(One of a series of weekday posts on the life of Winston S. Churchill.)
Historians continue to discuss the meeting of Churchill and President Roosevelt at Placentia Bay, Newfoundland in August, 1941. This BBC page has some information about their meeting.
But we’ll not be discussing their meeting today. Instead we’ll take a look at what Scotland Yard’s Detective Inspector Walter Thompson had to say about his meeting with Roosevelt at Placentia Bay. Thompson tells us:
During the Atlantic Meeting of August 1941, I accompanied Mr. Churchill over to the [USS] Augusta, where he was to have dinner with President Roosevelt._________________________________________________
Talking to my opposite number Mike Reilly …, I expressed an ambition to meet Mr. Roosevelt. He said that he would arrange for me to be introduced to the President that evening.
We were on the way to arrange this when we met Mr. Churchill. I explained to him what we had in mind, and he replied, “Oh, no. I will perform that introduction myself.”
He turned round, led me into the cabin, and said to Mr. Roosevelt, “Inspector Thompson has guarded me faithfully for a period of nearly twenty years. It gives me great pleasure to present him to you.”
It was a proud moment.
The President talked for a few moments and as he said goodbye, added, “Look after the Prime Minister. He is one of the greatest men in the world.”
Thompson’s account of his meeting Roosevelt is found on pg. 102 of Beside the Bulldog: The Intimate Memoirs of Churchill’s Bodyguard, a reproduction in its entirety of Thompson’s Sixty Minutes with Winston Churchill, first published in 1953.
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