August 1, 2013

Finest Hour 122, Spring 2004

Page 21

BY DON PIEPER

One Member’s Impressions

HAMILTON, BERMUDA— You are familiar, of course, with the Triangle, the Onion and the Shorts. But, perhaps, you didn’t know about Bermuda’s whimsical slate roofs or pink sand, or the chap who introduced speakers during the Twentieth International Churchill Conference that Jan and I attended here.

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I’ll get back to the roofs and the sand later, but let me tell you first about the man in the long red coat who looked like a Queen’s footman. Introducing speakers may be full-time work for him; I have no idea. But he did the honors during the Churchill Conference. Whenever VIPs needed introducing, this is what he’d say: “Our host, honourable Premier, my Lords, my Ladies, honoured guests, ladies and gentlemen, pray silence for…” And then he would fill in the name of the speaker on whose behalf he prayed for silence.

The introduction was always the same, whether we were at the hilltop Government House, where a tree Churchill had planted in 1942 flourishes despite wounds inflicted by the recent hurricane; or under a tent on the driving range at the Mid Ocean Club, where Churchill, Eisenhower and French Premier Joseph Laniel held a summit in 1953; or in the ballroom of the pink Fairmont Hamilton Princess Hotel for a black tie dinner and a speech by the Right Honourable The Lord Heseltine, CH (Companion of Honour), Minister of Defence in Margaret Thatcher’s Cabinet, until he had a row with her and quit.

Lord Heseltine (first name Michael) also served as John Major’s Minister for the Environment, and his “green” credentials were evident in his speech. He scolded the Bush Administration for what he saw as indifference toward global warming. He also lamented what he described as an American willingness to reject international counsel on Iraq. There were, it needs to be said, some uncomfortable Americans in his audience, and it wasn’t just because they were wearing starched tuxedo shirts.

But, then, the discussions here fifty years earlier between wartime comrades Ike and Winston weren’t very smooth, either. The Prime Minister wanted warmer relations with the Soviet Union, but President Eisenhower wasn’t buying. Ike thought more of Nationalist China than did the British PM.

Heseltine wasn’t the only person of prominence. His Excellency the Governor, Sir John Vereker, and Lady Vereker, attended several sessions. And, of course, Lady Soames, Patron of The Churchill Centre, was a faithful participant. She displayed typical Churchill pluck by making all her requisite appearances, including the planting of another tree, notwithstanding a broken foot.

So, okay, I am being a bit of a snob, listing our notable conference colleagues, and describing the fusty protocol of some of the proceedings. I do need to make it clear that the big heroes for me were the Churchill scholars who delivered illuminating lectures and engaged in stimulating discussions.

Next year is D-Day’s 60th anniversary, and Churchill Centre members will gather at Portsmouth, England, where the invasion forces and equipment were marshaled. Again, top military and political historians will help us understand what happened. With the scholars as our guides, we will cross the Channel and visit the Normandy battlefields, then the site of the Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes and the Remagen Bridge where the U.S. First Army crossed the Rhine, and we wind up in Berlin.

Oh, yes, the roofs and the sand. Almost all buildings in Bermuda have stair-stepped roofs designed to drain rain into cisterns because fresh water supplies are short. The sand is no finer than the sand at Pismo Beach, California, but it is pinker. More conch in the mix!

Mr. Pieper is a CC member from Shell Beach, California. This article is published by kind permission of the author and the Five Cities Times-Press-Recorder, Arroyo Grande, California