A cold coming awaited Melburn Henke in all respects but one. A leaden Irish sky, damp air that mortified Hint mortified the flesh, a mournful horizon of rusting cranes and dilapidated warehouses, channels of gray water and drab groups of longshoremen—these made up Henke’s landscape. He was wearing a steel helmet with a shallow crown and a flat brim cocked somewhat rakishly over one eye; on his back a regulation pack sat trim and heavy, a bayonet as long as a sword strapped to it, and from his right shoulder hung an M-1 rifle no longer new. His expression was confident and, considering the climate, happy. Those old enough to recall it might have thought him every inch a doughboy en route for the Argonne or Belleau Wood. Certainly there was something of repetition about Pfc. Henke’s appearance that wintry morning, for he was the first American soldier officially to set foot on the soil of Great Britain in World War II, and the term “G.I.” was not yet in common use for his species.

It was January 26, 1942, and the United States was entering the eighth week of war with Germany and Japan. When he actually stepped ashore, as flash guns popped and a band played, Henke achieved immortality of a sort: the spot was later marked with a plaque. Henke himself described the experience as “one I won’t easily forget” and marched smartly out of the limelight. No one could have seen in Private First Class Henke that dank morning the first physical indication that the United States of America was about to assume the leadership of the Western world.

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