AS PERSONAL assistant to the circulation manager of The Times in 1952, Charles Parker was sent out to the United States to organise an ambitious project to commemorate the thousands of Americans of all Services who had lost their lives fighting Nazism from British shores. This was the publication by The Times of Britain’s Homage to 28,000 American Dead, a handsomely bound illustrated book of remembrance. More than 70,000 copies of the book were printed and distributed in America to families who had lost a serviceman.
Sent out to New York in November 1952, Parker’s role was to advise on the US end of the distribution of Britain’s Homage. An appeal for relatives of the fallen was launched and application cards were distributed in 1953. By the end of 1954 more than 74,000 applications had been received. Parker’s office dealt with nearly 16,000 letters of thanks.
Parker also acted as liaison during the visit of the paper’s proprietor, Colonel J. J. Astor, to the United States, arranging a meeting between him and President Truman, at which the US President received a copy of Britain’s Homage at the White House. But many of Parker’s colleagues thought the bigger coup was his managing to get General Eisenhower to agree to meet Astor, during the last and crucial phase of Ike’s presidential campaign that year.
Charles George Archibald Parker was born in 1924 and educated at Eton. Leaving in 1942, he joined The Rifle Brigade in August and was commissioned the following May. After a period as an instructor he was posted to the 1st Battalion in February 1944, training for the Normandy landings.
Landing on the beaches shortly after D-Day, as an officer in A Company 1st Rifle Brigade he was part of a deep push inland by 7th Armoured Division, ordered by Montgomery with the intention of outflanking the stubborn German defenders of Caen. A Company was in support of the 22nd Armoured Brigade which was to capture the important road junction at Villers-Bocage, thus cutting the routes west and southwestwards into and out of Caen. They entered the town on the morning of June 13 to a warm welcome from the remaining inhabitants.
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Unobserved by the British column, a small force of powerful German Tiger tanks, commanded by the Panzer ace Obersturmbahnführer Michael Wittmann, had taken up positions in the sunken lanes flanked with high hedgerows that were a feature of the bocage country. With their 88mm guns these opened fire without warning with devastating effect on the British Cromwell and light tanks, causing heavy casualties and forcing a retreat. Parker was seriously wounded and eventually lost the sight of an eye. Falling into the hands of the advancing Germans, he spent the rest of the war as a prisoner.
He returned to the Army on being repatriated and from August 1945 to January 1946 was a battle school instructor.
Demobilised in August, he went up to New College, Oxford, to take a shortened degree in Russian language, literature and history, graduating in 1948. In 1949 he joined the advertising department of Times Newspapers. Among colleagues at the time he is recalled as a man of debonair charm. Few realised that he had lost an eye.
In May 1952 he became PA to the paper’s circulation manager, Victor Royle, and embarked on the American task that was to occupy him for the next year. In 1956 he resigned to join the coke and coal merchants Charringtons.In 1971 Parker sought the publishing ambience again, and joined the British Medical Association, where he was in charge of BMA Publications for the next 15 years. Finally, in 1976 he bought the publishing company, R. Hazell & Co, based at Henley-on-Thames.
Parker was a deputy lieutenant and vice-lord-lieutenant of Oxfordshire, as well as being High Sheriff, 1989-90.
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He is survived by his wife Shirley, whom he married in 1958, and by their daughter.
Charles Parker, publishing executive, was born on January 30, 1924. He died on July 18, 2004, aged 80.