The trouble with the Americans is that they are overpaid, oversexed and over here.
—British World War II complaint.
These feelings, increasingly rampant in the long lead up to D-day in June, 1944, are belied by the Cambridge American cemetery, which contains the headstones of more than 8500 Americans, who died in military operations out of the UK, including the Kennedy clan’s most promising son, Joseph.
Another WW2 asynchrony was Alan Turing, the father of computer science. As well as inventing the modern programmable electronic computer, he was the chief decipherer of the German “enigma machine”. His contributions saved many lives, and shortened the war. His persecution for homosexuality, with chemical sterilization, certainly shortened his life by suicide.
Churchill, Mary Ann’s subject of Cambridge, was another contradiction.
He aggressively warned of the rising threat of Nazi Germany, and became premier only after his fears had become realized. He was a resolutely firm leader in the face of danger, and would “never give in.” His memorable oratory and decisiveness saw Great Britain through its most tumultuous Wartime years, and soon after victory, he was rewarded by being ousted from power with his party in the election of 1945.
His literary genius was recognized by the Nobel prize in literature of 1953, and he was very quotable:
“Never before, in the history of mankind, have so few done so much for so many.”
“This is not the end, or the beginning of the end, but it is the end of the beginning.”
Winston Churchill spoke poetically, wrote poetically, and even penned a little bit of verse, however political:
Yet Father Neptune strove right well
To moderate this plague of Hell,
And thwart it in its course;
And though it passed the streak of brine,
And penetrated this thin line,
It came with broken force.
.
Mary Ann visited the British war Museum, the war room, and Chartwell, among other Churchillian shrines.
Churchill, the statesman, and Lord Byron, the romantic poet, shared at least one thing: Fame.
—Dr. C.
Journal Tales 