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

Top row:Alighting atGettysburg fromthe White Househelicopter, 6May 1959. Atright, Ike shoosaway reporters.Lower row:Rides on farmroads, at left ina surrey named"Mamie" (frontpassenger isAnthonyMontagueBrowne, SirWinston'sPrivateSecretary); atright in the golfcart. Standingbehind the cartis Det. Sgt.Eddie Murray,Sir Winston'spersonalbodyguard.MY painting overleaf asks the viewer to imagineone of those moments. In my mind's eye, theyare discussing the outcome of that fateful battle asonly two of the world's great commanders might.The commander of the Confederate forces (Lee) andthe Commander-in-Chief of the Union forces (Lincoln)listen, from a perspective only they can share.As the discussion ensues, Winston Churchilland Dwight Eisenhower step out of time, findingthemselves in that fateful moment when the courseof time might have taken different paths. The sceneis Pickett s charge. The Confederate Army rushes theflanks of the Union's 69th and 71st Pennsylvaniansat the "angle" on 3 July 1863. It was what Churchillcalled a "Hinge of Fate," not unlike more recenttimes when, as leaders of men, their own actionsmight have led to quite a different future than theone we now enjoy.There is an added dimension to my painting,something I intentionally wished to imply. Supposethat the Confederates, and not the Union, had prevailedat Gettysburg?Only a man of Churchill's military and literaryresources could have simultaneously contemplatedboth the great Union victory and the alternatehe wrote himself in 1931: How "the Confederatesoldiers, by a deathless feat of arms, broke theUnion front at Gettysburg."We have read what Churchill wrote about thehistory that happened. Turn the page now and recallwhat might have happened. Pickett's charge succeeds!Churchill then recounts what happened afterward inhis remarkable essay, "If Lee Had Not Won the Battleof Gettysburg."Churchill would visit America again, briefly,when he sailed into New York Harbor aboardChristina in 1961. But no one present that day in1959 could resist the thought that here, fittingly atGettysburg, Winston Churchill was saying good-byeto his Mother's Land. M>_•Overleaf: "Churchill and Eisenhower at Gettysburg"200 color prints, 14x20", printed on heavy coated paperwith a white margin, signed and numbered by the artistand suitable for framing, are available from ChurchillStores, PO Box 96, Contoocook NH 03229 for $65.FINEST HOUR 103 / 25