Winnie Sleeps

I can't imagine a twentieth-century person I admire more than Winston Churchill. I was dismayed when I learned that a bust of Churchill was sent packing when President Obama moved into the White House. This topic has been discussed and disabused so much by now that it has achieved mythical status. Suffice to say that it is yet another example of the lack of competence for anything other than campaigning by this administration.

Churchill died fifty years ago today, at the age of ninety. His career began with a cornet's (second lieutenant) commission to 4th Queen's Own Hussars calvary regiment.

In 1899, Churchill wrote The River War, an account of the Mahdist War in the Sudan. One passage of note apparently is now considered incitement and uttering it may subject the speaker to arrest. Churchill wrote, "No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith."

Churchill was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty in 1911. He was a major political and military engineer of the Gallipoli landings in the Dardanelles in 1915. When that campaign ended in disaster, he was forced to accept a demotion. He later served in France as the commander of the 6th Battalion of the Royal Scots Fusiliers, and "personally made 36 forays into no man's land."

In 1940, after Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain resigned, England's King George VI asked Churchill to be his successor. It was Churchill's finest hour. His speech before Parliament, on the eve of the Battle of Britain, contains one of the most powerful and rousing passages of recent history.

"We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender."

I never tire of Churchill anecdotes. He smoked Cuban cigars his entire life. His appetite for alcohol is the stuff of legend. Former White House butler Alonzo Fields wrote in his memoir that Churchill requested "a tumbler of sherry in my room before breakfast, a couple of glasses of scotch and soda before lunch and French Champagne and 90-year-old brandy before I go to sleep at night."

Perhaps my favorite Churchill story takes place during the last weeks of the Second World War. I encountered this while reading Rick Atkinson's "The Guns at Last Light." Churchill was standing amid a demolished Rhine bridge during Operation Varsity. American officers were concerned for his safety, and demanded he return. Churchill "put both arms around one of the twisted girders of the bridge and looked over his shoulder, with pouting mouth and angry eyes."