The experience enriched me, but that is because I am looking at it from this remove. For my contemporaries who were there, however, it was not an enriching experience. It was a salutary, emotional and sad experience to be away from home. In conversation with my friends and contemporaries they always expressed the aspiration to return home, but they met partners, married and had families and their commitments kept them there. I encountered this in Manchester last weekend in discussions with the emigrants I met. One told me her mother to her dying day always called Monaghan "home" even though she had been in England since the 1940s. Her daughter, who is first generation Irish, also refers to Monaghan as "home," even though she was born and reared in Manchester. That aspect of the report is worthy of being expanded.