To The End

When Winston Churchill was born in 1874 my great-grandfather hadn’t even been born yet. When he died in 1965 my father was ten years old. I don’t have any sort of conceivable connection with Churchill – no true memories, no familial bonds, nothing whatsoever – yet even I, like so many Britons, hold him in something of a mystic regard. No one else has such a wide-reaching legacy as he does; no one else has such worldwide respect.

I might, of course, be overstating this a bit. There are as many Churchill-haters as there are Churchillians. The new fashion in history seems to be one debunking the Churchill myth, as if anyone taken up by the stories of their childhood is an idiot who doesn’t know better. Certainly he is not the giant that many people make him out to be and not the immortal that he has been elevated to. His detractors would have made his flaws well known by now. Awful military strategy, always interfering in things that he had no experience in, and believing that his way was the right way. Gallipoli, the Norway campaign, the Balkans, the delaying of the Second Front all smears on his military record; thousands of lives lost, so on and so forth.

Arguably more controversial (for we have all had our share of bad military commanders) his views on empire and race. Churchill, as expected for someone whose emotions not brains drove him, was a hopeless romantic. If he was the sort to have tattoos he probably would have gotten ‘the sun never sets on the British Empire’. It was the ultimate form of prestige, something that had to be defended at all costs. He was a man little given to change, preferring to keep his set beliefs regarding other peoples. I doubt he would have been quite impressed with this Chinese girl writing things about him. Insert things about Gandhi and ‘half-dressed fakirs’; insert something about Indian famine; insert something about poison gas against uncivilised peoples.

As a wealthy man one cannot describe him as being attuned to the problems of the poor; his less famous home policies in the twenties and thirties spring to mind. A man, shall we say, out of touch, ineffectual, never a peacetime leader, and rightly deposed at the end of the Second World War. As a historian I suppose I should be affronted at his rewriting of history, the generation of a myth widely believed and long-held. Certainly he admitted that he intended to write it, and this egotistical demonstration does not speak as well of his character.

But what I have always admired about Churchill is how he was successful in spite of, perhaps even because of, his flaws. He would have been the first one to admit that he was not perfect, I’m sure. But despite his bouts of depression he picked himself up and got on with his job. Despite his wilderness years and in the face of mounting opposition, calls for him to retire, that sort of thing, he shouted them all down. His stubbornness to get his own way was one of his defining features, and while it might have led to military disasters, it also led to human triumph; one wonders, had Churchill not become Prime Minister, whether Britain would have discussed peace terms with Germany. His racial attitudes are inexcusable, and rightly should be, but it has to be remembered that he grew up in the age of Queen Victoria and imperialist jingo. I doubt any other white men of his day would have been sympathetic to the peoples they saw beneath them, either. It’s even noted that he was less harsh in his assessment than some of his colleagues; and he did change, in the end, to become less prejudiced, hardly easy to unlearn years of institutionalised racism.

Where his inability to relate to the common people might have hindered, Churchill reached out. Everyone knows the famous story of the old lady going ‘look, he’s crying. He really does care.’ And Churchill did; far more than the politicians of today, even. Certainly very few of the people who actually knew him disliked him; his staff were all devoted to him, despite his insistence on working at odd hours. His egotism has led to many humourous comments, has built his charisma and wit, has pushed him to do things that he might not otherwise have tried. It might be seen as a bad thing to be an egotist, but personally I would love to be one. It means that you’re confident in yourself no matter what other people say. That you believe in yourself. If Churchill hadn’t believed in himself, how could he have gotten an entire nation to do the same?

When I look at the people I admire I find a common thread amongst them – the passion for doing what they love. Churchill was no stranger to letting his emotions get the better of him, but it is this state of half-crazed enthusiasm that I find so endearing. He jumped with boundless energy from painting to bricklaying to writing. This is what truly defined Churchill, past the politics and the speeches. The endless devotion. The uninhibited dedication to do what he loved and thought was right. From this passion I think extended all of his other great qualities; stubbornness and determination was, after all, to protect that which was dearest to him. His rousing words, mobilised and sent into battle for the cause.

Yes, Churchill was a romantic who believed in the greatness of the Empire that was instead to come crumbling down around him. But it was this romanticism which led him to fight so hard. To protect his Island at all costs. Perhaps it has become mythical, but he held it as a symbol of hope and inspiration. Funnily enough, that’s what’s been done with Churchill as well. A mythical figure held to be an inspiration for a people who need it, especially in the climate of these days. Of course Churchill was flawed. But the inspiration lies in that he was able to achieve everything despite being flaws. The greatest human, if you would.

Sometimes I will go to Westminster to see his statue in Parliament Square. A strange feeling overcomes me. I stand there and stare at it. I swallow. I try to smile, I bite my lip, I try to say something, but I can’t really think of anything to say. It’s difficult to capture what the emotion in my chest is, a sort of gnawing, bittersweet feeling that only he can stir. Perhaps the word is gratitude. In the end I am always reduced to using his words instead; I suppose he would have quite liked that. I whisper, “we shall go on to the end.” Perhaps not his most famous quote, but my favourite one. Because that was what he was, when all is said and done. Not a giant, not an immortal; nor did he have to be. Simply the man who carried on when no one else could have.

That Day of Days

This is going to be an emotionally-charged piece which will probably not make sense and jump from here to there as I try to clear my thoughts, but it is still something I needed to write.

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Every year on the 6th of June, I turn on the TV, start up the DVD player, and watch the first and second episodes of Band of Brothers. And every year as I see their faces, the word runs through my head again and again: dead, dead, dead. Some of them had the good grace and fortune to die peacefully in their old age; others would die just fifteen minutes later. The list is always growing longer. My brother’s favourite soldier, Bill Guaranere, died March 8 this year. My own, Richard Winters, died three years ago. There are an estimated 1200 Normandy veterans still alive, most if not all older than ninety, and soon they too will pass beyond the field of living memory. Already people forget them; before I came along I’m fairly certain none of my friends even understood what D-Day was, let alone when it happened.

Personally, I have no connection whatsoever to those men who stormed those beaches. I don’t know any veterans, and I will probably never know any. But when I watch those sweeping shots of C-47s heading towards France, those clouds lit up with what is certainly not lightning, I always start crying, because it has everything to do with me, and you, and them. The significance of D-Day is often overstated, but it was important nonetheless, the opening up of the second front that Stalin had demanded for so long and that signaled the beginning of the end that Churchill had once spoken of. If D-Day had not succeeded, who’s to say what might have happened? but the one thing for sure is that even more millions of people would have died, and the war would have dragged on. If those boys – some no older than me – hadn’t fought their hearts out I, many other people, possibly a whole race, might not even be here today.

You’ll often hear people deriding the need for history. What’s the point of remembering, they’ll ask, something that happened seventy years ago? What’s the point of all these memorials and ceremonies and thinking? The past is the past and there’s no point looking back. We’ve got to focus on the future. And they’re right; the future is important. But anyone who thinks that the past isn’t needs to watch the veterans, streaming back to Normandy for what might possibly be their last time. Kneeling down at friends’ graves, bowing their heads in front of the pristine white crosses. Needs to see the sacrifices that both they and the people no longer there have made. Needs to realise how important remembering is, if only to tell us how we came here. Because that’s what history’s about, isn’t it; it’s our story, the chronicle of humanity, and respecting those who guided us.

It’s impossible to truly imagine what those wee hours of the morning were like. The silence of the shots of the paratroopers pre-take off, the pushing and pulling into the planes, the droning of the engines. They must have known that they were going to their doom, or at least that they’d never see some of their friends again. The steady rocking of the boats, the tension gnawing at their hearts. The waiting, more than anything, is the most horrifying thing about D-Day. The repeated stops and starts, never knowing when you’re going to go into battle, never quite knowing when that red light is going to flick on or when you’re going to land. Just sitting in that boat or in that plane and having to go towards death bravely, having to – one might say – soldier on.

What Band of Brothers did so well was juxtapose the silent nighttime, with sudden flashes of terror and bursts of machine gun fire cutting deep into what could have been any peaceful French countryside. And doing all of this fighting without knowing where any of your friends are (90% of the unit still not found, paratroopers scattered all across Normandy) – just you and your gun and that ridiculous cricket. Creeping around in the darkness stiffening every time you hear boots crunching on ground. Whispering ‘flash’ and dreading no reply. Sitting here in a comfortable chair with nothing but the hum of the electronic fan and the ticking of the clock I couldn’t imagine how it really was, but those men who fought I have nothing but respect and love for them.

As I mentioned before, this post is just one big emotional wreck while I try to find a proper way to express my gratitude and my emotions for D-Day, and everything that came after. I talked a lot about the paratroopers because they were the point from which I was thrown fully into my love for the arts. But the same is true of the men down on the beaches running directly into the line of fire, not only because they had nowhere else to go, but in a sense because they were brave enough to. I know that these men would never think of themselves as heroes, only boys sent to fight and die whether it was a cause they believed in or not. But I count each and every single one of them as my inspirations and as my heroes.

I watch Day of Days every year because it was the first thing I ever saw that fully rammed home the weight and the importance of 6 June 1944. It’s a little tribute, paltry as compared to what they gave, and it doesn’t really do anything, but it’s my tribute nevertheless. My way of remembering things as best as I can. On June 6, 2044, I hope to be one of the people able to stand at the graves of the soldiers, thanking them for all they have done. But for now, I will be content watching that last shot of Currahee: the hundreds of planes in the sky, the dozens of boats in the waters, the new world stepping forth to the rescue and liberation of the old.