.JOURNAL OFTIIE CHURCHILL CKNTER AND ... - Winston Churchill

Centerspread. StoryCHURCHILL AND EISENHOWERAT GETTYSBURG, 6 MAY 1959Article & Painting by Cnarlotte Tnibault • Commissioned ror Finest Hour by D. Craig HornPkotograpks from tke Ajtine Williams Wkeaton Collection, National Park Service, Dwigkt D. Eisenkower Likrary"W;ELL, MYfriend,you're back again,"Dwight D. Eisenhowersaid on 4 May1959, as Sir WinstonChurchill hobbleddown the ramp ofIke's official plane,Columbine III, whichhad brought him toWashington fromIdlewild. Churchillreplied, "I am indeed glad to see you." To the waitingmicrophones, Churchill responded to the President'sformal speech of welcome: "I am most happyonce again to set foot in the United States—mymother's country I always think of it and feel it. Ihave come here on a quiet visit to see some of myold comrades of wartime days..."Churchill took up quarters in his old suite atthe White House, where he and Eisenhower hadfirst met in 1942. Robert Pilpel's Churchill in Americarecords that dinner that evening was rather sad,"for it was well past midnight London time andChurchill was feeling the effects of jet-lag. Thechange in him since 1954, moreover, was starklydramatic, and during the meal Eisenhower observedsorrowfully to his daughter-in-law, Barbara, 'I onlywish you had known him in his prime.'"On the 5 th, however, Churchill had recovered,and the President took him to Walter Reed ArmyHospital to visitJohn Foster Dulles,dying of cancer, andGeorge C. Marshall,paralyzed by astroke. Pilpel recordsthat Eisenhower wasstill distressed overChurchill's deterioration,"plainlychoked up" accordingto a reporter. SirWinston revivedagain in the evening, where Ike held a stag party forWorld War II admirals and generals who had workedunder them both on the invasions of North Africaand Europe fifteen years before.On Wednesday May 6th they traveled by helicopterto Eisenhower's farm at Gettysburg, whichgave Churchill a bird's eye view of the great battlefieldhe himself had only just described in The GreatDemocracies, his final volume of his History of the English-SpeakingPeoples, published the year before. Oncelanded they boarded an electric golf cart and touredthe pastures and fields. Now and then they would dismountfor a look round.The evidence suggests that they spent moretime considering Eisenhower's Black Angus cattlethan the Battle of Gettysburg, but after the immortalwords Churchill had just published about it,there is no doubt that their thoughts on more thanone occasion wandered back to 1863.FINEST HOUR 103/24