Quads & the Man

Staff Sergeant Bill Thompson, whose home address is Friendship Avenue, Pittsburgh, was the friendliest Yank in all the crowded British Isles. He bounced down the street of his West Country station, shook hands with anyone & everyone, boasted: "I'm the father of the Heanor quads. I want, the whole world to know."

The Father. The chances of a man in Britain siring four children at a single birth are 600,000-to-1. Auburn-haired auburn-skinned Sergeant Bill had made it. Life, he felt at that moment, had no problems he couldn't lick. He was not married to Norah Carpenter, the English mother of his quadruplets. He had a wife, Eleanor, back in Pittsburgh, whom he had married (after a three-year acquaintance) just before he went overseas. But he had written Eleanor long ago, told her that their marriage had been a mistake, that he was in love with Norah and that she was going to have a baby. Now, he hoped, Eleanor would give him a divorce and let him marry Norah.

Bill was around one night last week when "the baby" was expected in Norah's home in sooty, unlovely Heanor. "I sat in the kitchen drinking tea and smoking," he related, until Norah's mother came in and said, 'It's a girl. There's another one coming.' I couldn't say a word. I thought, 'Jeeze, think of me being the father of twins.'

"Three hours later they came and said the third had arrived. I sweated. I didn't dare ask again. I finally went out to the phone and told the sergeant on duty at my station that I had three babies. He thought I was nuts.

"When I got back to Norah's I said, 'Don't tell me there's another one!'"

There was. Said Bill: "Jeeze! You could have blown me down!"

The Mother. Frail, fluffy-haired Norah Carpenter, former telephone operator in the Auxiliary Territorial Service, sat up in the tiny bedroom of her miner-father's house. Piled around her were congratulatory messages and neighbors' gifts: diapers, blankets, baby boots and dresses.

To visitors Norah said: "I wish to make no secret of the fact I'm single." Her bustling mother said: "We would rather be honest about it." Heanor's town council opened a subscription for the babies, itself led the donations with -L-25. To Norah at that moment, life had never seemed so exciting. Even the local cinema sent a gift: "Flicker tickets for life! For all six of us!"

The Children. Auburn-haired Michael and MacDonald, brunette Maureen and Madeline came into a home ready for only one baby. They were wrapped in cotton batting and pink-&-blue shawls, put into an "emergency" sideboard drawer and carried to wicker cots and baskets in Heanor's nursing home. Three-pound MacDonald, the last to arrive, died in his sixth day. His brother and sisters seemed to be doing well on a diet of milk, water, glucose, Vitamins K and B1.

The U.S. Army does not distinguish between legitimacy and illegitimacy. Result: the three babies will share $70 in monthly family allowances. The British Army allows three children, legitimate or illegitimate, about $18 a month. Michael, Maureen and Madeline lose the King's bounty -L-1 per head ($4.04) for multiple births of three or more. This bounty is not for by-blows.

The Wife. Trim, sensitive Mrs. Eleanor Thompson answered the long-distance phone in Pittsburgh. A New York Daily Newsman told her about her husband's progeny. She exclaimed: "Can you imagine! Quadruplets! That never happened in his family. Not even twins." No, she would not give Bill a divorce. Said her priest: "There is no way the marriage can be broken under the laws of the Church." Said her father: "Let him sweat it out!"

The World. Yanks in Britain called Bill Thompson "the best man in the whole damn Army," made the inevitable cracks about his status in the Services of Supply. Officialdom, British and American, pondered the chances of a Congressional inquiry into Army morals as reflected by Sergeant Thompson's application of lend-lease. But the death of MacDonald, the sudden weakening of Norah cast a shadow over Bill's high spirits. He hurried to London, conferred long & earnestly with his superiors. Then, scratching his head over how to legitimize his family, he received the press. Said he: "We just want to be left alone."

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