Review - "Mary Churchill's War"

 As for this review, like many Americans, I am a fan of Winston Churchill. In retrospect, it is amazing that he and Britain were successful in standing alone for a year and a half against Hitler’s Nazis – from Germany’s occupation of Paris in June 1940 until the United States entered into the War after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. That they did was largely because of the confidence instilled in them by Churchill. Mary’s diary provides an intimate portrayal of the man.

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Burrowing into Books

Mary Churchill’s War: The Wartime Diaries of Churchill’s Youngest Daughter, 2022

Edited by Emma Soames, Foreword by Erik Larson

April 14, 2024

 

Sunday, 3 September, 1939 – “DECLARATION OF WAR…O God, I thought

I hoped, I prayed that our generation would never see a war and that those who

fought last time would never have to face the ordeal a second time.”

 

Monday, 7 May, 1945 – “Lovely day…At about half past six it was announced 

That Germany had surrendered unconditionally to the Allies this morning.”

 

When the diaries begin on January 1, 1939, Mary, born September 15, 1922, is 16 years-old. When they conclude, September 6, 1945, she is just shy of her 23^rd birthday. The diaries can be appreciated on three levels: One, a portrait of her father (Papa), along with her mother (Mummie), siblings, friends and members of Churchill’s cabinet, from his adoring (and adored) youngest child. Two, the effects of the War on England, as seen by the young Mary Churchill who later served as a captain in the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS). And three, a coming-of-age story of an intelligent and vivacious young woman who at the start of the War is a typical teenager, but who matures over six-and-a-half years into a thoughtful and respected officer and woman.

 

When the War began, she wrote that she is “determined that the following pages shall contain a true and consecutive record of my life…the life of a girl in her youth.” In the early entries, she is fond of exclamation points and putting important words in capital letters. She fell in love often, as she recounts in her diaries, which prompted Roosevelt’s special envoy to London Harry Hopkins to caution her, in a letter to Ambassador John Winant: “Girls as attractive as Mary should get engaged at least 3 times before marrying.”

 

Of course she was not an ordinary young Brit. Her father was Prime Minister and her mother was the daughter of Sir Henry Hozier and Lady Blanche Hozier. During the War she lived mostly at 10 Downing Street, the Annexe, with weekends at Chequers, the country home for Britain’s Prime Minister. She also traveled twice out of the country with her father, first to Quebec in August-September 1943 and two years later to Potsdam after the War in Europe was over. Consequently, she commented on the politically powerful, like this entry about President Franklin Roosevelt: “Sunday, 12 September, 1943 – To me he seems at once idealistic, cynical, warm-hearted & generous, worldly-wise, naïve, courageous, tough, thoughtful, charming, tedious, vain, sophisticated, civilized.”

 

As an 18-year-old, she enjoyed herself: “Wednesday, 8 January, 1941 – Hospital dance in the evening…Danced a great deal. Oh I do love dancing.” Two years later, the reader detects a change: “Friday, 4 June 1943 – So many thoughts occur to me continually about life. How interesting & thrilling it all is – How can people be bored – and yet I’ve been bored myself sometimes.” And after Hiroshima was bombed: “Friday, 10 August, 1945 – “It strengthens in my mind the conviction that one should expect & hope & pray for very little – except courage. Courage to face & accept & wrestle with life however black & evil.”

 

More than her other siblings, whose lives were disrupted by divorce and cut short by death, Mary Churchill Soames, who died at 91 in 2014, was her father’s (and her mother’s) daughter. And her daughter’s editing of the diaries provides the reader a treat.

"Sixty Years of Marriage"

 

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

More Essays from Essex

“Sixty Years of Marriage”

April 13, 2024

 

“Marriage, N. The state or condition of a community consisting

of a master, a mistress, two slaves, making in all, two”

                                                                                                                                Ambrose Bierce (1842-c.1914)

                                                                                                                                The Devil’s Dictionary, 1911

 

“There is no more lovely, friendly, and charming 

relationship, communion or company than a good marriage.”

                                                                                                                                Martin Luther (1483-1546)[1]

                                                                                                                                Table Talk

Published posthumously in 1566

 

Two days ago Caroline and I celebrated sixty years of marriage.

 

…………………………………………………………………………………….

 

Winston Churchill once allegedly said: “My most brilliant achievement was my ability to persuade my wife to marry me.” Whether Churchill said that or not, the statement is true of me. I still marvel that Caroline accepted my marriage proposal. I was, at the time, a college drop out with no prospects. Military service was in my future, as was finishing college. Yet, she said yes.

 

Sixty years is a long time. Sixty years before we were married was 1904 – the year construction began on the Panama Canal, the year fingerprints were first used as an investigative tool, and the year Cy Young pitched the first perfect game in modern baseball, as the Boston Americans beat the Philadelphia Athletics 3-0. It was three years before my grandparents were married and six years before my father was born.

 

The last sixty years – because we lived through them – do not carry the same weight as earlier ones, though they might for our grandchildren. When we married Lyndon Johnson had been in the White House less than five months, the first major battle between U.S. Forces and the Army of North Vietnam was seventeen months in the future, the moon was unblemished by human footprints, a postage stamp cost $0.05, college tuition was $1,700, the average cost of a house in the U.S. was $18,900, and a gallon of gas cost $0.30. My starting salary at Eastman Kodak in June 1965, however, was $6,000.00.

 

But marriage cannot be measured by historical events or the effects of inflation on goods, services, and income. It is, when one thinks of it, amazing that so many marriages endure. Courting, even for two years as we did, does not offer the time to really know the other person. In fact, we never stop learning about the person we wed. Sociologists and marriage counselors have long pondered which maxim best applies to marriage: that opposites attract, or whether it is birds of a feather. More likely, it is love, luck, temperament, and tolerance that play key roles. Peering back into the mists of sixty years, I am thankful we never thought deeply about such matters. The future arrived one step at a time.

 

We had grown up differently, Caroline in New York City and I in the small New Hampshire town of Peterborough. But we fell in love, that indescribable (and delightful) condition that defies definition. There is no question that we are different in many respects, but we also share common interests, the most important being devotion to one another, our three children, their spouses, and our ten grandchildren.

 

Our first home was a 500 square foot, $85.00 a month, apartment in Durham, New Hampshire where I was finishing my degree at the University of New Hampshire. Because of my initial conduct in college (completing one year of credits in two years), I had to pay for my room, board and tuition when I returned following military service. So, in the next two years I completed three years of credits – while working three jobs – finishing in February 1965 (proof that the proffered hand is not necessarily as productive as the calloused one). With a job at Kodak[2] starting in June, and as we had had no honeymoon, we took $2,000.00 we had saved, bought round-trip tickets to Paris, and spent eleven weeks traveling around southern Europe in a rented Volkswagen without an itinerary. It was a memorable start for our marriage.  

 

Our voyage since has taken us through five Connecticut towns: Glastonbury (one year), Durham (four years), Greenwich (twenty-four years), Old Lyme (twenty-three years, along with a small one-bedroom apartment in New York for seventeen of those years), and now Essex where we have lived for the past eight years. 

 

We met on New Year’s Eve of 1961 at a ski weekend near my hometown. My sister who had known Caroline at Garland Junior College in Boston introduced us that afternoon. That evening I monopolized her. We saw each other regularly for the next several weekends, until on March 11 in North Conway, New Hampshire I asked for her hand. She said yes. The next day, on our first run down Wildcat Mountain, she broke her leg. At the time I was working in a laboratory outside of Boston. I spoke to my father, who was with my younger sister Betsy who was racing at Cranmore Mountain. I told him what had happened, including my proposal of the night before. He told me my duty was to stay with Caroline even if it cost me my job, which it did; for, as he said, you can always get another, which I did.

 

In his 1922 novel The Adventures of Sally, P.G. Wodehouse wrote: “And she’s got brains enough for two, which is the exact quantity the girl who marries you will need.” While neither of our fathers repeated those exact words to me, I could tell they were thinking them. We got married on April 11, 1964 in New York’s Church of the Heavenly Rest, in a service conducted by the Reverend Floyd Thomas – to join hands “…till death do us part.”

 

In Adam Bede, George Eliot wrote: “What greater thing is there for two human souls, than to feel that they are joined for life – to strengthen each other in all labor, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be one with each other in silent unspeakable memories of the last parting.” Amen.

 

Together we move on, happy and still in love.

 

 

---

[1] Martin Luther, once a Catholic monk, married Katherine von Bora, a former num, in April 1523, two years after he had been excommunicated by Pope Leo X.

[2] In the summer of 1967, I became a stockbroker – my career for the next 48 years.

"A Different Time"

 

Today’s TOTD follows in the mold of my most recent ones, where I have tried to stay away from personalities to write about issues that to me are important. In the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attack, President George Bush proclaimed that you are either with us or against us. At the time, his words reflected an appropriate rallying cry, but I see no reason to extend such metaphorical proclamations onto our domestic political lives. Personalities matter, but there are other factors, such as policy preferences: the border and immigration; demands on our utility grids; affiliations with allies and alliances; interest costs, soaring debt, and the role of capitalism in the economy; views on education and the environment; whether abortion should be a political or personal issue; and perspectives about the purpose of government and how big a role it should play in our lives. These are issues we should be able to discuss, without becoming bogged down as to which candidate is most corrupt or which is least mentally fit. The latter breed arrogance, division and hatred, while the former lead to intelligent and respectful debate, with the goal of working together.

 

Sydney M. Williams

30 Bokum Road – Apartment 314

Essex, CT 06426

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

April 5, 2024

“A Different Time”

 

“We must strive to keep fresh in the minds of our people that men

sacrificed their lives to give the world one more chance to live.”

                                                                                                                                Colonel David M. Fowler

                                                                                                                                Commander, 87^th Regiment

                                                                                                                                20 October. 1945

                                                                                                                                Camp Carson, Colorado

 

As Americans we have choices, except when we don’t. When liberty is at risk, we have a duty to ensure that freedom reigns. In his Farewell Address (published in September 1796), George Washington wrote: “The independence and liberty you possess are the work of joint councils and joint efforts – of common dangers, sufferings, and successes.” There are times when liberty needs defending.

 

While Washington, in the same Address, warned against foreign entanglements, he could not have foreseen how the world would shrink. By the dawn of the 20^th Century, steamships and later air travel shortened distances across the Atlantic and Pacific, encouraging commerce, trade and tourism. Obligations, embedded in treaties and alliances, extended beyond our borders. By the late 1930s Europe was mired in a second world war, brought about by Hitler’s hatred for Jews and his desire for lebensraum – living space. Over the course of almost six years he and his NAZIs murdered seven million Jews. At its peak, in November 1942, Germany dominated Europe. Apart from the United Kingdom, Sweden, Switzerland, Spain, and Portugal, Germany’s occupation extended 2,500 miles, from Brittany east to Stalingrad (now Volgograd), and 2,100 miles from Helsinki south to Athens. As well, they controlled a good part of North Africa. 

 

On December 7, 1941 Japan attacked our naval base at Pearl Harbor. The next day, the U.S. declared war on Japan. In his address to Congress on December 8, President Roosevelt committed the United States: “No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people, in their righteous might, will win through to absolute victory.”  Three days later, Germany declared war on the United States. Two years later, by early 1944, the momentum of the War, which in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East was in its fifth year, favored the Allies. Even so, some of its costliest battles – the invasion of Normandy, the Battle of the Bulge, Okinawa, and Iwo Jima – were still in the future. Millions of soldiers and civilians were yet to die. 

 

Eighty years ago this spring my father, a 33-year-old married father of three was drafted into the U.S. military, one of ten million American men drafted into the armed forces over the three years and nine months the United States was in the War. My father was an artist who abhorred violence. While he was not a pacifist, he was not a warrior; he never owned a weapon. When in combat in Italy’s Apennines, he became a runner so he wouldn’t have to carry a rifle. But still, when called to serve, he went; because of his age, he was more aware of the risks than his much younger fellow soldiers. Today, I wonder about our youth – offered safe spaces and protected against harmful words – are they ready to respond to such a call?

 

Very few Americans alive now were of draft age during World War II. Yet, from a nation of 160 million people, about 19 million men and women served in the armed forces during the War. What would be the response today to such threats to democracy, to the freedom we and others have? When we see so many abandoning Israel in their time of need, expressing ambivalence about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, or evading the consequences of a China intent on destroying democracy in Hong Kong and threatening Taiwan, one wonders – have we lost our moral fiber?

 

Do we realize how fortunate we are to live in this place at this time? Are we aware of what the founders of this nation created in 1776? Do we honor all those who have left hearth and home to defend our rights and the rights of freedom-loving people in other nations? Do we realize that freedom is not free, that it must be defended? My father went to Italy with the 10^th Mountain Division in early 1945, where he served in the 87^th Regiment. The Division was tasked with breaking through the Gothic Line, which Germany had established north of Florence in late summer 1944. In just over two months of intense fighting in early 194 301 soldiers from the 87^th Regiment were killed, 25 from my father’s company out of perhaps 200 men. He wrote to my mother from Camp Carlson on October 19, 1945: “I become more and more surprised that I ever lived through it at all. There would have been very few of us left if it had lasted any longer.”

 

We cannot recover the past, but we can learn from it. And, in this age of ethical equivocation and moral relativism, we should never forget that there are universal principles, embedded in the inseparability of religion and morality, that are eternal. In his Farewell Address quoted above, Washington wrote: “Of all the habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.”

 

Our homes, families, friends, and communities descend from a system we inherited. Our duty is to ensure they are there to pass on to succeeding generations. In a letter to my mother written on March 15, 1944, a week after he had been inducted, my father wrote from Alabama’s Fort McClellan: “They seem to want you to forget about home as quickly as possible, which seems foolish because if it wasn’t for that there wouldn’t be any point to all of this anyway.” It is for our homes, families and neighbors, but also for our unique country and the freedom for which it stands, that men and women have given their lives over the past two and a half centuries. The U.S. may not be perfect, but why do you think so many clamor to get here? In this world, the United States stands alone.

 

We do live in a different time. Consumer products have improved living standards. Technology has bettered our lives in a way unrecognizable to those of eighty years ago. We live more open, more equitable and less structured lives. But some things do not (or should not) change – that diligence and hard work are integral for success, that obeisance to the Golden Rule will make us better citizens, that moral lessons from Aesop’s Fables help mold our characters, and that adherence to George Washington’s Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior make us better people. Each generation greets new opportunities and confronts new obstacles, which, individually and collectively, they must take advantage of or overcome. Accepting challenges, taking responsibility, helping others, admitting mistakes, and reaping rewards are all part of the American experience in any time.

 

The “Greatest Generation” rose to challenges they faced. We must ensure we do so as well.