Falkirk firefighter ends 35 years of on-call action

While most retained firefighters move on after a couple of years, watch commander George Aitken (60) showed true commitment by putting his life on the line – and any chance of a good night’s sleep on hold from 1984 right up to January this year.

Laurieston father-of-four George admitted age had played a part in his decision to end his 35 years of service and spend more time with wife of 38 years Catherine and their family.

“I felt I was getting well past my sell by date. Some days I was getting back home and I could hardly walk, but I got a lot of satisfaction out of it, made a lot of friends and helped the community.”

George received “various bottles of alcohol” to mark his retirement, as well as a night away in Troon and a special “clocking off” plaque.

“My ambition was to be a firefighter full-time,” said George. “But it was harder to get in back in those days so I had the best of both worlds – working at a sawmill and being a retained firefighter.

“You didn’t know what you were going into, but the training was excellent. Back when I started we had around three fires a week. Whatever the full-time firefighters were called to the retained firefighters would be there to back them up.

“I’ve seen some really bad incidents. Nowadays they have people who talk to you about it to help you, but back then firefighters just talked to each other. We would poke fun at things because sometimes laughing was the best way to cope. That was old school.”

The former Graeme High School pupil revealed his claim to fame actually happened when he was off duty – alerting his colleagues fire had broken out at Fallkirk’s Sanam restaurant back in 2015.

“I was going past at around 5.30am and I smelled the smoke – at first I thought it was coming from the houses behind it.”

Later on members of staff at the Sanam all shook George’s hand when they found out he had helped save their livelihood. Both George and his colleagues were certainly well fed in the weeks after the incident.