August 23, 2013

Finest Hour 110, Spring 2001

Page 36

“Never imagine that such concepts as duty, honour, and love or country are outdated.”

WINSTON S. CHURCHILL TO THE CREW OF USS WINSTON S. CHURCHILL, NORFOLK, 10 MARCH 2001

Cdr. Franken, officers, members of the crew of the USS Winston S. Churchill, distinguished guests: I am sorry to disappoint you. I am not Tom Hanks who, I understand, was expected to be here to address you today. I cannot even claim to be Private Ryan’s kid brother. However I do happen to be the grandson, and have the great privilege of bearing the name, of the man in whose honour your ship is named. And I can tell you what a very proud day this is for me and all my family.

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As you travel the globe, you bear my grandfather’s name, not only on your great ship, but also emblazoned on your uniforms. You will be amazed at the warmth of welcome it will bring you, not just when you visit Great Britain, as you will be doing this summer, but in so many parts of the world. You cannot imagine what the name Winston Churchill means to so many people, in so many lands—none more so than to those who lived in Europe during the Nazi Occupation.

By way of example, let me tell you that, ten years ago, I had the privilege of addressing a meeting in London to mark the 50th Anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1941, when the tens of thousands of Polish Jews, realizing what fate the Nazis intended for them, armed only with Molotov cocktails and whatever weapons they could lay their hands on, tried to defend themselves against several divisions of S.S. troops. After the meeting, one of the guests, a fine looking lady of about 60, came up to me and said, “I was a girl of just 12 years of age at the time of the Uprising. I want to tell you that every time your grandfather was speaking on BBC radio, we would listen to his every word.

“I could not understand English, but I knew that any hope I and my family might have of surviving the war depended on that man. The Nazis put me and my family into the concentration camp of Bergen Belsen and then Buchenwald. I was the only member of my family to survive, and was eventually liberated by British forces, in fact by this man here, who is now my husband.”

It is a high honour, indeed one that is almost without precedent, that a great and proud nation like the United States should pay tribute to a foreigner in this way, by naming one of its major warships in his memory. But let me tell you something of the man for whom this mighty ship is named.

Winston Churchill was aptly described as “half-American but wholly British.” Through his mother, Jennie Jerome of Brooklyn, New York, he had American, indeed Revolutionary blood in his veins. He was proud to count among his forebears at least four ancestors who had fought against the British in the War of Independence.

If anyone should ask you why your ship bears the name of a British Statesman, you can tell them: “Because more than anyone else, Winston Churchill saved the world from Hitler.”

In those desperate four months, in the summer of 1940, it was above all thanks to him that Britain did not surrender in the face of Hitler’s onslaught. Had that come about—and, as the great Duke of Wellington said of the Battle of Waterloo, “It was a damn close run thing”—all possibility of eventual liberation for the nations of Occupied Europe would have been extinguished. There could have been no question of the United States’s launching a D-Day invasion from more than 3000 miles away across the Atlantic, and we would all be living in a very different world, dominated by the heirs of the Nazis.

Churchill’s achievement, which was crucial, was to ensure that the war was not lost, thereby making it possible for the Anglo-American alliance, once America joined the fray in December 1941, to go forward to Victory, together with our ally Soviet Russia.

It is easy, perhaps, to visualize in Churchill the valiant wartime statesman who, in the memorable words of Edward R. Murrow, quoted by President Kennedy, “mobilized the English language and sent it into battle.” Or as a rotund, elderly figure puffing on a large cigar, which is my childhood memory of him in the postwar years. But there was another Winston Churchill, and he was someone you should also know. That was the Winston Churchill of 50 years before, when he was your age: Winston Churchill the man of action, the young soldier who saw action across four continents, seeking fame and glory in the cannon’s mouth.

Young Winston saw his first action in 1895, when he visited Cuba to observe the Cuban revolution against Spain. It was there, on his 21st birthday, that he had his baptism of fire, when a bullet passed between him and a chicken-leg he was poised to eat, prompting him to observe: “There is nothing so exhilarating as to be shot at, without result!” Two years later, as a cavalry officer, he took part in fierce fighting on the North-West frontier of India. Then, in 1898, he contrived to get to the Sudan, where he participated in one of the last great cavalry charges of history, with the 21st Lancers at the Battle of Omdurman.

Yet again, just a year later, he was to be found in the thick of the battle in South Africa, where he went to report the Anglo-Boer War as a war correspondent. In a famous incident involving an armoured train, he was taken prisoner by the Boers. Undaunted, within four weeks he made a dramatic escape, which made him the hero of the hour. Thus, at the young age of 26, on the back of his fame as a soldier, he launched his career in Parliament, which was to span more than 60 years.

There is yet another Winston Churchill of whom you should know. That was the Winston who referred to himself, in correspondence with his wartime comrade-in-arms, Franklin D. Roosevelt, as a “Former Naval Person.” For Churchill, when just 36 years old, had been charged with political responsibility for Britain’s Navy. Amazingly not once, but twice—in 1914 and again, a quarter of a century later, in 1939—he had the task of preparing the Navy for war against Germany. On his return in 1939,
the signal was flashed to the fleet: “Winston is Back!”

At the Admiralty he was in his element, driving forward a major shipbuilding program and pressing on pioneering new developments, which included naval aviation. He became an enthusiastic pilot himself. Although Army matters were definitely not his responsibility, he played a key part in pressing forward the development of the tank, at a time when officers of the General Staff remained firmly committed to the concept of horses on the battlefield.

At that time the Royal Navy, as the U.S. Navy today, ruled supreme on the oceans of the world. But he was the first to recognize that with such power comes the need for responsibility. Soon after taking charge of the Admiralty, on 20 March 1912, he declared to Parliament in words that apply every bit as much to the United States today: “If we assert our claim, as we intend to do, to the supreme position on the seas, it is also our duty so to conduct ourselves, that other nations will feel that great power and great responsibility, which are a necessity to us, shall be used in such a manner as to be a menace to none, and a trust held for all.”

In a perceptive remark about the vulnerability even of the greatest warships, something that is even more true today, he told the House of Commons on 17 March 1914, just six months before the outbreak of the First World War: “The offensive power of modern warships is out of all proportion to their defensive power You must not think of [a naval engagement] as if it were two men in armour striking at each other with heavy swords. It is more like a battle between two egg-shells striking each other with hammers….The importance of hitting first, and hitting hardest, and keeping on hitting really needs no clearer proof.”

This is an exciting time for each of you. Indeed, for some it will be your very first tour of duty with the fleet at sea. The months of training and preparation, during which you have worked the ship up to a high point of efficiency, are now behind you. You are about to put into practice all you have learnt.

We live in a volatile world, set about with many unforeseeable dangers. Who can tell what challenges will confront you or what emergencies may come your way? Whatever they may be, and however great the danger, I know that you will rise to meet the occasion with courage and with fortitude, as did the man whose name your ship so proudly bears. Never imagine that such concepts as duty, honor and love of country are old-fashioned or out-dated. They are not. I am sure, should the need arise, you, the young men and women of the U.S. Navy, will show that same devotion to duty, that same spirit of courage and daring, that inspired the heroes of your Navy and ours, and which made them the two greatest navies of the last four centuries. 

We stand here, on the banks of the river named after King James I who, 400 years ago, united the crowns of England and Scotland. Indeed, it was in his reign that the very first British colonial settlement in the New World was established in 1607 at Jamestown, just a few miles from here. It stood on these shores of the state of Virginia, named in honor of his predecessor, Queen Elizabeth I, Good Queen Bess, whose mariners under Sir Francis Drake ensured that America became a British colony,
rather than Spanish like Mexico.

May I say to you that, as you travel the globe, upholding the interests of western democracy and of the Free World, your fortunes will be followed, not only by your own families and fellow countrymen, but also by those of Britain and of her Commonwealth around the world. To quote my grandfather one last time, speaking at Cambridge, on 19 May 1939, six months before the Second World War: “I have always thought that the union of these two great forces [the British and American navies], not for purposes of aggression or narrow selfish interests, but in an honourable cause, constitutes what I may call the sheet-anchor of human freedom and progress.”

Those words stand as a fine tribute to our two Navies, and are as true today as they were then, when the world stood poised on the brink of Armageddon. How proud my grandfather would be to know that this fine ship of the United States Navy will carry his name with honour across the seven seas. We look forward to welcoming you to Britain this summer, and I wish you all God speed and a safe return. 

Mr. Churchill is a London-based journalist and author, Sir Winston’s grandson, and a Trustee and Associate of The Churchill Center.