Henry was born on 26 August 1912 in Cork, Ireland to Lithuania born father Simon, a jeweller, and Swedish mother Sarah nee Bergson. Simon and Sarah were married in 1907 in Värmland, Sweden before moving to Ireland where their children were born.

Henry had two sisters, Dorothy and Betty, and a brother Albert. Betty, who became a novelist and biographer, married Emanuel Miller, a military psychiatrist and subsequently a paediatric psychiatrist at Harley House. Their son Jonathan Miller was an English theatre and opera director, actor, author, television presenter, humourist and physician.

Henry was an ordinary seaman on board H.M.S. Firedrake an ‘F’ class Destroyer, which was the escort leader to convoy ON153, with 43 ships bound for Canada. They sailed in a force 12 storm the worst the Atlantic had seen for a very long time. At about 17.00 hrs, the ASDIC operator picked up a contact. HMS Firedrake tracked the contact to about 5 miles south of the convoy, when at 20.10 hrs she was hit by a torpedo fired by U-boat U211. The ship broke in two. The bow section sank immediately, with the stern just managing to stay afloat. There were 168 of the Firedrake’s crew lost and 3 others that had been picked up earlier that had survived an earlier sinking that night.