March 22, 2015

Finest Hour 127, Summer 2005

Page 16


Many years ago I came into possession of To War with Whitaker, the diaries of the Countess of Ranfurly, which covered 1939-45. “Whitaker” was the body servant of her husband who had, on the outbreak of war in 1939, being a 2nd Lt. member of the Territorial Army’s “Notts Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry” (a cavalry unit), been mobilized. In a manner similar to 1914, the horsed unit was quickly shipped to Palestine, where it was thought to be more useful than in the European theater.

The energetic Countess took immediate action to be reunited with her quite recently wedded husband, as she wrote in her diary. By 16 May 1940, she had found her way to Palestine, where her husband’s regiment was stationed, and she had taken on a secretarial job with the Palestine branch of the Red Crescent, the Islamic equivalent of the Red Cross. Germany had invaded the low countries, and she, like all of us throughout the Empire, were shocked to learn that our British Expeditionary Force, along with the French army, was being forced into retreat by an apparently unstoppable Wehrmacht. Yet just a day or so before, we had learned with sure relief that Churchill had replaced Chamberlain as Prime Minister.

The Countess’s reaction, in her diary for May 20th, was the same as I remember among us far-away Britishers on India’s Northwest Frontier. She wrote:

“Winston Churchill, now Prime Minister, has made another broadcast. It gave us a clear understanding of the gravity of the hour and of his absolute belief in the British people—that we will never surrender. His news was petrifying but I felt braver for his words.

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“Whitaker came up to the bungalow. He, too, had taken courage from Mr Churchill. We had a chat before his bath and he looked over the top of his spectacles and said, ‘My Lady, the likes of me believe we will win this war, somehow, someday. I think it would help all our “hesprits du corpseses” if you and his Lordship gave a Ball in this bungalow, just like they did before Waterloo.’ I agreed. When he’d gone back to camp I locked the doors, pulled the curtains and wept until I fell asleep.”

I don’t remember our “weeping,” but, for sure—and like Whitaker—Churchill’s words inspired us all. They gave impetus to a determination to go ahead and “win one”—not for the Gipper, perhaps, but certainly for all that was right and decent.

—Bob Dales, Santa Fe, New Mexico (who wrote of his India experiences in Finest Hour 100).

Rev. R. E. Knodel, Jr. asks us to reference his favorite Churchill quotation, on the “Boneless Wonder.” This was said about Prime Minister Ramsey MacDonald in the House of Commons on 28 Janurary 1931: “I remember when I was a child, being taken to the celebrated Barnum’s circus, which contained an exhibition of freaks and monstrosities, but the exhibit…which I most desired to see was the one described as ‘The Boneless Wonder.’ My parents judged that that spectacle would be too revolting and demoralising for my youthful eyes, and I have waited fifty years to see the boneless wonder sitting on the Treasury Bench.”

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