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Major Eric George Sherbrooke Walker, MC (1887–1976) was hotelier and founder of the Outspan Hotel and Treetops Hotel in Kenya, as well as a decorated military officer. He is remembered as the host of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip when they visited Treetops in 1952, shortly before receiving news of the death of King George VI and Elizabeth's accession to the throne. ==Early life== The son of Reverend George Sherbrooke Walker and his wife, Jessie Elizabeth Carter, Eric Walker was born in Edgbaston, Birmingham in Warwickshire on 4 July 1887, and brought up in March, Cambridgeshire where his father was rector of St Wendreda's church.〔Birth registered in the Kings Norton Registration District in the quarter ended September 1887. His parents' marriage was registered in the Cheltenham Registration District in the quarter ended September 1886.〕 He was educated at Oxford University. Walker was associated with the Scouting movement, and was a personal secretary to Baden-Powell, the founder of the movement. He was one of the first two Scout inspectors, overseeing Wales and the South of England. He was present at Baden-Powell's first Scout camp in Humshaugh in 1908, and toured Canada with sixteen Scouts in 1910 to demonstrate Scouting. Walker was commissioned in the army in August 1914; he transferred to the Royal Flying Corps but was shot down and held as a prisoner of war in Germany. He is said to have made 36 attempts to escape. Apparently, on one occasion, a German girlfriend from before the war helped him by supplying him with wire cutters provided by Baden-Powell hidden inside a piece of ham. After the War's end he was employed as a temporary captain on the General List, fighting against the Bolsheviks with the British Military Mission in South Russia alongside the White Army in the Russian Civil War. He was awarded the Military Cross for his gallantry at Ushun in the Crimea on 8 and 10 March 1920, where he attached himself to the Police Regiment and remained with them throughout the two days of counter-attacks, during which they sustained heavy casualties. By his personal example and coolness, under heavy machine-gun fire, he was largely responsible for the decisive success gained. In addition, he received the Order of St. Anna and the Order of St. Stanislaus from the grateful White Russian authorities. Walker returned to England after the war, and became engaged and ultimately married to Lady Elizabeth Mary "Bettie" Feilding (22 August 1899 – ?), the daughter of Rudolph Feilding, 9th Earl of Denbigh, on 26 July 1926.〔 Needing money to finance his marriage, he ran a bootlegging business, smuggling liquor into America during the Prohibition era, while his fiancée Lady Bettie worked as social secretary in the British Embassy in Washington DC. When Walker shot and wounded a corrupt state trooper who had tried to steal his cache of whiskey, the couple fled to Canada. Walker later wrote ''The Confessions of a Rum-Runner'' under the pseudonym of ''James Barbican'' about his life during this period. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Eric Sherbrooke Walker」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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