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unusual in that. He was stationed first at Dublin Castle and recalled later that such was the appalling security offered to off-duty troops that as a rule they would buy their own side arms as, astonishingly, the Army did not provide them.
    Almost inevitably, Henry William boxed. He was a useful welterweight, in fact, and made it to the semi-finals of his brigade championships, which he won. In the final, a man who turned out to be a professional in civilian life beat him. Remarkably, Henry William fought both contests on the same night, which might go some way to explaining the result. His consolation was £1, so technically at least he was a now a professional.
    Henry William served in the RHA for seven years before rejoining civilian life in the year of the General Strike, 1926, which was also the year that his father died suddenly. George had been suffering from an undiagnosed gastric ulcer since 1922, so the medical report tells us, but it was a burst blood vessel, perhaps connected with the ulcer, perhaps with his liver, which would have been curling up at the edges by now, an event which occurred at the end of February. He was, typically, singing at a wedding at thetime. He died on 13 May at the home they shared with many others at 19 Ash Street, after a recurrence of the same symptom. Elizabeth was at his bedside when he died.
    Henry William, rather than stay with his mother, settled as a relieved civilian into lodgings at 33 Bedford Street, Newington. Next door at number 31 lived the Nutkins family. After a relatively brief courtship, Henry William Cooper and Lily Nutkins were married at St John’s Church, Newington on 8 May 1927.
    The couple moved to Daneville Road, Camberwell Green, where their first son, Bernard, arrived in 1930. The economic situation was dire, but not quite as bad as it was going to get. The stock market had crashed, but the full effects of this were yet to be felt, not that this would particularly bother either Henry William or Lily unduly, as life was always going to be hard for them, whatever the economic conditions; boom, bust, recession or depression, it made little or no difference to them. When times were really hard (and they would get really hard), it was more a matter of tightening an already constricting belt yet one more notch.
    When Lily became pregnant in the late summer of 1933, neither she nor Henry had any inkling about their new baby. When asked what she would call it if it was another boy she said she rather liked the idea of Walter, not that there were any Walters in her particular family tree, but then there weren’t any Bernards, either. The birth was due to take place in late April or early May at the Westminster lying-in (maternity) hospital. Lily had received a hint of what was to come, but failed to grasp it; she was even shown X-rays of herself. There had been an occasionalexample of twins in Henry William’s family, but not, so far as she knew, in her own.
    So, when healthy twin boys arrived on 3 May 1934, no one was more surprised than Lily. Any dismay she may have felt at the prospect of another mouth to feed (she was always, with good reason, a worrier) was quickly offset as she held the two new arrivals for the first time. The first baby out weighed in at 61bs, the second, born 20 minutes later, was a little more hefty, a difference that would in fact persist.
    As for naming these two, Lily recalled later that it was a maternity nurse, or perhaps a midwife who, as a matter of complete coincidence, thought of Henry and George, in that order. Both were Cooper family names, and they seemed appropriate, so Henry and George they became – neither was given a middle name.
    Daneville Road was clearly going to become quite crowded, the proud parents realized, but not perhaps immediately. Much would depend on how fast these new arrivals started growing. Another nurse had noted that they looked to be likely lads. ‘You mark my words,’ she said, ‘these two will be