Forgotten Stories from our Past: Churchill Didn’t say a Word
Descending a flight of stairs wearing a pair of Italian high heels, Winston Churchill’s sixty-seven-year-old mother fell, broke her ankle, gangrene set in, her leg was amputated above the knee, a vein in her thigh hemorrhaged, she died.
Two months later Churchill’s two-and-a-half-year-old daughter Marigold, throat infected, inflamed with tonsilitis, sighed, ‘So tired, so tired’ – died. Sitting beside him his wife ‘shrieked like a wounded animal.’
A year later, before an election, his appendix ruptured – they cut it out, bedridden he lost the election. He ran again, lost again. Ran a third time, lost. Ran a fourth time, won.
Almost always strapped for cash, scrambling to make ends meet, to his surprise his great-grandmother left him a small fortune. In 1929 he travelled to New York – the stock market crashed, his fortune vanished.
A hard decade ended.
Another hard decade began.
Hitler rose to power. Neville Chamberlain became Prime Minister – embraced appeasement. Churchill battled Chamberlain, landed in exile, spent years in the ‘Wilderness,’ an outcast.
Hitler marched into Poland, Denmark, Holland, Belgium, France – the Conservative Party split, part demanded Chamberlain resign; tottering, desperate to keep his hands on power Chamberlain set out to form a National (coalition) Government with the Labor Party – with him as Prime Minister. Labor told him no. A Chamberlain minion, abandoning Chamberlain, sat down with Churchill at breakfast the next morning, told him he was about to be summoned to Downing Street, told him what Chamberlain was going to ask him, told him not to say a word.
Churchill sat down with Chamberlain and Edward Halifax, another appeaser – Chamberlain said Halifax was the man to follow him as Prime Minister, stared at Churchill waiting for him to agree – Churchill sat silent. Shaken, not sure he could win another fight, Chamberlain resigned. The next day Churchill was Prime Minister.
Hitler bombed London, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, Churchill spent Christmas Eve in the White House, went to church with Franklin Roosevelt the next day, said later, “I found peace in a simple service…”
(Many of these stories are in The Allies by Winston Groom)
Forgotten Stories from our Past: Churchill Didn’t say a Word
Descending a flight of stairs wearing a pair of Italian high heels, Winston Churchill’s sixty-seven-year-old mother fell, broke her ankle, gangrene set in, her leg was amputated above the knee, a vein in her thigh hemorrhaged, she died.
Two months later Churchill’s two-and-a-half-year-old daughter Marigold, throat infected, inflamed with tonsilitis, sighed, ‘So tired, so tired’ – died. Sitting beside him his wife ‘shrieked like a wounded animal.’
A year later, before an election, his appendix ruptured – they cut it out, bedridden he lost the election. He ran again, lost again. Ran a third time, lost. Ran a fourth time, won.
Almost always strapped for cash, scrambling to make ends meet, to his surprise his great-grandmother left him a small fortune. In 1929 he travelled to New York – the stock market crashed, his fortune vanished.
A hard decade ended.
Another hard decade began.
Hitler rose to power. Neville Chamberlain became Prime Minister – embraced appeasement. Churchill battled Chamberlain, landed in exile, spent years in the ‘Wilderness,’ an outcast.
Hitler marched into Poland, Denmark, Holland, Belgium, France – the Conservative Party split, part demanded Chamberlain resign; tottering, desperate to keep his hands on power Chamberlain set out to form a National (coalition) Government with the Labor Party – with him as Prime Minister. Labor told him no. A Chamberlain minion, abandoning Chamberlain, sat down with Churchill at breakfast the next morning, told him he was about to be summoned to Downing Street, told him what Chamberlain was going to ask him, told him not to say a word.
Churchill sat down with Chamberlain and Edward Halifax, another appeaser – Chamberlain said Halifax was the man to follow him as Prime Minister, stared at Churchill waiting for him to agree – Churchill sat silent. Shaken, not sure he could win another fight, Chamberlain resigned. The next day Churchill was Prime Minister.
Hitler bombed London, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, Churchill spent Christmas Eve in the White House, went to church with Franklin Roosevelt the next day, said later, “I found peace in a simple service…”
(Many of these stories are in The Allies by Winston Groom)