50th Anniversary of Churchills Death and Funeral

I was only 5

I remember watching the entire thing on television. I was 13. It made a big impression on me. I particularly remember the journey the coffin took down the river, and all the cranes bowing down as they passed. It was all very moving. A fine tribute to a great man.

Something that I was wondering about the other day was, did he write those amazing speeches himself or did he have a team of people doing it for him? I only ask because I knew someone who knew one of Tony Blairs speechwriters and, up until that time I assumed that politicians wrote their own speeches and that it came 'from the heart' not from a bit of paper that someone had given them .

I was a Corporal in the WRAC at the time, working at MOD and living at Mill Hill. I was with my platoon, lining the route on Ludgate Hill, further down than where you were standing, Flickety. We had been there since very early in the morning, and I remember how intensely cold it was, standing to attention for what seemed like hours, but I would not have changed places with anyone who wasn't there on that day, it was such a very moving occasion. We could hear people behind the barriers at the back of us weeping openly when the cortège passed, at which point we were given the order to bow heads, so all we saw was boots and wheels! After the whole thing was over, when we were eventually given the order to march off, I wondered if I could actually get my legs to move again. When we got back to our barracks, in the afternoon, we were all so tired and cold all we wanted to do was fall into bed!

I was 17 and watched it on TV with my parents and grandparents. Dad had just retired from the RAF and Grandpa had been in the Merchant Navy during the war so the mood was a mixture of sorrow and pride.

I have found myself thinking of all my relatives who are no longer with us this week.

I find it hard to believe that Churchill was my age during the war years. That thought crossed my mind as I was watching an item about him early this morning as I lazed in bed with a mug of tea. I grumble if I have to face a supermarket shop on a cold and windy day. How on earth did someone who wasn't always in the best of health and suffered from depression achieve so much?

Our leading politicians tend to be so much younger these days and are so full of vitality they are often seen bouncing around like Tigger but I doubt any of them would have the ability to lead and inspire through such dangerous times.

Churchill was a man of his time. Thank God.

I was 21. Like you Merlot I came from a forces family. My DF had just retired from the army, my grandfather served in both world wars and several uncles were also professional soldiers.

As I was born and my family lived in south London during WW2 they had suffered under the worst of the bombing . My grandmother's house was destroyed by bombs in 1940. They all had a tremendous admiration for Churchill. I was just conscious that the day was a great event in history and I wanted to be part of it.

Greyduster I had forgotten how freezing cold it was. I have a feeling that my sisters and I took a couple of flasks with hot drinks. I remember mow that another reason we raced back to Waterloo so fast after the cortege left for Tower Pier was because we were so cold and wanted to get on the train and feel warm!

I was 17 and a student. My mother and I both went to the lying in state. It seemed to be something that was historically important.

I would have thought that he did write his own speeches Tegan after all he did get the Nobel Prize for literature. What he didn't always do was record them himself. I've forgotten the actor who did some of them - I know he was very famous as a radio actor.

I was 16 and at boarding school. I remember it well same way as I remember Kennedy's assasination. I had visited Parliament a couple of years before and had seen Churchill from the 'Visitor's Gallery' wheeled into the House which made quite an impression. Th progression down the Thames and then by train was very moving. We will not see the like again.

I was 22 when Churchill died and althou

Seemed to have a blip there!!! As I was saying. I was 22 when Churchill died, and although I acknowledge that he was a great wartime leader, his treatment of the men of Bomber Command after the war was over was nothing short of cowardly and cruel. The sanctioning of the bombing of Dresden was at Churchill's command, on, apparently the insistance of Stalin. (I wonder why?) The betrayal of these brave young men has always tarnished Churchill for me as my father was one of the 55.750 young men who lost their lives. So, yes to Winson with reservation.

niggly, There's no doubt that Churchill was flawed in some of his judgement. I too despair at the way Bomber Command was treated and the vilification of 'Bomber Harris'. The war would not have been won without huge sacrifices made by all the services and civilians who were involved. My father flew in Coastal Command and was involved in a dangerous mission to Murmansk that few people know about. Fighter Command were quite rightly lauded for their courage and sacrifice but Bomber Command should never have been ignored.

I watched the Jeremy Paxman programme about Churchill especially the bit about the dockers being paid to lower the jibs on the cranes as the coffin was borne along the Thames. The ex docker interviewed said that although he was moved, they all disliked/hated Churchill as he had no time for the working classes.

I wish somebody had pointed out to him that if it hadn't been for Churchill he might have been living in a country where he could never have expressed those views - if he survived at all.

merlotChurchill's home politics did little for the working classes. He was the right leader at the right time for WW2 but he was not a leader for the whole of the people of the UK. I think it is right to raise leader's weaknesses as well as their strengths as that is how we can learn from the past. I think it is wrong to 'idolise' leaders ..better to know them warts and all! It should not prevent us celebrating his major contribution to the nation but don't gloss over his faults.

I don't think anybody's doing any glossing, Penstemmon.

I think all the posts on here have been true to the facts.

Thanks melogran for your sympathetic words. My FIL was in Costal command and I know that they had a pretty hairy time. Of course during the war Churchill was an inspiration, and I'm certainly not denying that, but after the war, let's just say political expediency was very hard for the thousands of people like my mother who, it would appear, had firstly married a hero, who had overnight turned into a murderer. The monument in London is great, but for my family and many like us it is 60 years to late.
Of course Fighter Command were fantastically brave and deserved every accolade, but seeing my mother's tears (as if she hadn't shed enough) in the decades that followed the war as we had to listen in silence to the denigration of our airmen, never mind no medal, no monument, was at times very hard. I have (finally!) visited my father's grave in Holland where he lies with his companions in a Protestant graveyard in a small town in Den Hout. The care and reference shown by the local Dutch population is both humbling and almost overwhelming. They all, to this day,including young people, regard all the fallen airmen as saviours and heroes, and simply couldnot understand our attitude to them over all these years.

I have never seen Churchill as winning the war as many in the media have said this week. The war was won by people like the young airmen (barely out of childhood) who took to the skies to defend the coasts, knowing that their life expectancy could be counted in weeks. We can only applaud them and remember them with gratitude.

Amen to that mishap! I think Churchill gave people the will to win and to not to surrender to what was a terrible evil, and from that perspective a less belligerent attitude might well have led to capitulation and all the horrors that would have entailed. From that stance I certainly applaud him and his resolute determination, as Nazi Germany had to be, awful as it sounds, beaten never to rise again. One of our Dutch friends husband is German, and he wouldn't come with her to meet me as he feels so guilty and ashamed. I was actually quite upset that he felt like this as for certain his parents would have been children at the time, so how on earth could I attribute blame to someone who wasn't even born and whose parents were tiny children?! I don't feel any animosity towards the pilot who shot them down who also lost his life a few weeks later. Just a complete waste of young lives. But my own countrymen?!!!!

iainthepict.blogspot.co.uk/2011/02/bloody-friday-battle-of-george-square.html

not often mentioned in the press.

As a foreigner in the UK, I'd only heard how Churchill was such a great hero. But later, my next door neighbour was ex bomber command, and his wife always said he was never the same after the war- and she had some rather harsh words for Churchill. so I decided to study his life and was amazed at what I discovered. He was such an opportunist, changing party several times to be elected. He was strongly advised not to undertake the crossing to France due to severe weather warnings- but he had scant respect for the lives of his soldiers and decided to take a MASSIVE gamble with their lives. He was hugely fortunate the weather forecast did't materialise- and the soldiers were even more fortunate in this matter. It could so so easily have turned into one of the worst and bloodiest disasters in history. It didn't- and he became such a hero.

He was famous for his love of gambling ever since he was young, and lost huge sums on the stock market.

I cannot admire the man, he gave rousing speeches that!s it. He was selfish, arrogant , self serving, had no problem in sending the army to South Wales to control the starving miners , he had no empathy for the worker, the poor , he said the answer to a long life was a cigar, brandy and a sleep in the afternoon , when it came to crossing the floor , any party if he could benefit personally, he was without honour

But if he hadn't been a charismatic and inspiring leader in wartime we would have been invaded and defeated by the Nazis - and think what that would have meant.

Great leaders usually deeply complex and flawed individuals, especially in wartime It seems to go with the territory. Think Lloyd George and de Gaulle.

Well said FlicketyB

Great leaders are always flawed, or so it seems to me. I didn't live through the Churchill period but my grandparents and parents did. I'm relieved that they were balanced and interesting when they talked about Churchill.

I agree he was the right leader at the right time. He has been greatly honoured as a result of his leadership during WW2.

This has overshadowed the less 'heroic' aspects of his career. He did suffer from terrible depression and I am sure this illness impacted on his working life.

I think you're right, Churchill was the right man for that particular time (cometh the hour cometh the man) and he did suffer from 'Black Dog'. I guess after the war the politics of the post war period were very complex and attitudes had to be adopted for the greater good as I find it hard to believe that deep in Churchill's mind that he was happy in the way B.C was treated and regarded after the war, but I guess it was politically expedient at the time, so is best left at that.