Foreign News: The Return of Henry Worsley

To Stockport, England, slim, hard, bronzed Sergeant Henry (“Harry”) Worsley returned home after two years at war. He had fought from El Alamein to Salerno, been twice wounded, won the Military Medal. He had two weeks’ leave.

The train was late. When he arrived at Manchester, the last bus had gone. Through the blackout, with air-raid sirens wailing, he walked four miles home. His family had all but given him up. The children, Joyce, 8, Frank, 7, had been put to bed. Lily, his wife, unwilling to muss her new marcel wave before he saw it, waited, and kept ready a hot cup of tea.

For Now. Next morning he slept luxuriously late. When he awoke he learned that the sweaters he had brought for the kids were too small; the real crepe de Chine nightgown for his wife too large.

He looked up old friends; those still around were mostly the very old and the very young. He got used to staying in the kitchen-dining-living room; it was the one room with a fire. He played the radio incessantly; it was “grand to hear, music again.” Evenings, he and Lily visited “The Post House” across the street. He drank beer—”I still like my mild and bitter”—but his wife celebrated extravagantly with double whiskies.

For Christmas. He spent much of his time in his garden workshop. He made toy battleships and airplanes, repaired Joyce’s doll house. Otherwise, toys being so scarce and costly, the children might have had no new ones for Christmas. He visited the school to see how his kids were making out; the teacher made him tell an assembly about “life in the desert.” On his last night the family had a feast of roast lamb, boiled potatoes, cabbage, Queen’s pudding—a spongy affair with jam.

For Then. Before he enlisted in 1939, Henry Worsley, now 31, was a felt finisher in a hat factory. He was one of the little men so often called “the backbone of England.” Last week, just before he left to rejoin his outfit, he said that the one thing he expected of the postwar world was his job in the hat factory.