WINSTON CHURCHILL'S.....FINEST HOUR #5

CHURCHILL'S  FINEST  HOUR  #5

THE PATH TO VICTORY

In 1944, Churchill watched battles in France, Italy and on the Rhine border of Ge'rmany. At home,' Britain faced the V-2 flying bomb and the v-z rocket, while to Churchill's distress much of Europe faced the threat of communist dominance. the prospect marred his satisfaction as world war ii drew to a close in the spring of 1945.

After only a few hours' sleep, Churchill was back in the Map Room on the morning of 6 June, watching the charts gradually transform as the action from the Normandy beaches was plotted in front of him. Initial news of the landings was encouraging and at midday Churchill was able to make a confident speech to the House of Commons.

'I have to announce to the House,' he told MPs, 'that during the night and the early hours of this morning, the first of the series of landings in force upon the European Continent has taken place .... An immense armada of upwards of 4000 ships, together with several thousand smaller craft, crossed the Channel.... The fire of the shore batteries has been largely quelled .... So far, the commanders who are engaged report that everything is proceeding according to plan .... This vast operation is undoubtedly the most complicated and difficult that has ever taken place.'

The success of the D-Day invasion of Normandy was greeted with euphoria by the British public, to whom the downfall of Nazi Germany now appeared imminent. They were mistaken. Another long and costly year would pass until victory could be secured.

[In August 1944, Churchill (left) toured the battle areas in Italy and France, staying in Florence, Italy, which the German forces had evacuated on- ID August. During his stay in Italy, Churchill inspected the 4th Queen's Own Hussars (above). The regiment was equipped with Sherman tanks modified to carry troops, known as 'Kangaroos'.]

Six days after D-Day, Churchill crossed the Channel on board a destroyer to see the Normandy beach-heads for himself. It was only a day trip, but it was packed with action and Churchill relished the danger. At Courselles sur Mer, Churchill watched a Luftwaffe raid on the harbour, he saw landing craft unloading lorries, tanks and guns, and he witnessed Royal Navy ships bombarding German positions.

The destroyer was about to head back to England when Churchill suggested to Admiral Sir Philip Vian, who was accompanying him: 'Since we are so near, why shouldn't we have a plug at them ourselves?' The ship was within range of enemy artillery, but Vian complied. 'This is the only time I have ever been on board a naval vessel when she fired in anger,' Churchill commented later. 'I admired the Admiral's sporting spirit.'

LONDON UNDER ATTACK 

That same evening, Churchill was back at the Annexe, dining with Clementine and Mary, when news came that the long-feared rocket attack on Britain was imminent. The Germans had 27 rocket-powered 'flying bombs', the Vergeltungswaffe 1 (V-l), ready to launch from France. Four reached London, coming in over the capital with an unforgettable low, throaty roar. Once the engine cut out, the Y-ls lost momentum, crashed to earth and exploded. Two Londoners were killed in the first attack. The next night, when 50 V-ls reached London, Churchill and two of his private secretaries, Charles Dodd and John Peck, risked leaving the Annexe to witness the scene. Charles Dodd recalled that the episode 'exemplified the Prime Minister's energy and (hair-raising!) disregard for personal danger.' Churchill sent an insouciant message to Stalin, which read: 'We had a noisy night'.

[The Allied landings on the beaches of Normandy cm 6 June, 1944 were a huge operation, involving 5000 ships on the first day alone.]

Defence was soon organised. Some V-ls were shot down by anti-aircraft batteries. Intrepid RAF pilots destroyed others by flying alongside, wingtip beneath wingtip, flinging the V-ls off-course as the pilots banked away. The combined effort disposed of 200 of the 700 V-ls launched on London in the first week of the attacks, but 526 civilians were killed. Churchill's response was defiant. The First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham, wrote in his diary after an emergency staff conference that the Prime Minister 'said the matter had to be put robustly to the populace, that their tribulations were part of the battle in France and that they should be very glad to share in the soldiers' dangers.'

Churchill was mulling over ways of retaliating that would also halt flying bomb production and came up with some characteristically idiosyncratic

[CHURCHILL  ON  VICTORY  IN  THE  BATTLE  OF  NORMANDY,  28  SEPTEMBER  1944  --  Little more than seven weeks have passed since we rose for the summer vacation, but this short period has completely changed the face of the war in Europe. When we separated, the Anglo-American armies were still penned in the narrow bridgehead and strip of coast from the base of the Cherbourg peninsula to the approaches to Caen ... the Germany Army in the West was still hopeful of preventing us from striking out into the fields of France and the battle of Normandy, which had been raging bloodily from the date of the landing, had not reached any decisive conclusion. What a transformation now meets our eyes! Not only Paris, but practically the whole of France, has been liberated .... Belgium has been rescued, part of Holland is already free and the foul enemy, who for four years inflicted his cruelties and oppression upon these countries, has fled....]

ideas, such as the use of poisonous mustard gas. Churchill wrote in a note to the Chiefs of Staff: 'We could drench the cities of the Ruhr and many other cities in Germany in such a way that most of the population would be requiring constant medical attention. We could stop all work at the flying bomb starting points.' The Chiefs rejected the suggestion straight away. Gas, they told Churchill, was an inefficient weapon, difficult to control and unlikely to have the decisive effect he envisaged.

OPERATION ANVIL-DRAGOON

The V-l campaign against Britain was relatively short-lived, petering out after only two months, by the end of August 1944. The Germans switched targets to the Belgian port of Antwerp, which was captured by British forces on 4 September. But Britain was not off the hook. On 8 September, the Germans launched another, much more powerful, weapon. The supersonic V-2 missile, a forerunner of post-war space rockets, fell out of the sky without sound or warning. The V-2 attacks on Britain lasted for 6 months, killing 2754, nearly 80 per cent of them in London.

Operation Anvil-Dragoon, the Allied invasion of southern France, took place at St Tropez on 15 August, 1944, but failed to distract the Germans from their defence of the Normandy coast as the Americans had hoped. There was no mass withdrawal of troops to head off the assault in the south and the German garrison stationed on the French Riviera quickly surrendered to the Allies. Within only four weeks, the Allied forces joined up with troops advancing from Normandy, where the breakout from the beach-heads had taken seven hard-fought weeks at the cost of more than 120,000 Allied casualties.

Churchill, who was on a tour of the battle areas in Normandy and Italy, watched the invasion of southern France from the deck of the destroyer HMS Khnberley. He saw 'the panorama of the beautiful shore with smoke rising from many fires started by the shelling and artificial smoke being loosed by the landing troops and the landing-craft drawn up upon the shore.' Churchill found the invasion 'rather dull', for instead of a day-long bombardment from sea and air, the Germans' onshore guns had been silenced by 8:00AM. Had he known the circumstances in advance, he wrote to Clementine, he would have taken a picket boat and watched 'very much nearer to the actual beach'.

A PIECE OF THE ACTION

Churchill was better satisfied in Italy ten days later, when he stood with General Alexander on a high point above the German defence line around Florence as Allied forces attacked. 'Here one certainly could see all that was possible,' Churchill remembered. 'The Germans were firing with rifles and machine guns from thick scrub on the farther side of the valley, about 500 yards away. Our front line was beneath us. The firing was desultory and intermittent. But this was the nearest I got to the enemy and the time I heard the most bullets in the Second World War.'

[On 12 June, 1944, six days after D-Day, Churchill crossed the Channel to witness the action for himself. He had wanted to go to Normandy with the invasion fleet, but was talked out of it by King George VI.]

Churchill returned to Britain three days later on 29 August, but the month-long tour had been tiring and he succumbed to another bout of pneumonia. He was still recovering in bed on 3 September, when grave news reached him from Warsaw in Poland, where Polish insurgents were fighting a desperate battle against the Germans. Soviet forces were little more than 50 miles away, but had been ordered by Stalin not to interfere. The insurgents were attempting to establish a democratic government in Poland. Stalin meant the country to have a communist future and realised that the Germans would do his work for him by eliminating his potential opponents.

Churchill was enraged at Stalin's attitude and, despite a high fever, he called a Cabinet meeting

[Churchill, accompanied by General Bernard Montgomery, speaks to British troops at Caen. It had been originally planned that Caen would be captured on D-Day itself, but the Allied advance was hampered by strong German resistance and difficult terrain. Caen was largely destroyed in the savage fighting that followed.]

in the underground War Rooms. The Cabinet agreed that the situation in Warsaw was a scandal, but toned down their protest for the sake of preserving the alliance with the Soviet Union. In a carefully worded telegram, ministers told Stalin that his actions seemed 'at variance with the spirit of Allied co-operation to which you and we attach so much importance, both for the present and for the future.' The mild message had no effect and the insurgents in Warsaw were slaughtered while their city was laid waste all around them. It was a sombre lesson for the postwar future which Churchill would not forget.

Churchill's convalescence was still not complete when he embarked on the liner Queen Mary at Greenock, on the River Clyde, on 5 September, for another meeting with Roosevelt in Quebec. The liner had waited a week for Churchill to arrive and he was concerned to learn that, because of the delay, American GIs on board would lose seven days of home leave. Immediately, he sent Roosevelt a message requesting that the time be made up to them. 'It would be a pleasure to me if this could be announced before the end of the voyage and their anxiety relieved,' Churchill stated. Roosevelt complied at once.

THE ATOMIC BOMB 

Churchill reached Quebec on 12 September. The same day, news arrived that American forces had crossed the frontier into Germany close to Aachen. This first breach into Nazi territory was a joyful moment, heralding the end of the regime.

The Americans had come to Quebec with a scenario for a post-war Germany already worked out. Roosevelt's Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Morganthau, proposed to shut down all of Germany's factories, break up its shipyards and return the country to a pre-industrial, agricultural state. It was a step designed to take Germany back at least two centuries and so ensure that the nation could never again challenge the rest of Europe.

[In the summer of1944, with the Red Army 15 miles from the city, the "Warsaw uprising was crushed by the occupying German forces. Churchill, aware of the need to keep Stalin as an ally, tried to excuse the Russians' failure to help the Roles, earning him the enmity of the Polish people both during and after the war.]

CHURCHILL  ON  DEMOCRACY,  8  DECEMBER  1944

[Democracy, I say, is not based on violence or terrorism, but on reason, on fair play, on freedom, on respecting other people's rights as well as their ambitions. Democracy is no harlot to be picked up in the street by a man with a tommy gun. 1 trust the people, the mass of the people, in almost any country, but 1 like to make sure that it is the people, and not a gang of bandits ... who think that by violence they can overturn constituted authority, in some cases ancient Parliaments, governments and States. (Democracy has a price). We are paying for it with our treasure and our blood. We are not paying for it with our honour or by defeat.]

Roosevelt agreed to the idea, as did Churchill, but it was rejected by the US State Department and the future of post-war Germany remained undecided. Japan's future was also under discussion. The Americans had been developing an atomic bomb following an agreement made between Britain and the United States in June 1942. Work was due to be completed by August 1945, and at the Quebec Conference the Americans raised the possibility of using it against the

[Churchill in Normandy talking with Montgomery (left). Churchill was on good terms with Montgomery, but could be irritated by his caution, Montgomery was reluctant to send his forces into battle unless they were fully prepared and his delays frustrated the Americans.]

Japanese, Churchill was not convinced that this would be necessary. He believed that prolonged bombing and 'an ever increasing weight of explosives on their centers of population ' would eventually overcome Japanese resistance.

NEGOTIATING WITH STALIN

 Churchill sailed home on the Queen Mary, arriving at Greenock on 26 September. Eleven days later, he departed for Moscow, where he presented Stalin with proposals that he hoped would curtail the spreading tide of communist influence in southern Europe and the Balkans. The inexorable advance of the Soviet Army had liberated Romania, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia, and was about to free Hungary. Communist minorities, bidding to take power, were already active in all these countries. In Greece a civil war was developing between the royalist government and communist guerrillas even before the Germans started their withdrawal, which was completed in November 1944. Churchill's plan proposed 'percentages of
interest' for Britain and Russia i'n five countries. The Russians received 90 per cent interest in Romania, the British ten per cent. The proportions were reversed in Greece. In Hungary, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia, the proportions were equal. In addition, as a concession, Churchill offered to persuade Turkey to allow        I Russia free access through the Dardanelles to the Mediterranean. In exchange, Churchill asked Stalin for his word not to promote communism in Greece or Italy.

Churchill handed the paper containing these proposals to Stalin, who put a large tick on it and handed it back. Realising the imperialist nature of the proposals in what Churchill called 'a naughty document', he lightheartedly suggested to Stalin that they dispose of it: 'Might it not be thought rather cynical if it seemed we had disposed of these issues, so fateful to millions of people, in such an offhand manner?' Churchill asked. 'Let us burn the paper' Stalin disagreed: 'No,' he replied, 'You keep it.'

The discussion became less light-hearted when they moved on to the question of Poland, where the Germans had now crushed resistance in Warsaw. The Polish government in exile in London had told Churchill that they would accept nothing less than complete independence. Stalin had his own communist nominees ready to take over the government in post-war Poland. Neither side would yield. Churchill, who later described himself to the House of Commons as travelling 'from court to court like a wandering minstrel, always with the same song to sing', had to admit that no compromise was possible.

The countries of eastern Europe were 'seething with communism,' Churchill told Anthony Eden, '... only our influence with Russia prevents their actively stimulating this movement, deadly as I conceive it to the freedom of Mankind.' In eastern Germany many people had no intention of waiting to see what the I        Russians would do with the 'freedom of Mankind'. Millions fled westwards to escape the Russians' revenge for atrocities the Nazi forces had perpetrated in Russia. Churchill's compassion was roused.

'I am free to confess to you that my heart is saddened by the tales of masses of German women and children flying along the roads everywhere in 40-mile I   long columns ... before the advancing armies,' Churchill wrote to Clementine. 'I am clearly convinced that they deserve it; but that does not remove it from one's gaze. The misery of the whole world appals me and I fear increasingly that new struggles may arise out of this which we are successfully ending.'

A FRAIL ROOSEVELT 

The new struggles he feared were already evident and Stalin's expansionist ambitions became a central concern for Churchill. On 29 January, 1945, he left London on the first leg of his journey to Yalta, on the south coast of the Crimea in Russia, for a conference with Stalin and Roosevelt to discuss the growing problem. Churchill first headed for Malta to discuss tactics at Yalta with Anthony Eden and the Chiefs of Staff. Churchill wanted positive action to prevent the Russians advancing too far into Europe and placing communist governments in the territories they conquered. In this context, Austria was his
first concern. 'It is essential,' Churchill told the Chiefs of Staff, 'that we occupy as much of Austria as possible, as it is undesirable that more of western Europe than necessary should be occupied by the Russians.'

It was soon evident that Churchill would have to do most, if not all, of the hard work at Yalta.
President Roosevelt arrived in Malta on 2 February in no state for hard political bargaining.
Churchill was shocked at his frail appearance. _

Normally so lively and charismatic, Roosevelt had become pale, grey and painfully thin. A year     earlier, his doctors had diagnosed serious heart and circulatory problems and the deterioration in his health was all too evident. The President attended a few meetings in Malta, but for the most part sat silent and dull-eyed.

Churchill, Roosevelt and their respective staffs departed for Yalta on 3 February. The conference was held at the Livadia Palace, which had once been a residence of the last Tsar of Russia, Nicholas II. The timetable was not a taxing one. Discussions did not begin until four in the afternoon and lasted until about nine in the evening. That allowed Churchill to follow his favourite routine: he liked to rise late in the morning, then enjoy an early lunch with a short nap afterwards.

BROKEN PROMISES 

Agreement was easily reached on several of the issues discussed at Yalta. The three leaders were in accord over the policy of unconditional surrender first announced by Churchill and Roosevelt at Casablanca in January 1943. Stalin concurred with the American request that he declare war on Japan once Germany was defeated. Stalin also agreed to Churchill's request for a Soviet attack on Danzig, where the Germans had built a revolutionary new type of submarine that had already sunk ships British waters. There was assent too over the arrangements for the occupation of Germany after the war: Britain, the United States, the Soviet Union and France were to govern their own zones with Berlin falling under joint control. The long-term treatment of Germany was a more controversial matter. Despite prolonged discussion, there was no

consensus over the dismembering of the country into five small states, or the level of reparations the Germans would have to pay, or the procedures for dealing with war criminals - by judicial process or by summary execution without trial. 'The only bond of the victors is their common hate,' Churchill told Anthony Eden, fearing that the desire for revenge might dominate post-war policy in Europe.

There was no hope of agreement on the subject of Poland either. By the time the Yalta Conference took place, the Soviet Army had gained control of Poland and a large part of eastern Europe and Stalin could do as he pleased in these conquered territories. Although Stalin did promise Churchill that the Poles could have free and fair elections within a month, he did not keep his word. Every promise Stalin made at Yalta concerning Poland was afterwards broken.

A SOMBRE COMPARISON

Churchill returned home via Alexandria, where the USS Quincy, with President Roosevelt on board, was berthed on its way back to the United States. Roosevelt, exhausted by the strain of the Yalta Conference, seemed to be fading fast. 'I felt he had a slender contact with life,' Churchill afterwards recalled. 'At Yalta ... his captivating smile, his gay and charming manner had not deserted him, but his face had a transparency, an air of purification and often there was a faraway look in his eyes. When I took my leave of him in Alexandria harbour, I must confess that I had an

[In August 1944, members of the War Cabinet went to Buckingham Palace for a private meeting with King George VI. Clement Attlee (second from left) and Anthony Eden (behind Churchill) were both to succeed him in the post of Prime Minister.]

indefinable sense of fear that his health and his strength were on the ebb.' Churchill and Roosevelt never saw each other again.

Churchill was back in Britain on 19 February, after an absence of three weeks. Decisions made at the Yalta Conference regarding the fate of Poland had stirred up controversy. Many Members of Parliament found it impossible to believe Stalin's assurance of free elections. Churchill was guardedly hopeful when he wrote: 'Personally, in spite of my anti-Communist convictions, I have good hopes that Russia, or at any rate Stalin, desires to work in harmony with the Western 

[CHURCHILL  ON  THE  HUMANITARIAN  ASPECT  OF  UNCONDITIONAL  SURRENDER,  18  JANUARY  1945  --  I am clear that nothing should induce us to abandon the principle of unconditional surrender... but the President of the United States and I... have repeatedly declared that the enforcement of unconditional surrender upon the enemy in no way relieves the victorious powers of their obligations to humanity or of their duties as civilised and Christian nations .... We may now say to our foes "We demand unconditional surrender, but you well know how strict are the moral limits within which our action is confined. We are no extirpators of nations, butchers of peoples. We make no bargain with you. We accord you nothing as a right. Abandon your resistance unconditionally. We remain bound by our customs and our nature.]

democracies. The alternative would be despair about the long term future of the world.'

It was a front. Behind it, Churchill was depressed by a sombre comparison. Here he was, trusting Stalin to keep his word, and yet in both 1938 and 1939, another Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, had trusted and been betrayed by another dictator, Adolf Hitler.

STAKING OUT TERRITORY 

News of Stalin's betrayal reached Churchill in the next weeks. Reports told of political thuggery in Romania, where the Soviets were using intimidation, backed by military force, to impose a communist government. In Poland non-communists were excluded from government. Political opposition was banned. Some 2000 priests, intellectuals and teachers were sent to Soviet labour camps. In March 1945, Churchill sent a telegram to President Roosevelt urging him to exert 'dogged pressure and persistence' in the cause of preserving Polish freedom. There was no response. By this time, Roosevelt was past all exertions.

At the end of March, soon after he returned from an extensive tour of the battle front along the River Rhine, Churchill's attention was diverted by another problem. General Eisenhower had decided on a change of plan for the campaign in Germany: he wanted to abandon the drive for Berlin for the sake of a more southerly advance through Leipzig to Dresden, moving as far as, but not beyond, the River Elbe. Eisenhower was not convinced of the importance of Berlin, either as an industrial target or a military centre. His plan focused instead on overcoming the

[At the Yalta Conference in February i 945, Stalin cunningly used the meeting to stake Soviet claims to territory in eastern Europe.]

[Despite his busy schedule, Churchill still found time to enjoy a cup of tea with British Army gunners at an artillery observation point in March 1945, as airborne troops crossed the River Rhine and entered Germany.]

resistance the Germans were putting up in the industrial cities of the south.

Churchill and the British chiefs of staff were thoroughly alarmed when they received the news. To them, Eisenhower's plan was a terrible strategic error. Not only would it allow the Russians to seize Berlin, but halting American troops at the River Elbe would give the Russians access to even more territory in the east and could even threaten the Austrian capital, Vienna.

THE DEATH OF A PRESIDENT 

Churchill used all possible persuasions to make' Eisenhower change his mind. 'I deem it highly important,' he cabled the American general, 'that we should shake hands with the Russians as far

east as possible.' Eisenhower was unmoved. His new plan went forward and on 11 April, his forces reached the River Elbe. Berlin was less than 70 miles away, but the American troops made no sign of advancing towards it. Churchill interpreted the situation in the grimmest terms. 'It is by no means certain,' he said, 'that we could count on Russia as a beneficent influence in Europe or as a willing partner in maintaining the peace of the world. Yet, at the end of the War, Russia will be left in a position of preponderant power and influence throughout the whole of Europe.'

On 12 April President Roosevelt died, shortly after suffering a stroke while on holiday at Warm Springs, Georgia. Churchill was deeply upset. His telegram to his friend Harry Hopkins read: 'I feel a very painful personal loss, quite apart from the ties of public action which bound us closely together. I had a true affection for Franklin.'

Churchill paid tribute to the President on the day of his funeral, 17 April. 'My friendship with the great man to whose work and fame we pay our tribute today began and ripened during this war,' Churchill told the House of Commons. ' ... I conceived an admiration for him as a statesman, a man of affairs and a war leader. I felt the utmost confidence in his upright, inspiring character and outlook, and a personal regard - affection I must say - for him beyond my power to express today. .... President Roosevelt's physical affliction lay heavily upon him. It was a marvel that he bore up

[CHURCHILL  ON  VICTORY  IN  EUROPE,  8  MAY  1945  --  We may allow ourselves a brief period of rejoicing; but let us not forget for a moment the toil and efforts that lie ahead. Japan, with all her treachery and greed, remains unsubdued. The injury she has inflicted on Great Britain, the United States and other countries and her detestable cruelties, call for justice and retribution. We must... devote all our strength and resources to the completion of our task, both at home and abroad. Advance, Britannia! Long live the cause of freedom! God save the King!]

[Churchill was profoundly upset by the death of Roosevelt on 12 April, 1945. He attended a memorial service at St Paul's Cathedral in London on 17 April, accompanied by his daughter Sarah (behind him).]

against it through all the many years of tumult and storm. Not one man in ten million, stricken and crippled as he was, would have attempted to plunge into a life of physical and mental exertion and of hard, ceaseless political controversy .... ' Churchill concluded, 'it remains only to say that in Franklin Roosevelt there died the greatest American friend we have ever known and the greatest champion of freedom who has ever brought help and comfort from the New World to the Old.'

HORRIBLE REVELATIONS

By this time, Nazi concentration camps were being uncovered by the advancing American and British armies. Rumours of atrocities against Jews, gypsies, Slavs, homosexuals and others the Nazis considered racially or otherwise 'inferior' had been circulating since the early stages of the war. But the brutalities committed at Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen and Buchenwald were not fully revealed until the camps were liberated. The death camps in Poland were the first to be freed by the Russians at the start of 1945. In April, American troops discovered more camps as they advanced deeper into Germany from the west. The press coverage, showing pictures of corpses piled high in the camp compounds and skeletal survivors, hollow-eyed and barely alive, shocked cinema audiences and newspaper readers around the world. Churchill received a graphic description of the scene at Buchenwald in a telephone call from General Eisenhower. He wrote to Clementine, 'Here we are all shocked by the most horrible revelations of German cruelty in the concentration camps .... ' On 19 April, he told the Commons: 'No words can express the horror which is felt by His Majesty's Government and their principal

allies at the proofs of these frightful crimes now daily coming into view.'

The war was fast drawing to its close. On 20 April, the US Seventh Army captured Nuremberg. The Russians entered Berlin on 23 April. On 30 April, Hitler committed suicide in his underground bunker beneath the grounds of the Berlin Chancellery. The Russians, advancing through the shattered, rubble-strewn streets, were only a few yards away. A week later, all German forces surrendered unconditionally. Hitler's Third Reich, which he had declared would last a thousand years, had finally gone down in blood, flames and ruin.

[In May 1945, Berlin was a mass of ruined buildings -windowless walls were often all that remained standing after more than four years of bombing.]

....................

THERE  WAS  MORE  TO  WINSTON  CHURCHILL'S  LIFE  AFTER  WORLD  WAR  TWO.  BUT  WE  HAVE  LOOKED  AT  HIS  FINEST  HOUR.

HE  WAS  GIFTED  AND  TALENTED  IN  MANY  WAYS,  FROM  A  WRITER,   TO  HISTORIAN,  TO  A  MASTER  BRICK-LAYER,  TO  A  PAINTER,  TO  A  LECTURER.  TO  A  POLITICIAN.

HE  ALSO  HAD  ANOTHER  GREAT  SIDE  TO  HIM.  ONCE  HE  WENT  OUT  TO  SEE  THE  DESTRUCTION  OF  LIVES  IN  LONDON  WHEN  BOMBED  DURING  THE  "BLITZ" [GERMANY  RAINING  DOWN  BOMBS  ON  LONDON] AND  HE  CRIED.

I  ALSO  READ  THAT  ONCE  WHEN  STANDING  WATCHING  THE  BRITISH  SOLDIERS  PARADE  BY,  BECAUSE  HE  WELL  KNEW  THE  SACRIFICE  MANY  WOULD  MAKE,  TEARS  FLOWED  DOWN  HIS  CHEEKS.

YES  THE  GREAT  WINSTON  CHURCHILL,  COULD  CRY;  I'LL  BET  HE  DID IT  OFTEN  WHEN  ALONE  DURING  WORLD  WAR  TWO.

JESUS  SET  US  AN  EXAMPLE  IN  EVERY  WAY.  IT  IS  WRITTEN  IN  THE  GOSPELS  "AND  JESUS  WEPT."

I  BELIEVE  THERE  SHOULD  BE  SOMETHING  DURING  EVERY  PERSONS  LIFE  [YES  MEN  ALSO]  THAT  SHOULD  MAKE  YOU  CRY,  LITERALLY.
SHEDDING  TEARS  OVER  SOMETHING [COULD  BE  MANY  THINGS  IN  A  LIFETIME]  IS  REALLY  GOOD  FOR  THE  SOUL..... YES  IT  IS.  MAKE  SURE YOU  EXPERIENCE  IT.