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CHURCHILLIANS BY-THE-BAY QUARTERLY E- NEWSLETTER Northern California Fourth Quarter 2010 * Volume 2, Number 4

THE GLOW-WORM

“We are all worms. But I do believe that I am a glow-worm.” (Violet Bonham Carter, Winston Churchill as I Knew Him, page 16- WSC’s remark was made at a dinner given by Lady Mary Elcho.) © Copyright, All Rights Reserved Glow-Worm and Churchillians by-the- Bay, Inc.

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CONTENTS

� A Journey to World War II Battlefields, Carlo D’Este, page 3 � Tonypandy 100 years On, Dan O’Neil, page 15 � H.M.S. Glowworm by James Lancaster, page 19 � Churchill Charges Forth with Sword and Pen by John

Chettle, page 24 � The Sidney Street Siege January 2011 100 years on, page

34 � Churchill in the News, page 47

Interspersed with various Churchilliana… Churchillians by-the-Bay Board of Directors: Richard C Mastio, Chairman and Contributions Editor for The Glow-Worm, Jason C. Mueller, President, Gregory B. Smith, Secretary and Liaison with Churchill Centre, Michael Allen, Treasurer. Directors: Jack Koers, Carol Mueller, Editor of The Glow-Worm, Lloyd Nattkemper, Dr. Andrew Ness, Barbara Norkus, Katherine Stathis, and Anne Steele. Glow-Worm named by Susie Mastio

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FEATURED ARTICLE by CARLO D’ESTE

Author and historian Carlo D'Este speaks during the Kemper Lecture at Westminster College. Carlo D'Este (born 1938 in Oakland, California) is a American military historian and

biographer, author of several books, especially on World War II. He is a retired U.S.

Army Lieutenant Colonel.

Biography D'Este lists his three favorite military historians and influences as: Barbara Tuchman (The Guns of August), John Eisenhower (The Bitter Woods: The Battle of the Bulge), and Martin Blumenson (general George S. Patton’s official biographer). A&E adapted his biography of George S. Patton to television for its Biography (TV series) (and, presumably, its Biography Channel) in 1995. In 1996, C-span interviewed him about that book on its Booknotes program.

Writings • Decision in Normandy: The Unwritten Story of Montgomery and the Allied

Campaign, Dutton (New York, NY), 1983.

• Bitter Victory: The Battle for Sicily, 1943, Dutton (New York, NY), 1988.

• World War II in the Mediterranean, 1942–1945, Algonquin (Chapel Hill, NC),

1990.

• Fatal Decision: Anzio and the Battle for Rome, HarperCollins (New York, NY),

1991.

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• Patton: A Genius for War, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1995.

• Eisenhower: A Soldier's Life, 1890–1945, Henry Holt (New York, NY), 2002.

A Journey to World War II Battlefields

(Part 1) By Carlo D'Este | Carlo D'Este| War College | Published: October 04, 2010 at 1:34 pm

The American military cemetery, Carthage, Tunisia. (Shirley D’Este)

In September I was a guest lecturer on a tour of World War II battlefields in conjunction with the National World War II Museum in New Orleans. Over a ten-day period we visited a number of historic places in the Mediterranean, including Kasserine Pass, Malta, the landing sites and some of the battlefields in Sicily, Salerno, and Anzio. Starting this month and in the coming months I will be writing my impressions of what was a memorable and exceptionally edifying trip.

Accompanied by my wife, our trip began in Boston with a very uncomfortable flight overnight flight to Paris aboard an Air France 747, which had very narrow seats designed to numb one’s backside sometime

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within the first hour and a half of flight! From Pa ris we transferred to a mercifully short flight to Tunis, where the tour began.

Two nights in one of the world’s great hotels on the beach in Carthage was a wonderful cure-all for jet lag and a superb introduction to Tunisia.

Tunisia is a modern Arab nation with, at least on the surface, a surprisingly liberal Muslim society. In many respects Tunisia is a unique blend of Western and Arab cultures in a melting pot society. The nation is multi-lingual: English, Italian and German are frequently heard in addition to French and Arabic.

The mix of modern and ancient is evident everywhere. Tunis is a very modern city, while its suburb of Carthage is a pre-historic place with an incredible history that is thought to date to the 9th century BC.

There is a visible police presence throughout the country and during the next few days as we saw various parts of the country, we saw patrols everywhere. They routinely stop cars and people at random to check their papers. It was abundantly clear that small bribes are the necessary antidote for those who are stopped and wish to continue without further harassment.

Despite a vigorous economy and increasing tourism, lip service to democracy and a reformed political system, under its present ruler, President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, (in power since 1987), Tunisia is nevertheless an authoritarian police state and a nation where censorship is routine and criticism of the government, while tolerated, does not extend to public demonstrations. Much of the censorship and repression practiced in Tunisia is aimed at curbing Islamic extremism.

The average tourist gets an impression of Tunisia as a progressive nation where the people seem to be relatively free and content despite the strong police and security presence. Those who arrive in Tunis by air have to go through a security check. I made the mistake of noting my profession on the immigration form as “writer,” which nearly got me into trouble when the officer thought I was a journalist. I had to

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hastily explain to another English-speaking officer that I write books and was in the country only as a “touriste.”

Nevertheless, what separates Tunisia from other Arab states is the legacy of its modern day leader. When France granted independence to Tunisia in 1956, one of the first acts undertaken by Habib Bourguiba, after he assumed the post of prime minister (and later as president-for-life), was to introduce modern social and economic changes that Westernized the nation. Tunisia became a secular state in which the role of Islam was largely marginalized. He closed religious schools, banned the Islamic law courts (the Sharia), abolished polygamy and granted women full rights, including the same rights to a free education (including university) that was granted to males. Women in Tunisia also have the right to divorce and a large number occupy senior positions in the government and in both the chambers of Parliament, where they hold some 20% of the seats.

The literacy rate is around 83% for males and nearly 75% for the entire population. Starting at the age of six, education up to the age of sixteen is compulsory and students are not only taught Arabic but also French

and English.

Two World War II veterans lay a wreath in the Court of Honor at the American military cemetery, Carthage, Tunisia, on Sept. 11, 2010. (Shirley D’Este) Before departing Tunis our group visited the American military cemetery located in Carthage: the only cemetery in North Africa, and one of the twenty-four permanent overseas military cemeteries maintained by the American Battle Monuments Commission (ABMC).

Completed in 1960, it contains twenty-seven acres of marble headstones, 2,841 in all, ringed by cypress and Russian olive trees that also include acacia, Aleppo pines and Jerusalem thorn.

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The cemetery is a prehistoric place built on the ruins of ancient Roman Carthage. The chimes ring each hour and sometimes mingle with the Muslim call to prayer from a nearby mosque located just outside the cemetery.

Four sets of brothers lie side by side and 240 headstones are inscribed: “Here rests in honored glory a comrade in arms known but to God.” There are more MIAs and unknowns here than there are headstones. On the Tablets of the Missing are inscribed the names of 3,274 and a rosette marks those who have since been recovered and identified. Also by the Tablets of the Missing is a Statue of “Memory,” while by the reflecting pool there is a Statue of “Honor.” In the cloister is a Stone of Remembrance. A Memorial contains a Court of Honor.

On another wall is a large map that highlights the names of the battles fought in North Africa. Texts are in English, Arabic and French.

Each grave tells a story of a life, a battle and a death. Battles ranging from Algiers, Casablanca, Oran, Longstop Hill, Sidi bou Zid, Kasserine, Sbeitla, Faid or perhaps El Guettar or Hill 609. From the dates of their deaths one can generally surmise the battle where they died.

Also resting here are airmen and others lost in battles in the air and at sea. Army Air Corps Captain Foy Draper, a 1936 Olympics Gold medal winner is among those buried at Carthage. Draper ran the third leg of the famed 4 x 100 relay team in Berlin that also included Jesse Owens, who ran the first leg. Their feat not only set a world record time of 39.8 seconds on August 9, 1936, but was also yet another rebuff to Adolph Hitler and his aim of a purely Aryan Olympic games. Their record stood until 1956. Another member of this famous relay team was Frank Wykcoff, who won Olympic gold medals in 1928 and 1932, giving him the distinction for a decade of being called the fastest man on Earth.

In North Africa, Foy piloted an attack bomber from a base at Thelepte, Tunisia. On Jan. 4, 1943 Foy flew a mission against Axis forces near

Fonduk and never returned.

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The grave of Pvt. Nicholas Minue at Carthage. The headstones of Medal of Honor winners are engraved in gold with a gold star. There is one MOH winner buried here, Polish born Pvt. Nicholas Minue, Company A, 6th Armored Infantry, the 1st Armored Div.

His citation reads:

For distinguishing himself conspicuously by gallantry and intrepidity at the loss of his life above and beyond the call of duty in action with the enemy on 28 April 1943, in the vicinity of Medjez el Bab, Tunisia. When the advance of the assault elements of Company A was held up by flanking fire from an enemy machinegun nest, Pvt. Minue voluntarily, alone, and unhesitatingly, with complete disregard of his own welfare, charged the enemy entrenched position with fixed bayonet. Pvt. Minue assaulted the enemy under a withering machinegun and rifle fire, killing approximately 10 enemy machinegunners and riflemen. After completely destroying this position, Pvt. Minue continued forward, routing enemy riflemen from dugout positions until he was fatally wounded. The courage, fearlessness and aggressiveness displayed by Pvt. Minue in the face of inevitable death was unquestionably the factor that gave his company the offensive spirit that was necessary for advancing and driving the enemy from the entire sector. (Source: Congressional Medal of Honor Soclety)

The evening of September 11, after a day full of memories of the fallen of World War II and of that terrible day in the Uni ted States in 2001, we boarded a small but elegant cruise ship called the Corinthian II and sailed for Tunisian port city of Sousse. The ship was to be our home for the next ten days during a voyage that would take us to Malta, Sicily, and Italy.

The following day our group visited famed Kasserine Pass, the subject of next month’s article.

• Reprinted from Armchair General Magazine with the permission of Col. Jerry Morelock, Editor-in-Chief . Col. Morelock is a former Director of the Churchill Memorial in Fulton, Mo. Subscribe to Armchair General Magazine www.armchairgeneral.com Subscribe online and save nearly 40%

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QUARTERLY QUOTES

Winston Churchill at the Town Hall, Malmesbury, 28 December 1904 (Complete Speeches, 397):

A period of enormous expenditure, of the lavish casting about of public money for unprofitable objects, has affected alike the credit and consuming power of the people . . . After the riot of extravagance comes the pinch of want. An undue percentage of employment, a hampering lack of ready money throughout the country, a restricted credit in business circles, a considerable increase in pauperism — all follow in the track of the storm.

The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” --Ronald Reagan

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136th Anniversary of Sir Winston’s Birth

A Pre-Birthday Celebration on November 29, 1963 (A press photo with editorial markings ready to crop)

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ANOTHER BIRTHDAY PAST:

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Celia Lee and a Taste of Churchill’s Cake

12:00pm Sunday 5th December 2010 By Mark Chandler »

A chance meeting while lecturing about the birth of Churchill has given one Lewisham author a unique taste of history.

Celia Lee was giving a talk on the war leader’s premature birth and was stamping out rumours with the help of vascular consultant Rodney Croft that Churchill was conceived out of wedlock.

While giving the lecture in his old Conservative constituency of Epping in Essex she met Mike Tompkins - a chef who baked the great statesman’s 80th birthday cake.

Ms Lee explained: “Mike took the cake personally to 10 Downing Street, and was graciously received. There was a party with Winston and his wife Clementine and others.

“Mike produced two framed photographs out of a plastic bag, which show him with the cake and Winston and his wife Clementine and several others in Downing Street.

“The table was set for a celebration and the cake was lit by three-tier candelabras and the cake was iced plain white with icing.”

Mr Tompkins revealed the cake had been made using the same recipe as the Queen’s wedding cake when she got married after the end of the Second World War.

Because of the wedding’s timing there was a shortage of ingredients and so items had to be shipped over from Australia.

Ms Lee said: “Mike did not have these problems when he came to bake his cake for Winston's 80th birthday in 1954, but rationing was still in place then. Coupons were still required for luxury items.”

The author, who has written books including ‘The Churchills - A Family Portrait’ and recently returned from a lecture tour of New York sponsored

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by the Churchill Society, described the existence of the recipe as “a bombshell”.

Excited by the discovery, she asked her neighbour Lorna Williams, a baker, to make her own version of the classic cake - including lashings of the former prime minister’s favourite Cognac brandy.

Ms Lee, who said: “Lorna kept the icing all white to make it serene for the birthday of a deceased hero and world leader. It simply says ‘Churchill 136’.”

The finished product is being kept preserved and will be eaten when members of the Churchill family meet to celebrate his 136th birthday later this month.

Ingredients: butter, caster sugar, moist Tate and Lyle pieces, flour, frozen whole egg, honey, salt, spice, cassia, nutmeg, ground ginger, ground cloves, ground almonds, cherries, currants, sultanas, mixed peel, caramel powder, glycerine, egg colour, oil of lemon, oil of orange, cognac brandy, sherry, rum.

Cartoon of Churchill's Birthday in 1960 . . This drawing in ink on art paper shows the worl d wishing a bed-bound Churchill a Happy Birthday on h is 86th. The artist is Frank Williams, a cartoonist fo r the Detroit Free Press from the 40s to the 70s.

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Another anniversary this quarter 102 years on:

Clementine and Winston wed on 12 September 1908

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Dan O'Neill: Tonypandy riots left a legacy o f Bitterness

Nov 2 2010 by Dan O'Neill, South Wales Echo

If the fearsome battles between police and miners during the strike of 1984 can be summed up in one word, that word would be Orgreave, the Yorkshire coke depot where picketing pitmen and police in full riot gear went to war. The scenes there, wrote one historian, “were without parallel in an industrial dispute this century”.

He was wrong. There is a parallel. When Tonypandy e xploded 100 years ago this week.

It began when 70 men of the Ely Pit at Penygraig pr otested at the rate for working in a difficult seam. Which meant a seam 18 inches high with a couple of inches of water under their backs. The management, in tune with the times, simply lock ed out not only the 70 but another 900 workers as well.

So the South Wales Miners’ Federation immediately c alled a strike of all 12,000 men working in the Cambrian Co mbine’s pits in the Tonypandy area. Few expected what came next. On November 7 the miners found that Leonard Llewellyn, manager of Llwynypia’s Glamorgan Colliery, was using blackl egs to keep the pumps working. It was the only pit to do this, a challenge that couldn’t be ignored.

Thousands gathered to hear strike leader Will John thunder that the mine had to close. And if police were brought i n they would be driven out – “By force, if necessary”. He was to o late. Captain Lionel Lindsay, the 5ft-1in Chief Constable of Glam organ, had already drafted every available officer in the coun ty into the

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area. Reinforcements from Cardiff, Bristol and Swan sea were on standby as well.

Lindsay recognised the Glamorgan pit as the flash p oint and that’s where he concentrated his strength. They pre pared for action when news came that strikers were attacking police in Clydach Vale, dragging them from their horses, the Echo’s headline MENACE OF THE MARCH, Ugly Turmoil in Mid-Rhondda. Which, for most Cardiffians, was a foreign country.

Then the miners, armed with hammers and iron bars, marched on the Glamorgan Colliery, showering bricks and sto nes at the 99 police defending it. They were driven back, but the shaken coal-owners told Lindsay they wanted more than poli ce. They wanted troops. And quickly.

Winston Churchill, Home Secretary, replied to their appeal: “Infantry should not be used until all other means have failed.”

Instead, 100 mounted police and 200 “foot constable s” were sent to South Wales by special train while troops w ere held in reserve in Swindon. SOLDIERS HELD IN LEASH, trumpet ed the Echo and there was even talk of artillery coming to Rhondda.

Our Own Reporter fuelled talk of civil war with his claim (on the highest authority) that “steps are being taken by m iners to stop entry of the military into the disturbed areas” – f orcing another miners’ leader, Jack Hopla, chapel deacon, to plead “For God’s sake stop this violence. The soldiers are only just down the road. They will be here with bullets”.

At the same time a local magistrate was cabling the Home Office, “Police cannot cope with rioters. Troops ab solutely necessary”.

The Hussars, though, were still in Cardiff and the Metropolitan police hadn’t started their march up the valley. Th at night the looters moved in, the first brick going through the window of the shop owned by T P Jenkins, the magistrate who had c losed all public houses that day. Another 63 Tonypandy shops were

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looted, one belonging to Welsh rugby international Willie Llewellyn among the few left untouched.

The windows went in. The goods came out. One man wa s spotted wearing nine bowler hats, one on top of the other. Sides of bacon and ham were grabbed, a huge cheese wheele d out, men ran off laden with clothes and groceries. It en ded when a squadron of the 18th Hussars clattered into town, l ater relieved by a company of the Lancashire Fusiliers.

General Neville Macready, the commanding officer, r eported: “Not a shot has been fired. Not a sabre waved.”

He added angrily that most of his problems were dow n to “the delusion of the coal-owners that the police and mil itary were simply their tools”.

The riots gave birth to a new and fiery brand of le ader but Jack Hopla, the peacemaker, went to jail and was never t he same after his release. But the strike he helped lead paved th e way for minimum wages for miners while from then on they be came the elite of British industry, shock troops of the unio n movement. It didn’t happen, but the myth that British troops fir ed on British workers made Churchill a hate figure for generation s of Welsh men and women. Almost 70 years after the “Tonypandy riots”, 13 years after his death, Churchill’s grandson, ano ther Winston, asked in the Commons about miners’ pay.

The PM, one James Callaghan, replied: “I hope that Mr Churchill will not pursue the vendetta of his family against the miners of Tonypandy for a third generation.”

A century on, though the mines have gone, the bitte rness lingers.

Read More http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/columnists/2010/11/02/dan-o-neill-tonypandy-riots-left-a-legacy-of-bitterness-91466-27581447/#ixzz14BIH90wm

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Americans at the Abbey

DAVID E. SCHERMAN / TIME LIFE PICTURES / GETTY

In 1942, London's Westminster Abbey held Thanksgiving services for U.S. troops stationed in England. More than 3,500 soldiers filled the church's pews to sing America, the Beautiful and The Star-Spangled Banner — the first time in the church's 900-year history that a foreign army was invited to take over the grounds. It was an ironic gesture given the holiday's origins as a festival for pilgrims fleeing religious tyranny in Britain. Read more: http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1862503_1862505_1862518,00.html#ixzz14OnMBlqn

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Bookworm’s Corner by James R. Lancaster

H.M.S. Glowworm

“We are all worms. But I do believe that I am a glow-worm.” Winston’s remark to Violet Asquith, the 19-year old daughter of Herbert Asquith the Chancellor of the Exchequer, inspired Churchillians-by-the-Bay to adopt Glow-Worm as the title of their quarterly newsletter. A splendid choice.

Winston’s amusing remark was made at a dinner party in the summer of 1906. A few months later, on December 12, the Royal Navy, for the first time in its long history, launched a ship with the name Glowworm. It was a coastal destroyer. In later years two other Navy ships were called Glowworm: an Insect-Class gunboat launched in February 1916, and a G-Class destroyer launched in July 1935.

This third Glowworm was the most famous of the Navy’s G-Class fleet of destroyers. Appropriately, the ship’s motto was Ex tenebris lux – Out of darkness, light.

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H.M.S. Glowworm

This destroyer, with a maximum speed of 36 knots and a range of over 5,000 nautical miles, was initially deployed in the Mediterranean Fleet. On the outbreak of war in September 1939 her main task, as part of the 1st Destroyer Flotilla, was to intercept enemy merchant ships. She was later transferred to the Home Fleet at Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands. From this anchorage, on 5 April 1940, she headed out into the North Sea, together with the battle-cruiser H.M.S. Renown and the destroyers Hero, Greyhound and Hyperion. Their task was to provide cover for Operation Wilfred — the laying of mines between Norway and her islands, to prevent German vessels from using these waters to transport Swedish iron ore.

However, the planned mine-laying operation coincided with the German invasion of Norway on April 7. What happened next was described by Winston Churchill in The Gathering Storm, recalling his days as First Lord of the Admiralty:

When the War Cabinet met on Monday morning [April 8], I reported that

the minefields in the West Fiord had been laid between 4.30 and 5.00 a.m. I also explained in detail that all our fleets were at sea. But by now we had assurance that the main German naval force was undoubtedly making towards Narvik. On the way to lay the minefield ‘Wilfred’ one of our destroyers, the Glowworm, having lost a man overboard during the night, stopped behind to search for him and became separated from the rest of the force. At 8.30 a.m. on the 8th, the Glowworm had reported herself engaged with an enemy destroyer about 150 miles south-west of West Fiord. Shortly afterwards she had reported seeing another destroyer ahead of her, and later that she was engaging a superior force. After 9.45 she had become silent, since when nothing had been heard from her . . .

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Since the war we have learned from German records what happened to the Glowworm. Early on the morning of Monday the 8th, she encountered first one and then a second enemy destroyer. A running fight ensued in a heavy sea until the cruiser Hipper appeared on the scene. When the Hipper opened fire the Glowworm retired behind a smokescreen. The Hipper, pressing on through the smoke, presently emerged to find the British destroyer very close and coming straight for her at full speed. There was no time for the Hipper to avoid the impact, and the Glowworm rammed her 10,000-ton adversary, tearing a hole forty metres wide in her side. She then fell away crippled and blazing. A few minutes later she blew up. The Hipper picked up forty survivors; her gallant captain was being hauled to safety when he fell back exhausted from the cruiser’s deck and was lost. Thus the Glowworm’s light was quenched, but her captain, Lieutenant-Commander Gerard Roope, was awarded the Victoria Cross posthumously, and the story will long be remembered.

An Admiralty artist’s impression of Glowworm ramming the Hipper

The heroism of the Glowworm’s skipper and crew was a fine example of

Nelson’s last signal at the Battle of Trafalgar – ENGAGE THE ENEMY MORE

CLOSELY. It was not in vain. The Hipper, ten times larger than the Glowworm, was forced to go to Trondheim for repairs. She was badly damaged, having lost 150 feet of her side plating. She was out of action for a month, one of many German

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ships to be sunk or damaged during the Norwegian campaign from April to June 1940. Twenty-two German ships, including three cruisers and ten destroyers were sunk. In addition, five cruisers and two pocket battleships were damaged or put out of action. These significant losses reaffirmed German respect for the fighting traditions of the Royal Navy. As Churchill wrote in The Gathering Storm:

At the end of June, 1940, a momentous date, the effective German Fleet consisted of no more than one 8-inch cruiser, two light cruisers and four destroyers. Although many of their damaged ships, like ours, could be repaired, the German Navy was no factor in the supreme issue of the invasion of Britain.

Lieutenant Commander Gerard Roope

Captain of H.M.S. Glowworm

Captain Roope’s action was the first to be awarded the Victoria Cross in the Second World War. It was gazetted posthumously, at the end of hostilities in July 1945. It was one of the few awards to be based, in part, on evidence supplied by the enemy. The Captain of the Admiral Hipper had written to the British authorities via the Red Cross, recommending the award of the Victoria Cross for Roope’s “courage while engaging a vastly superior warship”. The citation published in The London Gazette reads:

ADMIRALTY

Whitehall 10th July, 1945

The KING has been graciously pleased to approve the award of the VICTORIA

CROSS for valour to: The late Lieutenant-Commander Gerard Broadmead ROOPE, Royal Navy

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On the 8th April, 1940, H.M.S. Glowworm was proceeding alone in heavy weather towards a rendezvous in West Fjord, when she met and

engaged two enemy destroyers, scoring at least one hit on them. The enemy broke off the action and headed North, to lead the Glowworm on to his supporting forces. The Commanding Officer, whilst correctly appreciating the intentions of the enemy, at once gave chase. The German heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper was sighted closing the Glowworm at high speed, and an enemy report was sent which was received by H.M.S. Renown. Because of the heavy sea, the Glowworm could not shadow the enemy, and the Commanding Officer therefore decided to attack with torpedoes and then to close, in order to inflict as much damage as possible. Five torpedoes were fired and later the remaining five, but without success. The Glowworm was badly hit; one gun was out of action and her speed was much reduced, but with the other three guns still firing she closed and rammed the Admiral Hipper. As the Glowworm drew away she opened fire again and scored one hit at a range of 400 yards. The Glowworm, badly stove in forward and riddled with enemy fire, heeled over to starboard, and the Commanding Officer gave the order to abandon her. Shortly afterwards she capsized and sank. The Admiral Hipper hove to for at least an hour picking up survivors, but the loss of life was heavy, only 31 out of the Glowworm’s complement of 149 being saved.

Full information concerning this action has only recently been received and the VICTORIA CROSS is bestowed in recognition of the great valour of the Commanding Officer who, after fighting off a superior force of destroyers, sought out and reported a powerful enemy unit, and then fought his ship to the end against overwhelming odds, finally ramming the enemy with supreme coolness and skill.

Seven months later, in a ceremony at Buckingham Palace on 12th February

1946, His Majesty King George VI presented the Victoria Cross to Lieutenant Commander Roope’s widow. She was accompanied by her son, Michael, who was serving as a Cadet in the Royal Navy. Ex tenebris lux – Out of darkness, light.

James R Lancaster @ jimlancaster.com

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Churchill Charges Forth With Sword and Pen By John Chettle

Winston Churchill wore medals during World War I he had earned since joining the army in 1895 (National Archives).

"I am more ambitious for a reputation for personal courage," Churchill told his mother, "than [for] anything else in the world," and a couple of decorations would help to "beat my sword into an iron dispatch box," a reference to the place from which ministers give their speeches in the House of Commons.

This article is from the Winter 2011 issue of MHQ, which will be available on newsstands Tuesday, November 16th, 2010. Visit the HistoryNet store to order your copy today!

Winston Churchill first heard a shot fired in anger at him on the morning of his 21st birthday, in 1895. A newly commissioned second lieutenant with Queen Victoria's army, he spent a two-month leave observing Spanish troops trying to quell an insurrection by Cuban colonists. During that day's early morning march, gunfire sounded from afar, but it did not faze the young Churchill. He was, he wrote in his memoirs, like the optimist "who did not mind what happened, so long as it did not happen to him." Later that morning, however, as Churchill gnawed on a chicken drumstick during a break in the march, a volley rang out nearby. A slug passed within a foot of his head and hit a horse just behind him between the ribs, leaving a dark red circle a foot wide on its bright chestnut coat. Watching the horse struggle for life, Churchill wrote, "I began to take a more thoughtful view of our enterprise." Over the next five years, Churchill would see battle in three very similar wars: against the tribesmen on the North-West Frontier of India (now the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan); against the Dervishes in the Sudan; and against the Boers in the Anglo-Boer War of 1899–1902. Serving simultaneously as a cavalry officer and newspaper correspondent during much of that time, he proved an acute observer and a prodigious chronicler, turning out dozens of articles and four books, some still relevant to modern conflicts.

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Equally important, these experiences helped mold one of the most influential men in modern history. Thirsting for fame and glory, Churchill during those years went through a literal baptism of fire. What he saw and learned in the field sparked what would become a lifelong fascination for battle and war. At the same time, his writings forced him to confront questions of grand strategy and the nature of conflict.

The British Empire at the end of the 19th century still covered one-quarter of the world's land surface, with 380 million subjects scattered on every continent. Inevitably, Churchill's combat tours exposed his powerful and impressionable mind to most of the forces that were to shape the future: war itself, Great Power politics, religious fanaticism, and nationalism. And while he was devoted to the empire and convinced of its power for good in the world, we can see a generous mind at work, adamantly resisting any departure from its benign principles, but increasingly conscious of man's capacity for evil.

Churchill's path to glory was littered with oddly propitious turns. An indifferent student, he entered the army because his father did not think he was bright enough for the law. At age 20, he graduated from the Royal Military College at Sandhurst, and was commissioned as a lieutenant in the 4th Hussars on February 20, 1895, just nine months before he saw action in Cuba.

As he was to do throughout his career, Churchill went to people at the top to achieve his objectives. Of course, it did not hurt that he was the son of Lord Randolph Churchill, the former chancellor of the exchequer, and his beautiful and well-connected American wife, the former Jennie Jerome of New York City. In a bid to be seconded to the staff of the commander in chief in Cuba, Winston wrote to a former parliamentary ally of his father, Sir Henry Drummond Wolff, then British ambassador to Madrid, as well as to Lord Garnet Wolseley, the commander in chief of the British Army. To help pay his way and make his name, he arranged with the Daily Graphic to file occasional dispatches at five guineas each.

In Cuba, his assignment to the staff of General Álvaro Suáres Valdés introduced him to the finest cigars and meals, rum cocktails, and the siesta, but it was not an unmitigated privilege. The general often rode to within 500 yards of the enemy line and, with his white uniform and gold lace, was the target of every sharpshooter, diminishing the life expectancy of his staff members.

Neither the privileges nor the danger blinkered Churchill's judgment. "There is no doubt," he reported in a dispatch to the Daily Graphic, that the insurgents "possess the sympathy of the entire population, and hence have constant and accurate intelligence." The only uniform an insurgent wore was a badge; when removed it was "impossible to tell a rebel from an ordinary peasant." The island was overtaxed, all offices were reserved for Spaniards, and the administration was corrupt. It was not surprising, he reported, that the demand for independence was "national and unanimous."

He found many of the Spanish army operations pointless. For 10 days, he told his readers, he had accompanied 2,000 of the best Spanish troops under a general who marched hard in search of enemy troops, attacked, and drove them out of their position. Then, honor seemingly satisfied, the general returned to his cantonments, having taken a low grassy hill of no importance and killed 30 or 40 rebels. The Spanish officers, he reported, "anticipate a speedy end to the war…[but] I confess I do not see how this is to be done." As long as the insurgents adhered to the tactics they had adopted, "they can neither be caught nor defeated."

Churchill did not have high expectations for the rebels either, saying they offered at best "a bankrupt Government, torn by racial animosities and recurring revolutions." The outlook for Cuba, he concluded in his last dispatch, was a somber

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one. Churchill delivered this judgment at age 21, after just 16 days in Cuba. Yet its balanced assessment of the insurgents, the futility of the Spanish strategy, and the ultimate result was an accurate reflection of countless insurgencies to come.

As happened throughout Churchill's career as a war correspondent, his presumption annoyed the authorities and some of the press, who wondered what could possibly impel a British officer to get mixed up in such a dispute. The answer, of course, was ambition, fame, adventure, and the love of danger, or at least the desire for a reputation for courage in the face of danger, which, he confessed frankly to his mother, would help him as he pursued his political career.

"I am more ambitious for a reputation for personal courage," he told her, "than [for] anything else in the world." A couple of decorations, he added, would help to "beat my sword into an iron dispatch box," a reference to the place from which ministers give their speeches in the House of Commons. Not surprisingly he was seen by some as bumptious and—accurately—as a medal hunter. This didn't bother him. If he was seeking medals, it was his own life that he was risking.

What did concern Churchill after his return to London was getting another opportunity for action. That came in September 1896 when he joined his regiment in India, then departed again to be a war correspondent in a pending war between Greece and the Ottoman Empire. As the Thirty Days' War looked to have been averted by the Great Powers—and did not break out until April 1897—Churchill returned to England for a vacation when trouble flared on the North-West Frontier.

"I was on the lawns of Goodwood [a race course] in lovely weather and winning my money," he wrote later, "when the revolt of the Pathan tribesmen on the Indian frontier began." He had extracted a promise from Brigadier Sir Bindon Blood, in command of the Malakand Field Force on the frontier, that he would employ him on his staff in such a contingency, and Blood wrote to tell him that if he could get press accreditation, he would do so. By modern journalistic standards, this may seem an obvious conflict of interest, and it was unusual even then, but it served to circumvent the bureaucracy. Churchill demanded $50 a dispatch from the Daily Telegraph and full attribution, but to his annoyance, after his return to India his mother negotiated only $25 and anonymity.

"Stingy pinchers," he grumbled, but what really hurt was the lack of a byline. How was he to gain fame and fortune if nobody knew he was there? He need not have worried. Though the "letters" were attributed only to "a young officer," Lady Randolph took care to ensure that everyone of note, including the Prince of Wales, knew who had written them. (He also wrote dispatches for the Allahabad Pioneer.)

General Blood attached Churchill to Brigadier P. D. Jeffreys, who had been directed to conduct a punitive expedition. This was a relic of the mid-century policies of the British authorities in India, who used such forays to discourage incursions from warlike tribes in the north. The operations irritated the tribesmen and did not improve the situation, so they were succeeded by a "forward policy" of pacification, which relied on forward outposts, a civilizing presence, educational and economic advantages (such as building roads while protecting and encouraging trade), and payments to local grandees.

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A warrior-writer of some repute by the end of the Boer War, Churchill formed lifelong impressions, later writing, "Never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on that strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter." (Library of Congress). The forward policy has obvious analogies to current U.S. policy in Afghanistan. So do its drawbacks. The mullahs simply saw the British as a threat to their faith and power, and the policy began to fail. Then, in 1897, the Turks defeated the Greeks, a book was published on jihad, Islam welcomed a new caliph, and a new "Mad Mullah" emerged in India, convinced of his divine mission against the infidel British. In response, Britain reverted to its traditional punitive expeditions.

As always, Churchill in his dispatches was generous to his opponents. The "brave and warlike" Pathan tribes exhibited great military skill, he wrote. They followed "a code of honor not less punctilious than that of old Spain…supported by vendettas as implacable as those of Corsica."

But the tribal society showed all the consequences of such a code. As he put it in The Story of the Malakand Field Force, his first book, which he wrote in two months upon his return from the campaign, "Except at the times of sowing and of harvest, a continual state of feud and strife prevails throughout the land. Tribe wars with tribe….To the quarrels of communities are added the combats of individuals….Every tribesman has a blood feud with his neighbor. Every man's hand is against the other, and all against the stranger."

Churchill confronted physical danger and death more directly in this campaign than ever before. In his letters, dispatches, and books, the thought of death is never far away. In a letter to Lady Randolph he confessed that in one skirmish he was perhaps "very near my end." Referring to his dispatch to the Telegraph, he wrote: "If you read between the lines of my letter, you will see that this retirement was an awful rout in which the wounded were left to be cut up

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horribly." He and another subaltern carried a wounded sepoy some distance: "[My] pants are still stained with the man's blood….It was a horrible business. For there was no help for the man that went down." In his book he was more insouciant: "Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result."

In this campaign Churchill developed a philosophy of glory that he adhered to throughout his life, combining an ardent pursuit of fame, an extraordinary belief in his luck, and a phlegmatic acceptance of death. The pursuit of a military career, he reflected in his writings, differs from all others:

The only way [a soldier] can hope to rise above the others is by risking his life in frequent campaigns. All his fortunes, whatever they may be, all his position and weight in the world, all his accumulated capital, as it were, must be staked afresh each time he goes into action. He may have seen twenty engagements and be covered with decorations and medals….And yet each time he comes under fire his chances of being killed are as great as, and perhaps greater than, those of the youngest subaltern….The statesman, who has…made a great miscalculation, may yet retrieve his fortunes. But the indiscriminating bullet settles everything.

As for the campaign itself, the tribesmen, he reported, "have been punished, not subdued; rendered hostile, but not harmless. Their fanaticism remains unshaken….The riddle of the frontier is still unsolved." As the campaign wound down, Churchill returned to the 4th Hussars and peacetime duties in India.

The Story of the Malakand Field Force was received with almost universal enthusiasm. The reviewer in the Athenaeum called it "a literary phenomenon." Richard Harding Davis, perhaps the greatest American war correspondent, wrote several years later that it was Churchill's "best piece of war reporting…and to writers on military subjects it is a model. But it is a model very few can follow, and which Churchill himself was unable to follow, for the reason that only once is it given a man to be twenty-three years of age….[The actions] which he witnessed and in which he bore his part, he never again can see with the same fresh and enthusiastic eyes."

For those who study Afghanistan and Pakistan today, the book is still significant. Although Churchill, judging the conflict by the standards of European wars of the day, was somewhat dismissive of the issues and the scale of operations, some 120 years later we have become far more conscious of the power of the Islamist ideology driving such conflicts, and of the capacity of small, fanatical groups to strike disproportionately damaging blows.

Churchill next covered the war against the Dervishes in the Sudan, which arose from the same Islamic zeal Churchill had encountered on the North-West Frontier. In 1883, the followers of Mohammed Ahmed, who called himself the Mahdi, or messiah, and had proclaimed a holy war against foreigners, annihilated an army of 10,000 Egyptians led by an English officer. Sent to Khartoum with vague instructions to restore order and evacuate Europeans, Major General Charles Gordon dispatched 2,600 women and children to Egypt before he found himself besieged. After more than 300 days, the city fell and Gordon was killed. In the decade that followed, the government in Egypt accumulated the money, intelligence, and force to meet the 60,000 men on whom Khalifa Abdullah al-Taaisha, who had succeeded the Mahdi, could call.

Churchill had long coveted the chance of glory in the Sudan. He had made unavailing efforts to attach himself to the forces of Sir Herbert Kitchener, the sirdar, or commander in chief, of the Egyptian army, which was then led by both British and Egyptian officers. Kitchener saw no reason to encourage a brash young subaltern who, without the experience of his seniors, criticized their judgment.

In truth, Churchill had been full of praise for Sir Bindon Blood in India, but he had commented freely on military

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policy, and that behavior from a subaltern was equally unacceptable. Kitchener firmly rejected the appeals of all the grand names mobilized by Lady Randolph.

Then, with that luck to which Churchill frequently referred, he was saved by the prime minister, Lord Robert Salisbury, who had read the Malakand Field Force and invited its author to 10 Downing Street. A courteously worded request from Salisbury eventually received a grudging acquiescence from Kitchener, and on August 15, 1898, Churchill filed his first dispatch from Atbara, which lay at the end of a 400-mile railroad built across waterless desert to enable the British to strike at the Dervishes.

Churchill was attached to the 21st Lancers. The celebrity achieved by his dispatches from India, and then by his book, meant there was no lack of interest in his reports. Unfortunately, Kitchener's dislike of war correspondents meant that they had to be sent to the Morning Post in the form of a series of letters to a friend. Once again, Churchill's dispatches recognized the bravery and fanaticism of the opponent—the Dervishes were "as brave men as ever walked the earth"—and that the Khalifa represented both the religious and the nationalistic aspirations of his followers. The Khalifa had announced his intention to destroy the infidels. "Allah," wrote Churchill sardonically, "is said to have fully approved of his plan."

Winston Spencer Churchill, the famous war correspondent, in Bloemfontein, South Africa, c. 1900 (Library of Congress).

The most memorable passage concerned Churchill's participation in what was probably the last classic cavalry charge of the British Army, at Omdurman. The charge arose in part from a misapprehension, since the great mass of the Dervishes was concealed by a fold in the ground, and the British rode into a trap. The long column of Lancers began to move against what seemed to be a row of crouching blue figures, firing frantically. Churchill, whose shoulder had once been dislocated, clutched a Mauser pistol rather than a sword. As the Dervishes came into full view, he realized that they were 10 or 12 deep. Suddenly he was in their midst, but they were not so thickly packed that he collided with any of them. The Dervishes

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were hacking at the horses, firing their rifles, pressing the muzzles into the very bodies of their opponents. Some Lancers were dragged from their horses. Churchill saw a gleam of a curved sword and fired. Then suddenly he was through the mass, with horses spouting blood, men clutching arms and faces cut to pieces, "gasping, crying, collapsing, expiring." He was untouched. "It passed like a dream," he told his mother, "and some part I cannot quite recall."

The charge won extravagant praise and three participants were awarded Victoria Crosses. But it was, wrote the Marquess of Anglesey in his History of the British Cavalry, "the most futile and inefficient part of the battle."

The Mahdists left some 15,000 of their dead and wounded on the battlefield. Churchill reported that they "strewed the ground in heaps and swathes." The battle opened the way to the fall of Khartoum. It was, Churchill wrote in The River War, published in two volumes in 1899 to almost universal approbation for its honest assessments of the British Army at war, "the most signal triumph ever gained by the science of arms over barbarians."

Churchill admired Kitchener's cool precision, his careful planning, and the magnitude of his achievement in conquering the Sudan. But he wrote scathingly of the shooting of wounded Dervishes, and of the treatment of the Mahdi's corpse. "The corpse of the Mahdi was dug up," Churchill wrote in The River War. "The head was separated from the body, and, to quote the official explanation, 'preserved for future disposal'—a phrase which must in this case be understood to mean, that it passed from hand to hand till it reached Cairo."

Even before the book was published, Churchill resigned his commission and returned to England to run for Parliament for the Conservatives, in Oldham, Lancashire. In this case his usual good luck came in disguise. He lost, but the defeat led to his traveling to South Africa as a war correspondent. In hindsight the Boer War seems a minor prelude to the Great War, but it was the first conflict since the Crimean War to be waged by Britain against a modern army. It was also the war that made Churchill an internationally known figure, and opened up the political career of which he dreamed.

The Morning Post agreed to pay Churchill's expenses: $5,000 for four months' work and $1,000 a month thereafter, probably the most lucrative contract won by a newspaper war correspondent up to that time. He took with him a letter of introduction from the colonial secretary, his personal valet, a new adjustable Ross telescope, a Voigtlander field glass, ample wine, and 18 bottles of 10-year-old Scotch whiskey, among other refreshments. The story of the South African campaign is the story of Churchill's adventures, though from the start his judgment of the Boers and the probable length of the war was far sharper than that of the military authorities. Three days after his arrival, he wrote his mother: "We have greatly underestimated the military strength and spirit of the Boers. I very much doubt whether one army Corps will be enough."

That insight clearly contributed to Churchill's lifelong recognition of the perils of going to war. "Let us learn our lessons," he wrote many years later, reflecting on the Boer and other wars. "Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on that strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter."

The Boers, mostly farmers from the two independent inland states of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State, had invaded the Cape Colony and Natal, Britain's two coastal colonies in Southern Africa. Perhaps the finest mobile mounted infantry in the world, they had attacked a British advance column in Natal, killed the commander, Major General Sir Penn Symons, rounded up several thousand of his troops, and were besieging 9,600 British soldiers in the garrison town of Ladysmith in Natal, as well as Kimberley and Mafeking in the Cape Colony.

Churchill hastened to the Natal front, some hundred miles from the east coast port of Durban, and at once destiny took

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him firmly in its grasp. An old friend from India, Captain Aylmer Haldane, invited Churchill to join him on an armored train containing a company of the Dublin Fusiliers and another of Durban Light Infantry, with an antiquated 7-pounder muzzle-loading naval gun. These troops were to reconnoiter along the tracks to the railroad junction town of Colenso. Reports indicated no enemy within the next few miles.

The train completed its reconnaissance and on its return, as it rounded a corner, they could see newly made entrenchments. The Boers waited until the train was within 600 yards of their position, then opened fire with two field guns, Maxim machine guns, and a large number of rifles. The driver put on full steam, ran down a steep gradient, and crashed into a pile of stones artfully placed across the line to derail the train.

The three cars ahead of the locomotive were flung onto the embankment or across the track. The Boers' fire was intense, if not particularly accurate. As Haldane noted in his later report, Churchill offered to help clear the line while the captain, dazed from the crash, organized those in the armored cars to return fire. The first thing was to detach the car that was half off the rails. Volunteers were called for, and after much pushing, the locomotive giving a shove, the car fell off the line. But it became jammed in the derailed car and Churchill had to search for a chain that could be used to pull back the obstruction.

There was still not enough room for the locomotive to get past. For 70 minutes Churchill and the other volunteers struggled, amid "clanging, rending iron boxes with the repeated explosion of the shells and the artillery, the noise of the projectiles striking the ears…the grunting and pulling of the [locomotive]—poor, tortured thing, hammered by at least a dozen shells, any one of which, by penetrating the boiler, might have made an end to all."

At length, it cleared the obstruction, so Haldane permitted the driver to retire slowly, putting as many of the wounded as possible aboard the locomotive. Churchill ran back to help extricate the other unwounded men, and found himself in a railroad cutting almost alone. Unbeknownst to him, two soldiers, without authority, had waved white handkerchiefs in surrender. The Boers were rounding up prisoners and Churchill turned to escape. Several Boers began firing at him. One, just 40 yards away, took careful aim. "Death stood before me, grim sullen Death without his light-hearted companion, Chance," he reported later. He slowly held up his hands.

"I cannot speak too highly of his gallant conduct," wrote Haldane in his official report. A wounded officer, interviewed by a local newspaper, described his conduct as "that of as brave a man as could be found."

A youthful-looking Prime Minister Churchill inspecting Civil Defense personnel in London at the outbreak of the Second World War (National Archives). But Churchill was now in the humiliating position of being a prisoner of war in Pretoria, the Boer capital. The account of his escape is crowded with the same daring and extraordinary luck that characterized his conduct on the train. He climbed over a well-lighted fence surrounding the prison. With no map, he guided himself by the stars, then leapt onto a passing train, jumping off as it approached the border with Portuguese East Africa. He stumbled—by chance—into one of the few houses owned by an

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Englishman, who helped conceal him on a train bound for the coast. He arrived back in Durban just as the British had suffered the last of three terrible defeats during the so-called Black Week. But tales of his exploits quickly traveled the world. As his son later wrote, like Lord George Byron after the publication of Childe Harolde, Churchill awoke one morning, at the age of 25, and found himself famous.

There was much more to report. He wrote two books based on his dispatches: From London to Ladysmith via Pretoria and Ian Hamilton's March. Far earlier than most, he understood that this would be a long and arduous war—in truth Britain's Vietnam. It was the culmination of a series of experiences given to few young men, and few young men would so comprehensively have understood them, and put them to such world-shaping use some 40 years on. Time and again we read in his dispatches accounts of the passionate nationalism of the Boers, both young and old. It was a powerful lesson in the dangers of underestimating an enemy, a mistake he did not make when confronted with the rise of Adolf Hitler, who was also tapping into resentful nationalism, in this instance of the Germans.

"Reprinted with permission of MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History, Copyright 2010, Weider History Group. For subscription information to MHQ, see MHQmag.com ."

1998 Pol Roger Cuvee Winston Churchill.

Prestige cuvee is the term for the finest champagnes made. Each Champagne house creates its own name for its top champagne and makes it only in the best years. Prestige cuvees are made from the finest grapes selected from grand cru-rated vineyards and are aged from five to eight years in the winemaker's cellar, longer than any other champagne. But such attention comes with a price.

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In 1984, Pol Roger created its Cuvee Winston Churchill to honor one of the 20th-century's great statesman and devoted drinker of Pol Roger champagne. Churchill's infatuation with Pol Roger began at a luncheon given by the British Ambassador to France a few months after the liberation of Paris. At the table was the beautiful Odette Pol Roger and the wonderful 1928 Pol Roger champagne. Churchill was smitten by the former, and claimed to drink Pol Roger on a daily basis thereafter.

Cuvee Winston Churchill is always a full-bodied champagne. The blend of pinot noir and chardonnay changes with the vintage, but what is consistent are the rich, complex aromas and flavors, and the finish that seems eternal. The 1998 Pol Roger Cuvee Winston Churchill's delicate bubbles release aromas of toasted hazelnuts, gingerbread and citrus. Fruit flavors from guava to lime cross the palate with a body as big as the man the cham- pagne is named for.lton,

The third annual Winston Churchill Student Essay Contest 2010-2011

is being sponsored by the National Churchill Museum located on the campus of Westminster College, Fulton Missouri.

The essay topic is “Winston Churchill: A Renaissance Man?” and is

open to any student in grades 6-12 in the United States! Find details and submission guidelines at www.nationalhurchillmuseum.org Click on School Programs, Student Essay Contest.

Submissions must be received by 11:59pm on April 11, 2011

Cash prizes for the top three essays at the middle school level and high school level will be awarded with a total value of $900.00!

Contact: Mandy Plybon, Education & Public Programs Coordinator, 573.592.6242 or Mandy.Plybon@churchillmemorial.org

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The Sidney Street Siege

The Illustrated London News reporting the news of

the siege in 1911

HISTORY: Churchill's role in deadly siege remembere d in new exhibition

ON a January night in 1911, the Home Secretary, Winston Churchill, had to deal with a deadly stand-off

between police and burglars in east London.

Long before he became the MP for Woodford and 30 years before he made his famous 'The Few' speech

about the airmen of the Battle of Britain, Churchill

took centre stage during the Siege of Sidney Street,

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which is the subject of a new exhibition, London

Under Siege: Churchill And The Anarchists, at The

Museum of London Docklands.

The siege came two weeks after the robbery of a

nearby jewelers in Houndsditch, when three

policemen were shot dead and two were disabled for life.

Two members of the gang of Latvian revolutionaries

who had attempted to break into the jewelers had gone into hiding in a flat in Sidney Street and were

surrounded by more than 200 armed police officers.

Churchill ordered back-up from the Scots Guards and when the flat the Latvian gunmen were hiding in burst

into flames, he stopped the fire brigade from

extinguishing it.

The two dead gunmen were later found inside the

building – one on the first floor, where he had been

shot and the other on the ground floor, where he had

died from smoke inhalation.

The Museum of London's exhibition will look at

Churchill's role in the siege, which many accused him

of overplaying to gain political popularity.

The overcoat he was wearing on the day will be on

display and the curator of Social and Working History

at the museum, Julia Hoffbrand, said she hoped to

find the top hat he was wearing as well.

“It may still exist somewhere and it would be really

interesting to find it,” she said. “So if anyone has a

battered top hat in their attic, please let us know.”

Weapons belonging to the gunmen, newsreel and

eyewitness accounts from the day of the siege will

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also be on show, as well as the orders of service from

the funerals of the murdered policemen.

The museum is running the exhibition in partnership

with the Jewish East End Celebration Society.

One of the society's members, Clive Bettington, said:

“The siege of Sidney Street is part of East End and

socialist folklore and the area at the time was home to

radical political groups, most of whom had come from

Eastern Europe, thus helping exaggerate people's imaginations about immigration and other cultures.”

London Under Siege: Churchill And The Anarchists opens on December 18 and runs until April 2011 at the Museum of London Docklands in West India Quay. Entry is free.

When the Queen told Churchill: Stop making me sit through these dreadful

films

Ghastly ordeal: Queen Elizabeth II arriving for a Royal Film Premier of Rob Roy in 1953. She was not impressed by the film.

For nearly 50 years the Queen has graced the red carpet at Royal Film Performances.

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But newly discovered documents show that in the early years of her reign she found the movies so dreadful she complained to then Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill during an audience at Buckingham Palace.

She may have once even considered boycotting the event.

The 1954 Royal Performance of the film Beau Brummell - starring Stewart Granger and Elizabeth Taylor - was a particular cause of displeasure. The Queen and her officials were also unimpressed by three previous films - Where No Vultures Fly, Because You’re Mine and Rob Roy The Highland Rogue.

In a memo concerning the Beau Brummell screening dated November 19, 1954, Churchill’s Private Secretary David Pitblado told Sir Frank Lee, the Permanent Secretary at the Board of Trade:

‘The Prime Minister asked me to look into this when he returned from his audience with the Queen. The Queen had told him what a bad film it was and he, on his own initiative, wanted to see what could be done about it for the future.’

The declassified documents show that both Buckingham Palace and Downing Street began to despair with the choice of films in the Fifties.

In a further memo dated November 25, 1954, Sir Frank noted: ‘There is no doubt at all that the quality of the films shown to HM on the last four occasions (which I have also had the misfortune to attend) ranged from the mediocre down to the vulgar and distressing.

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Not amused: The Queen disliked the film Beau Brummel (left) with Stuart Granger and Elizabeth Taylor, so much she complained to the PM Winston Churchill

‘The whole evening is a long and garish ordeal; it is not surprising that both HM herself and most outside critics should ask whether the selection of the main film to be shown could not be radically improved.’

Officials at Downing Street and Buckingham Palace secretly lobbied the Film Industry to overhaul the event. Film bosses reluctantly agreed to drop the stage show which accompanied the chosen film and to cut back the number of ‘meet and greets’ expected of the Queen.

They also accepted the appointment of an independent figure from outside the movie business to chair the panel that chose the film. He was given the power of veto over the final choice of movie.

The changes were a success and the Queen was delighted with the selection of Alfred Hitchcock’s To Catch A Thief in 1955.

An unsigned memo said: ‘Lieutenant Colonel Charteris, an Assistant Private Secretary to the Queen said that Her Majesty had enjoyed the film (as I did myself) and was happy with the revised arrangement . . . She had particularly welcomed the elimination of the stage show and the fact that, for her, the whole occasion had lasted for no more than 2 hours 40 minutes.

Second great fire of London: Christmas 1940, the blitz of St Paul's Cathedral By Nigel Blundell 19/12/2010

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Flames and smoke billow all around as the unmistakable shape of St Paul’s Cathedral rises out of this scene from hell. Artist rendering of photo.

St Paul’s Cathedral became an inspiration to the British people during the Second World War .The general population was subjected to the might of the German airforce’s Blitzkrieg attack on major cities across the UK .Throughout the Blitz, St Paul’s miraculously escaped major bomb damage, whilst buildings in the surrounding areas were reduced to rubble. Images of St Paul’s framed by the smoke and fire became a symbol of the nation’s indomitable spirit. In 1945 services at St Paul’s, marking the end of the war in Europe, were attended by 35,000 people.

This picture was to become one of the Second World War’s most iconic -images.

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London was burning. Huge pillars of fire swept through the streets. But at the centre of the raging inferno St Paul’s stood firm, a symbol of the nation’s defiance and its people’s courage.

Now the historic photo – taken 70 years ago on the evening of December 29, 1940, when the Luftwaffe unleashed its firestorm on the capital – has been digitally enhanced to give it colour

And the impact is all the more horrific for it.

From a vantage point on a Whitehall rooftop, Winston Churchill was moved to fury as he watched the mass of flames spreading across the city, -according to a new book about the Blitz.

He turned to an aide and growled: “We’ll get the bastards for this.”

He ordered that St Paul’s must be saved at all costs.

He knew how it would lift the spirits of a war-weary public if they could see it had survived the onslaught – but for a while it looked as if the great landmark would surely be lost.

That night more than 1,500 fires were burning, from 100,000 bombs dropped by German raiders. They turned the City of London’s Square Mile into a furnace. In the 1,000-degree heat, stone walls cracked and crumbled, iron girders twisted and glass melted, and road surfaces burst spontaneously into flames.

From 100 miles away on the French coast, German observers could see the night sky light up. An American war reporter based in the city cabled his office with the news: “The second Great Fire of London has begun.”

And perched high above Fleet Street, photographer Herbert Mason captured the astonishing sight of the cathedral dome, surrounded by devastation but still standing proud.

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David McCullough's new book based on concert with Mormon Tabernacle Choir

By Hillel Italie (CP) –

NEW YORK, N.Y. — David McCullough's latest book project did not begin with a president or a great war. It started with his friendship with Larry H. Miller, the late owner of the Utah Jazz basketball team.

"He was a phenomenal success in business and a success at almost everything he touched. Here's a fellow who had little education, who fairly late in life became interested in American history and interested in how teaching could be improved, a subject close to my heart," McCullough, the Pulitzer Prize winning historian, said during a recent telephone interview from his home in Maine.

"I helped him set up a summer seminar program for history teachers in Utah, whereby it was made possible to spend several weeks brushing up on history in general. I was invited to lecture at several of the universities in Utah. One thing led to another. Larry became quite ill with diabetes and one of his last wishes to me was to take part in the Christmas concert with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir and Orchestra."

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Miller died in February 2009. In December, McCullough was among the guests at the annual Mormon Tabernacle performance on Temple Square in Salt Lake City, where he discussed two Christmas songs, "O Little Town of Bethlehem" and "I'll Be Home for Christmas," and their ties to a Christmas Eve ceremony at the White House in 1941, less than three weeks after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. President Franklin Roosevelt spoke briefly from the White House balcony about celebrating a holiday during wartime, then introduced a surprise guest, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who had secretly crossed the Atlantic Ocean to appear with Roosevelt.

"He wasn't even mentioned in the program," McCullough said of Churchill. "He risked his life to be there."

McCullough's talk has just come out in book form, the 56-page "In the Dark Streets Shineth," released by the Salt Lake-based Shadow Mountain Publishing. "Dark Streets" includes a DVD of McCullough's reading with the choir, photographs from the 1941 White House gathering and pictures of World War II soldiers.

Known for such historical works as "Truman" and "John Adams," McCullough has strong memories of the war and personal attachments to both Christmas songs cited. "O Little Town of Bethlehem" was a favourite of McCullough's father. "I'll Be Home for Christmas," written during the war by Buck Ram, Kim Gannon and Walter Kent and popularized by Bing Crosby, "still melts me," McCullough says.

"I was still a boy in World War II. I was 11, 12 years old, but old enough to be very aware of what was going on, reading newspapers and knowing that older young men in our neighbourhood were away," says the 77-year-old historian, a Pittsburgh native. "There were stars in the window and all of that, so it was a vivid part of my whole life."

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McCullough noted in his talk last year that Churchill had never heard "Little Town of Bethlehem," a carol authored by clergyman Phillips Brooks in the 1860s, until the morning following his joint appearance with Roosevelt, when he attended a Christmas service with the president. McCullough noted that Churchill had declared on Christmas Eve that for the holidays "each home throughout the English-speaking world should be a brightly lighted island of happiness and peace."

His wishes unconsciously echoed "Little Town of Bethlehem" and its line, "Yet in the dark streets shineth the everlasting Light."

Link to an article of interest:

Published on The National Interest (http://nationalinterest.org) Source URL (retrieved on Dec 16, 2010): http://nationalinterest.org/article/the-importance-being-winston-4577

The Importance of Being Winston December 16, 2010 John Lukacs

IN AUGUST 1942, Churchill and Stalin met for the first time. That event was the least discussed and yet perhaps the most important among the many “summits” of the Second World War.

The entire history of World War II proves the then-supreme importance of great national leaders and of their relationships. How contrary this is to the widely accepted and trusted idea: that history and politics and societies are governed by economic and “material factors,” that the primary importance of individual persons belongs (if it ever belonged) to earlier ages.

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Winston Churchill: Walking With Destiny

(Documentary)

By RONNIE SCHEIB

A Moriah Films production in association with the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center for Holocaust Studies. Produced by Rabbi Marvin Hier, Richard Trank. Co-producer, Katrin Osmialowski. Directed, written by Richard Trank, from original written material by Trank, Marvin Hier. With: Winston S. Churchill, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Celia Sandys, Martin Gilbert. Richard Trank's old-fashioned docu "Winston Churchi ll: Walking With Destiny" casts its titular icon as the sole savior of Great Britain, Europe and the free world. Pic benefits greatly from Ben Kingsley's brilliantly nu anced reading of frankly bombastic narration, and from th e cavalcade of well-edited newsreel clips that propel its hindsight-determined story arc. As produced by Mori ah Films, a division of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, p ic has an implicit metaphor -- a vision of a lone emba ttled country courageously prevailing against impossible odds, underscored by frequent quotations from Israe l's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion -- that shou ld attract Jewish auds on its Oct. 29 release.

To its credit, and perhaps to the disappointment of some, docu never deviates from its central focus; its treatment of the Holocaust is always secondary to its portrait of an unquestionably great statesman. Swell footage of some 300,000 Allied troops under heavy bombardment on the beaches of Dunkirk, improbably rescued by a motley British fleet of battleships, destroyers, yachts and fishing trawlers, loses none of its pathos over time; viewers can readily comprehend the galvanizing effect of this Churchillian maneuver on England's resolve to stubbornly resist Nazi rule.

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Friday, October 22, 2010 9:45 AM

From: John David

Olsen<jolsen@winstonchurchill.org>

ChurchillChat@googlegroups.com We recently created the Churchill Centre Channel on you tube. You can now find uploaded there a video that was produced for the Centre some years ago narrated by Gregory Peck. The video include a message from Lady Soames, The Hon. Celia Sandys and Sir Martin Gilbert. You can find it under "Uploads" and there you will find Part 1 and Part 2 http://www.youtube.com/user/ChurchillCentre Introducing our newest Churchillian by-the-Bay, Genevieve Esmé Mueller-- 4th generation member joining Great-Grandmother, Grandmother, and her Parents.

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Our Next Event will be in Monterey at the Casa Munras: Saturday, March 12th 2011 featuring two speakers: our previous speaker David Ramsay in tandem with Steve Harper. Here's some background: The topic will be on Dunkirk starting at 10:00 with a presentation by David Ramsay; as you know his father Sir Bertram Ramsay was responsible for the evacuation of Dunkirk. Following a break, Steve Harper who also has a Dunkirk history and association will give his presentation which will include pictures from the 2010 Dunkirk reunion event. Per David Ramsay: Steve’s grandfather, James Procter, who had been in the merchant navy, served under my father at Dover in WWI when he commanded firstly a monitor (a floating gun platform) and then a destroyer and again in 1940 when he was the mate in one of the merchant ships sent to Dunkirk to bring off soldiers. He himself is a keen member of the Association of Dunkirk Little Ships, who make the voyage from Ramsgate to Dunkirk every fifth year on the anniversary of the evacuation, most recently this year when we all met up in Dunkirk. He and some colleagues are also involved in a project to put together a film on Dunkirk which is currently at film script s tage about which he could tell you more than I could. I have read and liked some early versions of the script, which recently won an award at the Houston Film Festival He is an executive with Aerojet which is based in Seattle and which produces rocket fuels.

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Reservation and Menu selections will be sent next year. Next Save the date: May 14th 2011 and the topic will be On Becoming Churchill by Michael McMenamin Details next issue.

CHURCHILL IN THE NEWS

Our Work is not yet done…

Herald staff During the presentation of his new show, 94-year-old tango legend Horacio Salgán recalled what happened when Bernard Shaw invited Winston Churchill to see his latest play. Churchill turned down the offer saying that he couldn’t make it, yet Shaw insisted: perhaps overwhelmed by Shaw’s perseverance, Churchill replied “Ok, I’ll do my best to pop by, if I don’t die before. By Mariana Marcaletti

Neosho Daily News Posted Oct 15, 2010 @ 01:05 PM

…Winston Churchill failed at every attempt to gain public office until he became prime minister of Great Britain at age 62.

Fox News:

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Mara Liasson: Nancy Pelosi did two things for which she will go down in history: She was an incredibly effective majority leader and Speaker when there was a opposition president. And when she was in the majority she was the hammer that got through President Obama’s agenda. However that’s a completely different role from what she wants to do now. In which I think, she’s kind of like Winston Churchill, she’s accomplished historic things for the Democrats and they should be sending her off in a blaze of glory and adjusting for a new regime.

By STAFF REPORTER

Published: 17 Sep 2010

WARTIME leader Sir Winston Churchill really was in the hot seat as he helped repel the Nazis — he had the world's first h eated TOILET SEAT installed in his plane.

At the end of World War II the former Prime Minister had the electric lavatory seat built in the loo of his private Skymaster aircraft.

Historian Nick Loman says he was prompted to request the seat after a particularly chilly trip back from Crimea.

So the plane's crew contacted the General Electric Company and asked if they could provide "a hot seat for the Old Man".

Mr Loman, 65, from Devon, said the firm's designers used a wire heating element to warm the seat which turned on automatically when the lid was lifted.

Mr Loman, who has collected Churchill memorabilia for 30 years, said: "Not many people knew that Churchill had his own planes - three in all.

"They had electrical customisation, with a lavatory that was the first in the world to have an electronically heated seat."

The loo seat was eventually lost on a mission to China when the plane was damaged and abandoned on a Chinese scrap heap.

POSTED: 28/09/2010 08:28:55

Churchill rocks UK from beyond the grave! ANI London, October 03, 2010 release.

Released to coincide with the 70th anniversary of the battle, Reach For the Skies features the Central Band of the RAF and some of Churchill's most rousing speeches from 1940.

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The Few and Their Finest Hour are set against music for the first time.

The album also includes war classics such as the Dambusters March, Battle of Britain March and 633 Squadron. It is dedicated to The Few.

It has even outsold other new albums by pop and rock legends Eric Clapton, David Bowie and Neil Young.

"It is great that to a long list of Official Chart stars including Elvis, Madonna, Cliff and The Beatles, we can now add Winston Churchill,” Sky News quoted Official Charts Company managing director

Martin Talbot as saying.

"It is also a tribute to the amazing sacrifices of our servicemen that the British public have bought this RAF album in such large numbers," Talbot added.

Dickon Stainer, president of record label Decca, added: "Churchill's speeches are as potent today as they were 70 years ago when they motivated the RAF to one of the greatest victories in British history."

Churchill had many qualities we admire By Pam Kelley Reading Life Editor Sunday, Nov. 07, 2010

Sir Winston Churchill was strong, witty, quirky.

1940 AP FILE PHOTO

When the third volume of "The Last Lion" is published, it will join hundreds of books on Winston Churchill, including more than 30 by Sir Martin Gilbert, his official biographer.

What makes Churchill so popular?

There is, of course, his role as Britain's prime minister during World War II. Many credit Churchill, more than anyone, with saving the world from Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany.

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"He stood up, took responsibility and motivated a world to feel they could overcome the worst tyranny in history. Wow," says Craig Horn of Weddington, chair of the Churchill Society of North Carolina.

Yet there's much more. Churchill was an Army officer, a war correspondent, a painter, a brilliant orator, winner of the Nobel Prize in literature.

"He's a real character, a joy to be in the company of," says Paul Reid, who is completing the third volume of "The Last Lion," William Manchester's Churchill biography.

He was by turns rude, witty, quirky, anti-intellectual. He loved Gilbert and Sullivan recordings, cigars and alcohol. He often drank a glass of wine with breakfast, followed during the day by scotch and soda, port, champagne, brandy.

He was a horrific driver who believed people shouldn't be in his way. He was overweight, didn't exercise and lived to 90. He died in 1965.

He snarled at subordinates but loved small children, whom he called "wollygogs."

And he was quotable. Churchill's words have filled multiple books. Among his most famous were these, delivered to the House of Commons in 1940 after the evacuation of British and French armies from Dunkirk, France, as the Germans advanced:

"We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. 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!"

Read more: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2010/11/07/1818375/churchill-had-many-qualities-we.html#ixzz14fEvhWii

Until next issue, Happy New Year

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