The Churchill Series – Feb. 7, 2007

(One of a series of weekday posts on the life of Winston S. Churchill.)

After his December 1941 visit to the White House for war planning sessions and a trip to Canada where he addressed that country’s Parliament, Churchill took a brief vacation in Florida. It was his only one of the war.

He stayed at an oceanfront house in Palm Beach. His bodyguard, Scotland Yard’s Detective Inspector Walter Thompson, tells us what happened one day when, in a light-hearted mode, Churchill went for a swim:

As he got ready a shout from the beach conveyed the information that a fifteen-foot shark had just swum to within a few yards of the shore, but that it was probably a harmless sand shark.

“I am not so sure about that ,” said Winston with a smile. “I want to see his identity card before I trust myself to him.”

As he sat down in the shallows by the water’s edge, he asked me to keep a sharp lookout.

“Let me know if that ‘inoffensive’ shark comes back,” he said.

But we saw no more of it, and when he left the water Mr. Churchill remarked, “My bulk must have frightened him away!”

Once again we see Churchill’s ability to poke fun at himself. You don’t find Hitler doing that.
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Walter Thompson, Beside the Bulldog: The Intimate Memoirs of Churchill’s Bodyguard. (p, 106)