Harry was born at Burnage, Lancashire. In 1940 he joined the R.A.F. as a wireless operator, and after training became a member of the force known as Y service, highly secret then. This work was later taken over by G.C.H.Q. Cheltenham, and consisted of tracking enemy bombers by listening to their radio messages which were in Morse Code. By triangulating with another R.A.F. radio station, it was possible to find their position, and alert Fighter Command. The call signs of the aircraft were recognised, and their home bases were known. Harry remembers that on one occasion, he picked up the call sign of Hitler’s personal aircraft. It was D 2600.
After serving in this country, he took part in the Tunisian campaign, then southern France, landing at St Raphael, and on to Avignon, Marseilles, Rome, Naples, Capri, Foggia, Bari Ancona and Loretto.
When the war ended, Harry volunteered to server 2 more years as a civilian in the same work. He had been writing to Pat while he was overseas, and they were married in 1947. He was working at Whitchurch in Shropshire and while they were visiting family in Herefordshire, they walked past the cottage, Mason’s Meadow, where Harry now lives. It was for sales, and they bought it, and Harry gave up his job which paid £11 per week, and worked at Pullen’s Farm for £7. He says that going from a sedentary job to manual work on the land, nearly killed him. However he stayed there for seven years.
He then felt the need for a change, and Mr. Higgins, a churchwarden at Mathon who owned a factory in Worcester gave him a job as a progress chaser and for a time Harry exchanged the quiet of the fields for machine noise, but then he began to long for the open air, and worked for Stephen Ballard as foreman at his farm in Colwall. This lasted for three years until Stephen retired. He had owned Groves End, Bank Farm and Pitlock Farm. When his daughter married he gave her Hope End as a wedding present. This was the site of a house owned in the past by Mr. Barrett, the father of Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
Harry followed this with working as a postman for six months, and then as groundsman at Chase School, though he was now handicapped by hip pain and went into hospital for a replacement. His last job was as assistant storekeeper at Broads of Malvern, which ended when the owner said to him, “Well, Harry, you’ve had your chips.”
So that was the beginning of Harry’s retirement. When Harry and Pat first lived at Mason’s Meadow, they had no car and used to walk to churches at Acton Beauchamp, Suckley, Evesbatch, Fromes Hill, Cradley, Mathon and Storridge. Rev Thorburn was Vicar of Mathon at that time, and they liked him immediately, especially when they found that his daughter had worked alongside Pat in Manchester. So they settled at Mathon Church, and he became churchwarden, ran a Scout troop, and took many services when the church was temporarily without a vicar. He has that rare gift of being able to be on goods terms with anyone as soon as he meets them.
He took the Scouts for camping holidays in the Lake District, New Forest, Gower Peninsula, Peak District, and to a jamboree in Wales. He met Lord Baden-Powell.
In retirement he became a skilled painter in oils, and for many seasons missed few county matches at Worcester. For years he would take services in churches when they had no parson, and on one of those visits, he was told by a lady in the congregation that one of their services had been taken by Rev. Mark McCausland. “Oh I know Mark,” Harry replied, “he was our vicar some years ago.” “Well, weren’t you lucky!” she replied.
Harry gets a medal for service to the Boy Scout movement