Freeman, Mary Hunt, made a short plea to all Horners for them to consider including a legacy in their wills for the benefit of the Horners Company. Peter Nelson addresses Common Hall The City Livery Club The Horners Company has enjoyed a very long association with the City Livery Club since the Club was founded in 1914 and several Horners have served on the Council of the Club and as President, the most recent of whom is Court Assistant Mei Sim Lai who was the President in 2006-7. She was the second lady President in the Club‟s history and is still active at the Club, leading on the Discussion Group Events and the Club‟s Women in the Livery initiative. Uniting the Livery and promoting Fellowship amongst Liverymen is the aim of the City Livery Club and all Horners are welcome to join as members. The current President, Alderman Alison Gowman is supported by Valerie Boakes, Senior Vice President and Alderman and Sheriff David Wootton who is the Junior Vice President as well as Alderman Neil Redcliffe , the Honorary Treasurer. Members have use of the facilities at the Baltic Exchange where the Club is based. This includes a bar (open till 8pm every Thursday), a restaurant, a library and meeting rooms. The Club also has reciprocal arrangements with other well known Clubs in the U.K. and abroad. What makes the City Livery Club unique are its many special interest sections such as music, motoring, golf, tennis, antiques, wine circle, aero and photography. In addition there are currently three investment clubs. On 21 April 2010 at 12 noon, Past Lord Mayor Alderman Sir John Stuttard will be leading a discussion on „The Role of the Livery Companies and their importance to the City today „. This will be a marvellous opportunity to attend what promises to be a very interesting and relevant meeting, meet other liverymen and visit the City Livery Club. If you would like to attend please contact Court Assistant Mei Sim Lai on MeiSim@laipeters.org. Details on joining the Club and the activities of the Club can be found on the Club‟s website www.cityliveryclub.org. A Mystery We arranged to meet up with Glenn and Patsy Beall of Chicago during their recent visit to the UK in order to attend the Mansion House banquet. It has been several years since they were our guests at Henley and Glenn particularly wished to go antique hunting. We arranged this and Patsy found an elegant plastics bracelet which was, in fact, an early laminated ivory look-alike cellulose piece. In the meantime Glenn had wandered into the rear of an adjacent, antique rug dealer‟s premises and had found, locked in a display cabinet, a magnificent horn pitcher some 9” high, with a silver handle, lid and base. The horn is in pristine condition so one wonders if it was ever used to contain a liquid. The upper and lower silver bands are hall marked London 1884 and the makers name is John Williams Johnson. So far I have not been able to find any similar horn jugs and I wonder if any fellow Horner can throw some light on such a fine example of a horn artefact. Alan Griffiths 15
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Page 13: IN MEMORY OF LATE HORNERS Malcolm D

Horn Blower

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