HEROES: Old Friend

Bulldog head set squarely on top of wattled neck and stooped shoulders, massive gold watch chain spread across massive middle, Sir Winston Churchill, 84, came haltingly down the ramp from Columbine III one evening last week at the Military Air Transport Service terminal in Washington. At the bottom of the steps President Eisenhower watched solicitously as he waited for his visitor. Then, with Churchill triumphant, Eisenhower stepped forward and thrust out his hand. “Hello, my friend,” he said. “Glad to see you back again.” Churchill, noticeably composing himself, replied: “I am indeed glad to see you.”

For the newsreel cameras he put on a pair of black-rimmed reading glasses and read briefly from a small piece of paper covered with typed notes: “I always love coming to America. But,” he added with a wry poke at fast-traveling Field Marshal Viscount Montgomery’s gibes at U.S. leadership, “I shall not say—as most people who are traveling nowadays about the world seem to do—everything I think.” Taken off to the White House in the President’s bubbletop Lincoln, Winston Churchill rested, dined quietly with the Eisenhower family, turned in, at the President’s suggestion, at 9 p.m.

To the Farm. Next morning he had a long soak in a hot tub, did not leave his suite until noon. Then Eisenhower and Churchill drove out through the blazing red azaleas of the National Arboretum to Walter Reed Army Hospital to visit former Army Chief of Staff George Catlett Marshall, gravely ill following two strokes, and former Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. When Eisenhower pointed to an Eisenhower portrait of Churchill hanging on the wall of the presidential suite (occupied by Dulles), Old Painter Churchill said, “Very good, very good.” Dulles asked Churchill to autograph a one-volume abridged copy of Churchill’s war memoirs, “I would be honored,” and Churchill did so. At times during the afternoon at the hospital Eisenhower was plainly choked up.

On a happier mission, Eisenhower and Churchill whirred off by helicopter to the farm at Gettysburg next afternoon, rode around in Eisenhower’s electric golf cart, Churchill wearing a ten-gallon hat, inspecting Eisenhower’s butterfat Black Angus cattle. They sat on the glassed-in sun porch discussing the famous battle. Then Eisenhower took Churchill hedgehopping in the helicopter along Lee’s line of advance down the Cashtown Road, along the left flank of Pickett’s charge, down the Union position from Cemetery Hill to Round Top. Churchill, old Civil War buff, discussed divisions and division commanders with sure style.

To the Queen. That evening, back in Washington, at a stag dinner in the green-and-gold White House state dining room, the President of the U.S. moved the U.S.’s welcome of Sir Winston Churchill to a high point. Said President Eisenhower, as he raised a champagne goblet in a toast to Queen Elizabeth: “Here is a man who makes on all who meet him an impression that is unforgettable. Now, for me, I met him in this house—and this was something for a newly commissioned brigadier. In the same room that he is now occupying is where I met him.”

Sir Winston’s eyes gleamed with delight, and it was then, belying his halting walk, belying his halting talk, that he threw forth a deep-felt proposal, on which he had often spoken and eloquently written. Said he:

“It resounds in my mind, a precious and hopeful thought . . . the Union of the English-Speaking Peoples.

“I earnestly hope that an effort will be made, a fresh and further effort forward, to link us together. Because it is really of the utmost importance that we, who think so much alike . . . should see clearly before us the plain road onwards through the future.”

Next day, rising again at noon, Churchill walked onto the White House steps for his farewells, was whisked away to the British embassy, where he co-hosted (with British Ambassador Sir Harold Caccia) an informal dinner in the President’s honor. With Old Friend Barney Baruch, 88, he set out in President Eisenhower’s plane for New York, weekended quietly at Baruch’s home; then, fingers held high in his famous V sign, he headed back home to London.