21 September 2025

Following a period of rest & recuperation in the US (San Francisco) Harry finally returned home arriving in Southampton and travelling up to Oban, Scotland to be reunited with his family. Eventually, he would settle in Liverpool, buying up two shops, one with a milkshake bar (US influence perhaps) and the other selling toys, sweets and cigarettes. He was a very popular member of the local L8 community and was loved by so many.

Thereafter, Harry had a good life amid the pervasive optimism of those heady (and generally much happier) post-war years as Britain settled cautiously into the relative peace of the 1950s and 60s. He died in 1965, of cancer, at the age of 74 which may have been due to travelling through Nagasaki in September 1945. We will never know.

In summary then, here was a man who had been a professional soldier for most of his life, having joined the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry way back in 1910, at the tender age of 19. Following the relentless trauma of the Western Front in WW1, he continued to display his innate courage when, in the 1920s, he bade farewell to life in Britain, and travelled to India (with his young family in tow) for service in the Indian Army. No doubt, he had not anticipated that he might be called upon, yet again, to serve his country in war - and yet, he certainly was. Despite advancing middle age (he was, by the early 1940s, 51 years old), he was to stand up and volunteer once more, to confront the aggression of Imperial Japan. Here was a man whose life was all about 'duty' yet he didn't crow about his many achievements. Like so many other veterans of both world wars, and of all the smaller conflicts in between, his quiet modesty, good-natured generosity, and his love for his family told you everything you needed to know in order to understand the giant of a man that Harry was.

This has been our attempt, in some small way, to keep his indomitable and gentle spirit alive for this generation, and for those yet to come.

Anne & Simon Powley