May 16, 2013

FINEST HOUR 140, AUTUMN 2008

BY EDMUND MURRAY IN 1992

Edmund Murray was Sir Winston’s bodyguard from 1950 until the end. His remembrances of their long friendship were recorded at the Ninth International Churchill Conference in Surrey, England on 13 June 1992, and may be read in full on our website.

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I escorted Sir Winston on his last visit to the House of Commons on Monday, 27 July 1964. His very first political speech had been made just along the road from where we live in Bath, at the American Museum, on 26 July 1897. He had been for sixty-seven years and a day actively engaged in politics.

On Saturday, 9 January 1965 he dined with Lady Churchill at Hyde Park Gate. He was very quiet during dinner, ate little and wanted neither brandy nor a cigar, which was most unusual. It was only in the early hours of the morning that he was persuaded to go to bed. He never got out of it again.

From Friday, 15 January, daily bulletins were issued by his doctors and suddenly the whole world became aware that the old warrior was fighting his last battle. I saw him as usual at about 8 a.m. on Saturday 23 January. He was lying on the small bed with his eyes closed and his hands crossed on his breast. He made no response when Howells, the male nurse, announced me, so I stepped forward and placed my right hand in his. It was immediately gripped firmly, and the blue tinge on his face began to disappear, to be replaced by a touch of the old pinkish colour.

The nurse saw this and hurried to present a glass of orange juice to the old man’s lips and he sipped from it several times. Howells assured me that was the very first nourishment that had passed those lips in four days. We and young Winston, who had witnessed the event from the open door, began to hope, and Winston and I had a whisky in the lounge: “He’ll do it on them yet again, Sergeant Murray, he’ll do it on them yet again,” he said.

But it was not to be and the very next day, that chill Sunday, 24 January 1965, at five minutes past eight in the morning, seventy years to the day his father, Lord Randolph, had passed on, Sir Winston Churchill, Knight of the Garter, Order of Merit, Companion of Honour, with so many more honours and decorations from the world, died. He was just over ninety years old.

That man had brought our country through the greatest struggle in its history. Though he did admit to me on several occasions the Shakespearean line that God had been on his side, his was the voice, the spirit, the courage and the determination that had brought Britain and Britons to the highest peak of glory they had ever known. He inspired men and women in this country, and in many other countries as well, so that from a balcony in Whitehall on 8 May 1945, the descendant of the First Duke of Marlborough, who had defeated the combined forces of the French and Bavarians at Blenheim in 1704, was able to stand in the presence of a multitude and with his colleagues at his side proclaim the end of the war in Europe: “God bless you all! This is your victory. Everyone, man or woman, has done their best.”

Ladies and gentleman, the Churchill I knew was the epitome of all that was ever good and fine in our island race, and he was always proud as well of his American heritage. Yes, he made mistakes, but then only those who do nothing do not. Always his aim was to make Britain great, and to join all European countries together as one in peace and freedom. One day we may possibly see the culmination of those efforts which he himself began at Zürich so long ago in 1946.

We all have a job to do and indeed the tools to do it are in your hands. Vivre à jamais dans l’esprit des gens, n’est-ce pas l’immortalité? [To live forever in the minds of men, is not that immortality?] There is the heritage he left us: la raison d’être of The Churchill Centre. May we all be worthy of his trust. 

 

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