June 23, 2013

Finest Hour 137, Winter 2007-08

Page 47

Riddles, Mysteries, Enigmas – Valet Frank Sawyers

Q. Whatever happened to Winston Churchill’s loyal valet, Frank Sawyers, after he left Churchill’s service in 1947?

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A. This is of particular interest to us because our friend Michael Dobbs, author of four Churchill novels reviewed in past issues, wants to weave Sawyers into a new novel and has found his niece Doreen Jones in Kent. In August 2006 she wrote the Daily Mail: “Frank Sawyers was my fathers youngest brother. After he left Mr. Churchill’s service, he went to Rhodesia and was valet to the assistant Governor General. In the Fifties he was with Lord Astor at Hever Castle. Upon the death of Sir Winston in 1965 my uncle, then valet to Col. Leon Mandel in Chicago, was flown home for the funeral, together with General Eisenhower and Secretary of State Dean Rusk. When he retired, he returned to his home town of Carlisle (Cumberland) where he died in July 1972, aged 69. My uncle was one of the old school of employees and never told tales about the people he served.”

Q. How was British Petroleum booted from Iran, losing control over the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, and what was Churchill’s response to this loss? Can you incorporate into your answer the relationship between Churchill, Truman and Eisenhower that brought about a covert operation to overthrow the government of Iran in 1953? Could you expound upon Churchill’s role as leader or cohort in suing Iran, amassing a naval armada, requesting U.S. assistance in going to war against Iran, etc.?

A. That sounds like a term paper assignment, and from a fairly one-sided angle. We know nil about “suing” Iran, but the business about naval armadas and requesting U.S. aid is correct. Consult either of two books for further details, both by Martin Gilbert: Churchill: A Life (London, Heinemann, 1991), 895-, or Winston S. Churchill, vol. 8 “Never Despair” (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1988) starting at page 617-Check at any good library.

Before World War I, Churchill helped organize Anglo-Persian (later Anglo-Iranian) Oil Co. (AIOC) with the Iranians, to keep the Royal Navy supplied with oil after he had converted it from coal. AIOC was ejected by Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadeq in 1952. Kermit Roosevelt (1916-2000), grandson of Theodore, headed the CIA’s “Operation Ajax” to oust Mossadeq. In 1954 AIOC was restored to ownership but lost its monopoly. It later became British Petroleum (BP), which now runs adverts featuring people asking silly questions about alternative energy.

Churchill’s involvement with the leader he called “Mussy Duck” was peripheral, but he closely queried Kermit Roosevelt about the coup. From Boyle, ed., The Churchill-Eisenhower Correspondence (Chapel Hill; University of N.C. Press, 1991):

“Growing Iranian resentment against Britain reached a climax with the exile of the Shah and the coming to power of Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadeq, who in May 1952 nationalized the AIOC concession. Britain organized a boycott of Iranian oil and…British intelligence planned a covert operation to overthrow Mossadeq….The CIA favored cooperation with the British covert operation, but Truman and his secretary of state, Dean Acheson, sought a negotiated settlement, involving acquisition by American oil companies of part of the AIOC concession in Iran. This was unacceptable to Britain….Eisenhower increasingly viewed Mossadeq as a tool of radical elements dependent for support on the Iranian Tudeh (communist) party. He therefore gave his blessing to a covert operation…which was accomplished on 19 August 1953. The Shah was restored to power and an oil agreement was reached.”

Q. What is the truth behind the assertion (most recently in The Times of 22 March 2007) that Churchill was Jewish through his mother, “Jennie Jacobson Jerome…as was pointed out by Moshe Kohn in a 1993 article in the Jerusalem Post“}

A. David Watson wrote The Times four days later: “Jennie could trace her American roots back to around 1717, when Timothy Jerome, of Hugenot descent, emigrated to Meriden, Connecticut. Timothy Jerome’s male descendants, from whom Jennie and Sir Winston were descended, were (son) Samuel; (grandson) Aaron; (great grandson) Isaac; (great great grandson and Jennie’s father) Leonard Walter. All were Jeromes; none was registered as a Jacobson. The Old Testament names in the family are in keeping both with their French Calvinist antecedents and with the times and place in which they lived. See An Historic Record and Pictorial Description of the Town of Meriden, Connecticut, by C. Bancroft Gillespie (1906).”

FH 101 (51) says that in 1932, Dr. Otto C. Pickhardt issued a medical note that Churchill’s convalescence “necessitates the use of alcoholic spirits, especially at mealtimes,” specifying “250 cc per day as the minimum.” Was the “medical note” a prescription?

It was almost certainly a “dodge” to enable WSC’s use of his refreshment. If Dr. Pickhardt thought that WSC was a serious alcoholic, he theoretically might have prescribed alcohol to avoid the DTs (delirium tremens) of the chronic alcoholic who suddenly is removed from his or her usual alcoholic intake. I don’t believe that WSC was a chronic alcoholic in the clinical sense. He was a regular imbiber of a whiskey and soda, and he had champagne and other alcoholic beverages (brandy and port), mostly over meals or during a long smoke of his cigar. —JOHN H. MATHER MD