Finest Hour 54

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Paris, 26 March 1938: WSC at the Quai d'Orsay

I HE INTERNATIONAL CHURCHILL SOCIETY • AUSTRALIA • CANADA • NEW ZEALAND • UK • USA THE RT. HON. SIR WINSTON SPENCER CHURCHILL SOCIETY • BRITISH COLUMBIA • CALGARY

Winston Churchill in Press and Periodicals • edited by John G. Plumpton

Ogden Kniffln, "A Basement View of Sir Winston,'' AMERICAN HERITAGE, Vol. 23, No. 6, October 1972.

A lower-floor chamber of the White House was a respository of the highestlevel information during the war. In this top-secret White House map room, Winston Churchill found himself at home away from home because it was modelled on his own in London. When he visited Washington in December 1941, he brought a collection of maps and charts showing all theatres of operation. Observing this, Roosevelt directed that a Map Room be established for him in the White House.

The daily routines of the President and Prime Minister differed greatly when Churchill visited the White House. The President regularly arrived early in the day and again late at night. The Prime Minister was likely to pop-in at any time, and often in the middle of the night after Roosevelt had retired. The Map Room operated on a twenty-four hour basis. About 3:00 a.m. the duty officer was authorized to pull out a small cot and catch a few hours' sleep.

Between Churchill and Harry Hopkins, the President's adviser, there developed a give-and-take which never existed between Churchill and Roosevelt. Churchill could talk to Hopkins, bouncing off ideas and contemplating how he might present his views in a later talk with the President. Frequently the President and Prime Minister would arrange to meet in the Map Room for a morning conference.

Churchill's pending arrival at the White House, whispered a day or two before he was due, always caused excitement in the Map Room. When the Prime Minister was aboard anything could happen!

On a cold drizzly morning in the spring of 1944,1 was the night duty officer. That evening Mr. Churchill was to have been a dinner guest at the British embassy. At 4:30 a.m., assuming that he must have returned and gone to bed, I pulled out a cot, stripped to my shorts and turned in.

A few minutes later came a knock on the door and the voice of the usher, "Sir, the Prime Minister." I sprang from my cot, opened the door and came to attention as best I could under the circumstances. "Good evening, Mr. Prime Minister," I said.

"Please come in."

Mr. Churchill, immaculate in white tie and tails, eyed my "uniform" and said in his gentle way, "Good morning, Captain. Perhaps it would be well for both of us to retire."

That was the last time I saw the great man.

Gerald Pawle, "Christmas with Churchill,- BLACKWOODS MAGAZINE, Vol. 314, No. 1898, December 1973.

Winston Churchill had left Egypt on 11 December 1943 to fly home after the historic conferences with Allied war leaders at Cairo and Teheran.

From that moment there had been a complete clamp-down on any news of his whereabouts.

He left Cairo intending to meet General Eisenhower at Tunis but his aircraft encountered an extraordinary series of blunders. The Prime Minister had left Cairo suffering from extreme exhaustion and by the following morning he was desperately ill with pneumonia.

When he rose from his bed ten days later, his mind was fully occupied with the Allied landing at Anzio. The naval Commander-in-Chief, Mediterranean, was bombarded with demands for information on the availability of Landing Craft for that invasion. As the Flag Lieutenant, I was instructed to accompany Admiral Sir John Cunningham to see the Prime Minister.

When we arrived at Mr. Churchill's headquarters we were joined by the top brass of the Mediterranean theatre headed by General Eisenhower, General Bedell-Smith, General Sir Henry Maitland-Wilson and Air Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder.

Mrs. Churchill was there with daughter Sarah, her son Randolph and the Prime Minister's physician, Lord Moran. I also recognized Mr. Churchill's watch-dog, Detective Inspector Thomson and met 'Tommy' Thompson, Churchill's 'personal assistant,' and Desmond Morton, his 'special investigator.'

As the most junior officer present, I decided to move into the only unoccupied corner before anyone asked me searching questions. Then Mr. Churchill entered the room, shook my hand, and inquired, "How are you on this glorious Christmas morning? I have asked you and several other 22

young officers here today because I thought you might have a more agreeable Christmas with me than you would in your Algerian fastness."

He then left the room and a surprising number of complete strangers gathered around me, convinced that Mr. Churchill had imparted some information of great importance, and I saw no reason to disillusion them.

When lunch time arrived we were sharply deflated. While the rest of the guests filed into the dining room we were banished to a spartan guesthouse and a meal of granite-hard bacon and worm-riddled vegetables, served on a dirty tin plate and accompanied by a mug of lukewarm coffee.

Just as we finished this unappetizing meal a messenger arrived to tell usthattherehadbeenamistakeandthat a lavish lunch of turkey and Christmas pudding was waiting for us.

We listened spellbound to Mr. Churchill who was at the top of his form. I asked the detective if the rumours of the P.M.'s illness had been exaggerated. "Not at all," he said. "It was touch and go. When he was in a critical state he said to me, 'Thompson, if this is the end it is well that I should die in sight of Carthage.' " At dinner Mr. Churchill dined in his bedroom with his senior guests but afterwards he returned to talk to the rest. His entry into the room produced a remarkable effect with everyone, including the most eminent Generals and Air Marshals, assuming an air of rigid and deferential alertness, and stammering halting replies to any questions he asked.

It took me back to my schooldays.

At any moment any of us from Eisenhower, the head of the school, to Pawle, the most junior new boy, might be confronted with some shocking neglect of duty by the new headmaster.

But on that Christmas night so many years ago Winston Churchill seemed only concerned that for all his guests and particularly the younger officers, this should be an occasion they would recall all their lives.

I was to see Mr. Churchill many times again. I was even to write a book about him with the great man's blessing. But that first Christmas meeting on the shores of the Bay of Tunis, when he returned from the shadows to take a leading part in the making of history, was the most memorable of all.*