June 27, 2013

Finest Hour 135, Summer 2007

Page 14

Datelines: 21 MAY 1948 – The Commando Memorial

“NOTHING OF WHICH we have any knowledge or record has ever been done by mortal men which surpasses the splendour and daring of their feats of arms.”

2024 International Churchill Conference

Join us for the 41st International Churchill Conference. London | October 2024

More

By Winston S. Churchill

Published by kind permission of the copyright holder, Curtis Brown Ltd., on behalf of the Estate of Sir Winston Churchill, copyright © Winston S. Churchill.

Nearly six decades ago in the cloisters of Westminster, the Leader of the Opposition, Winston S. Churchill, unveiled a memorial to those who had died in the then-recent World War on service in submarines and with commando and airborne forces: three groups who had knowingly faced even more dangers than those which confronted fighting men as a matter of course. His speech was fully reported in the following day’s Times, but the early biographers seem to have missed it. It bears reprinting for the light it throws both on the men Churchill commemorated and on his own beliefs.

Over forty years ago, when preparing the official history of the Special Operations Executive in France (reissued in 2004), I conjectured that, as he spoke, Churchill had in mind—as well as the feats he praised—the then still inadmissible deeds of special agents for sabotage, subversion and escape who had set out on their missions by parachute or by submarine.

A distinguished audience was assembled to hear the wartime Prime Minister that day. Among those present were A.V. Alexander, Minister of Defence and wartime First Lord of the Admiralty; Admiral of the Fleet the Viscount Cunningham of Hyndhope, wartime First Sea Lord; Field Marshal the Earl Wavell, former Commander-in-Chief Middle East and later Viceroy of India; Major General Sir Robert Laycock, who had been Chief of Combined Operations; Lieutenant General Sir Frederick Browning, who had been commander of Airborne Forces; Lieutenant Colonel A.C. Newman, who had won his Victoria Cross at St. Nazaire; and several other VC holders. The Dean of Westminster, the Very Reverend A.C. Don, held a brief service. Churchill concluded with the last two verses of an old Masonic poem, familiar in those days to many of the dignitaries present.
—PROFESSOR M.R.D. FOOT

Today we unveil a memorial to the brave who gave their lives for what we believe future generations of the world will pronounce a righteous and noble cause. In this ancient Abbey, so deeply wrought into the record, the life and the message of the British race and nation—here where every inch of space is devoted to the monuments of the past and to the inspiration of the future—there will remain this cloister now consecrated to those who gave their lives in what they hoped would be a final war against the grosser forms of tyranny. These symbolic images of heroes, set up by their fellow-countrymen in honour and remembrance, will proclaim, as long as faithful testimony endures, the sacrifices of youth resolutely made at the call of duty and for the love of our Island home and all it stands for among men.

This memorial, with all its grace and distinction, does not claim any monopoly of prowess or devotion for those to whom it is dedicated. We all know the innumerable varieties of dauntless service which were performed by His Majesty’s soldiers and servants at home and abroad, in the prolonged ordeals of the Second World War for right and freedom. Those whose memory is here saluted would have been the first to repulse any exclusive priority in the Roll of Honour.

It is in all humility which matches their grandeur that we here today testify to the valour and devotion of the Submarine Service of the Royal Navy in both wars, to the Commandos, the Airborne Forces and the Special Air Service. All were volunteers. Most were highly-skilled and intensely-trained. Losses were heavy and constant. But great numbers pressed forward to fill the gaps.

Selection could be most strict where the task was forlorn. No units were so easy to recruit as those over which Death ruled with daily attention. We think of the forty British submarines— more than half our total submarine losses—sunk amid the Mediterranean minefields alone, of the heroic deaths of the submarine commanders and crews who vanished for ever in the North Sea or in the Atlantic Approaches to our nearly-strangled island. We think of the Commandos, as they came to be called—a Boer word become ever-glorious in the annals of Britian and her Empire—and of their gleaming deeds under every sky and clime. We think of the Airborne Forces and Special Air Service men who hurled themselves unflinching into the void—when we recall all this, we may feel sure that nothing of which we have any knowledge or record has ever been done by mortal men which surpasses the splendour and daring of their feats of arms.

Truly we may say of them, as of the Light Brigade at Balaclava, “When shall their glory fade?” But there were characteristics in the exploits of the submarines, the Commandos and the Airborne Forces which, in different degrees, distinguished their work from any single episode, however famous and romantic.

First there was the quality of precision and the exact discharge of delicate and complex functions which required the utmost coolness of mind and steadiness of hand and eye. The excitement and hot gallop of a cavalry charge did not demand the ice-cold efficiency in mortal peril of the submarine crews and, on many occasions, of the Airborne Forces and the Commandos.

There was also that constant repetition, time after time, of desperate adventures which marked the work of the Commandos, as of the submarines, requiring not only hearts of fire but nerves of tempered steel.

To say this is not to dim the lustre of the past but to enhance, by modern lights, the deeds of their successors, whom we honour here today. The solemn and beautiful service in which we are taking part uplifts our hearts and gives balm and comfort to those living people, and there are many here, who have suffered immeasurable loss. Sorrow may be assuaged even at the moment when the dearest memories are revived and brightened. Above all, we have our faith that the universe is ruled by a Supreme Being and in fulfilment of a sublime and moral purpose, according to which all our actions are judged.

This faith enshrines, not only in bronze but for ever, the impulse of these young men, when they gave all they had, in order that Britain’s honour might still shine forth and that justice and decency might dwell among men in this troubled world. Of them and in presence of their memorial we may repeat as their requiem as it was their theme, and as the spur for those who follow in their footsteps the well-known lines:

…heard are the voices—
Heard are the Sages,
The Worlds and the Ages.
“Choose well; your choice is
Brief and yet endless;
Here eyes do regard you
In eternity’s stillness;
Here is all fullness,
Ye brave, to reward you.
Work, and despair not.”

Poems Churchill Loved

With his usual impressive memory, Churchill was quoting the “Masonic Poem” of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), which he must have read years before or recalled from Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, which he essentially memorized. The poem is found on http://xrl.us/wevb, which notes: “To English-speaking Masons, Goethe’s best known Masonic work is the short poem ‘Masonic Lodge.’ It can be found in any collection of Goethe’s works, and in Volume Twenty of the Little Masonic Library. It is given in full here, not only for purposes of short discussion, but because, by some unaccountable and distressing error, the first ten lines, which are the keynote of the whole poem [which Churchill did not quote] are omitted in the (1929) Clegg edition of Mackey’s Encyclopedia.”

The Masons’s ways are
A Type of Existence
And his persistence
Is as the days are
Of men in this world.
The future hides it
Gladness and Sorrow,
We press still thorow,
Naught that abides in it
Daunting us—onward.
And Solemn before us
Veiled, the dark portal,
Goal of all mortal;
Stars are silent o’er us
Graves under us silent.
While earnest thou gazest
Comes boding of terror,
Comes phantasm and error
Perplexes the bravest
With doubt and misgiving.
But heard are the voices—
Heard are the Sages,
The Worlds and the Ages;
“Choose well; your choice is
Brief and yet endless;
Here eyes do regard you
In eternity’s stillness;
Here is all fullness,
Ye have to reward you,
Work, and despair not.”

Finest Hour thanks Professor Foot for his suggestion that we republish the Commando Memorial speech. Reading it, shortly after the United States’ Memorial Day, we were struck by how much has changed in contemporary tributes to the military. Churchill unabashedly told us what these brave people did, hurling themselves against the enemy, “unflinchingly into the void.” Today when we honor those who serve, we do so almost in the abstract. Apparently, describing what they actually do is considered somehow too delicate, and might be found objectionable by this or that segment of society. Churchill was often quite specific about what brave individuals did for their country—but Churchill was also convinced not only of the justice of his cause, but of the unity of his nation. That too, sadly, has changed. —Ed.