Entertaining the troops with Field Marshal Montgomery.
50 years since his death at the age of 90, the stories of how the soldiers carrying his coffin nearly dropped him are coming out and every British politician concerned about their image instantly loves him.
As a student he was crap at most subjects, especially math but excelled in history and English composition. He was so bad at languages that he took a 2 hour Latin test and only filled in his name and the number of the first question. Who the fuck speaks Latin anyways .... besides Latin American and their pigs and they want the Falkland islands so they can fuck off .
A seven year-old slacker who loved playing with toy soldiers.
The head master at his boy's school said the 10 year-old Churchill could be trusted to do nothing and had no ambition ..... stoopid 10 year-old, that head master really called it.
He was raised with constant accusations of being slovenly and lazy, his father was one of his most harsh of critics:
"I am certain that if you cannot prevent yourself from leading the idle useless unprofitable life you have had during your schooldays & later months, you will become a mere social wastrel, one of the hundreds of public school failures, and you will degenerate into a shabby unhappy & futile existence."
You ain't never gonna amount to nuthin.
Maybe to please his father who suggested he join the military he took the entrance exam to get into Sandhurst military college and and failed, only after getting a tutor he barely got in the third time but only for the Calvary which had lower standards than the infantry, that is the opposite of the modern day military.
He graduated 20th out of a class of 130 so he was indeed a quick learner.
He never received his father's approval and after his father died it was as if he tried harder to gain that approval posthumously. The 20 year-old was becoming a man:
"Solitary trees, if they grow at all, grow strong; and a boy deprived of a father's care often develops, if he escapes the perils of youth, an independence and vigor of thought which may restore in after life the heavy loss of early days."
He saw combat on three continents, won four medals and an order, was mentioned in dispatches and wrote five books winning the Nobel Prize in Literature at the age of 80 ... what have you done?
Standing with a Tommy holding a Tommy gun.
Lincoln wishes he was Churchill cool.
No matter what you think of Churchill there is no denying that he was one of the greatest figures of the 20th century. While Hitler, his peer in Germany got called 'that little corporal' and will be thought of by history as a short dude like that other megalomaniac Napoleon, Hitler was just over 5 foot 8 inches tall while Churchill was 5 foot 6 inches, no one ever mentions that because Churchill was bigger than life for the right reasons.
Winston Churchill with little Kaiser Wilhelm II
Regarded as a glory seeker he was certainly brave, his criticism of the British high command in his early books meant that he was out of favour with General Kitchener and so while others may have gotten medals for bravery he did not, no wonder he told newspapers about his own exploits, the establishment was against him getting recognition, though he deserved it.
He believed he'd be kept safe for something big in the future, dying in battle was not on the cards for him. "I do not believe the Gods would create so potent a being as myself for so prosaic an ending."
Old Knudsen never liked Gandhi, sure he was great at the old peaceful protest thing and does a mean quote in Facebook memes but I've never liked him. Churchill had no love for him either and when Gandhi went on a hunger strike Churchill was all for letting him die. Keeping India British was very important to the British empire. He called Gandhi, " A seditious Middle Temple lawyer now posing as a fakir of a type well known in the East."
Today we are shocked that American sniper Chris Kyle referred to Iraqis as savages, Churchill said that the Zulus, Afghans and Dervishes were "savages and barbarous peoples."
If you go into a country as an oppressor yer not exactly going to see the people at their best. Gandhi knew how to brand himself and portray what the public wanted .... like most of the best leaders throughout history.
I like Ike and North korea liked Winnie's clothes.
Churchill was a 'if you are not with us you are against us' type and while Ireland remained neutral during WWII they weren't really neutral. I don't mean the IRA siding with the Nazis, I mean the Irish government letting the British and Americans use their air space and reporting on German ship movements off their coast. The Irish government could not bring themselves to publicly side with the British, not even against the evil Nazis. Churchill described Ireland as, "at war but skulking."
While some recent news stories had Churchill flirting with a conversion to Islam, that wasn't really an option. He did show an interest as he was a very curious person. "Moslems may show splendid qualities. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the Queen: all know how to die: but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it."
Churchill was raised Church of England which is the state religion of the UK. He admitted to praying during difficult times even though all his logic and reason saw it as kinda pointless if only to give him comfort and to collect his thoughts, he was more agnostic than anything.
"If you tried your best to live an honorable life and did your duty and were faithful to friends and not unkind to the weak and poor, it did not matter much what you believed or disbelieved."
In the first edition of his book The River War he denounced Islam as being dangerous and that
Mohammedanism was a militant and proselytizing faith that kept people in the stone age and enslaved women ... unlike Christianity of course which is the exact same. He must have changed his mind as he deleted that view of Islam from later editions.
Better memes than Gandhi.
A great man with many faults like anyone else, he overcame being written off as a child and being sickly and clumsy with a stammer. He rallied himself and the nation during low points, his dozens of quotes could sound like a self- help manual, "If you are going through Hell, keep going" he always seemed to spot the dangers in the world while others saw what they wanted to see instead of reality .... that made him unpopular as who wants the truth if it's harsh?
This beat is sick!
I dislike the fawning over him especially by right-wing politicians who aren't fit to tie his shoe laces. He was a political opportunist, while he may have been in the Conservative party and known as a Conservative they considered him a trouble maker and a wild card and kicked him out in 1904, he then became a Liberal MP. With David Lloyd George he reformed British society bringing in old age pensions, unemployment and sickness benefits that still exist today. These were to be paid for by taxing the wealthy.
"He knew that Britain was not just a place on the map but a force in the world, with a destiny to shape events and a duty to stand up for freedom".... David Cameron fat baby headed PM of Engerland.
Taxing the rich brought accusations of being a socialist .... sound familiar America? Churchill sought to make the difference of Liberalism and Socialism in his speeches: "Liberalism seeks to raise up poverty. Socialism would destroy private property; Liberalism would preserve private interests in the only way in which they can be safely and justly preserved, namely, by reconciling them with public right. Socialism would kill enterprise; Liberalism would rescue enterprise from the trammels of privilege and preference. Socialism assails the pre-eminence of the individual; Liberalism seeks, and shall seek more in the future, to build up a minimum standard for the mass. Socialism exalts the rule; Liberalism exalts the man. Socialism attacks capital; Liberalism attacks monopoly."
A heavey handed imperialist he did save the world. April 9 will be Winston Churchill Day, the anniversary of the 1963 ceremony in which President John F. Kennedy declared him an honourary U.S. citizen, only 6 other people have gotten that. While his mother was American he wasn't born in the US.
Hero or villain? That is a matter of perspective, to Old Knudsen he was a hero.
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