Today is Winston Churchill's 133rd birthday. A descendant of the first Duke of Marlborough (not the cigarette) Churchill led a life of extraordinary accomplishment and crushing failures only to have, late in his life, the course of history turn such as to make him instrumental in the salvation of the free world from the horrors of Nazism.
Churchill's life reads like that of an intelligent Forrest Gump. For over half a century Churchill would find himself at the center of almost every major event in British history. He served in India and the Sudan as part of the British military. His escape from prison during the Boer War is itself a remarkable story that could be turned into a novel or movie. He'd go on to serve in Parliament and rise to various important roles including First Lord of the Admiralty during the First World War. In that capacity he received most of the blame for the failed attempt to take the Gallipoli Peninsula from the Turks. This misadventure cost tens of thousands of lives, and although Churchill would be officially relieved of responsibility, the event would haunt him most of his professional career.
He was instrumental in the creation of the Irish Republic in the 1920s and would serve as Chancellor of Exchequer. But by the 1930s Churchill's career was on the wane. Diminished to the role of a back bencher, he called out unceasingly for greater attention to the rise of totalitarianism on the continent and the need to rearm. He was dismissed as a crank. Of course he would be proven correct.
The appeasement of Chamberlain resulted in almost total failure. In May of 1940 Churchill, now
sixty-five years old, became Prime Minister, and through his actions and rhetoric would rally Britain and the free world to victory.
Churchill was also a man of letters. Let us not forget that he was a winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. His histories of both World Wars, his ancestor the Duke of Marlborough and his History of the English Speaking Peoples show a remarkable gift in the use of the English language.
Here is snippet of Churchill's famous "never surrender" speech of 1940, just before the Battle of Britain. You can go here to read and listen to Churchill's praise of those brave airmen who saved Britain during that battle.
The gratitude of every home in our Island, in our Empire, and indeed throughout the world, except in the abodes of the guilty, goes out to the British airmen who, undaunted by odds, unwearied in their constant challenge and mortal danger, are turning the tide of the World War by their prowess and b~ their devotion. Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.
When one contemplates the life of Winston Churchill, those words never ring more true. Happy Birthday Winston Churchill.
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