Great Britain: Requiem for Greatness

(2 of 6)

Ahead of the gun carriage marched platoons from all the arms and services, their arms reversed. Here, also, were Lord Mountbatten, Chief of the Defense Staff, and the other service chiefs, followed by eight officers of the Queen's Royal Irish Hussars—Churchill's first regiment—bearing Sir Winston's medals. Behind the gun carriage strode the top-hatted men of the Churchill family, led by his son Randolph. In a carriage lent by the Queen were Lady Churchill and her two daughters Sarah and Mary. The march was accompanied by music of the Drum Horse and State Trumpeters in their velvet jockey caps and gold-laced jackets. Band after band—ten in all—appeared at appointed intervals in order to keep the pace steady and slow all down the long line of marchers.

Up Whitehall, past Nelson's monument in Trafalgar Square, by the National Gallery, where the flag hung at half-mast, and into the Strand moved the gun carriage, which had borne the regal corpses of Queen Victoria, Edward VII, George V and George VI. Along the way the pavements were thronged with silent watchers, and the white topees of Royal Marines dotted the route like snowdrops.

At Temple Bar, the boundary between Westminster and the City, the gun carriage entered the ancient section of London that had been heavily bombed by Nazi planes and was heartened on those long-ago, smoky, red-eyed mornings by the inspiring Churchill presence poking defiantly among the ruins. The cortege moved on through Fleet Street, home of London's press, and then up Ludgate Hill to the strains of Chopin's Funeral March.

Seated Kings. St. Paul's was meticulously packed with heads of state and government, with famous men and old colleagues of Churchill's. They came in powdered wigs and capes and frocks of office, in morning clothes sprayed with medals and sashes, set off by black ties and armbands. Here sat Charles de Gaulle and Dwight D. Eisenhower, Queen Juliana of The Netherlands and the Kings of Norway, Greece and Denmark. One hundred and thirteen na tions had been invited to send representatives to the funeral. Only one—Red China—refused. Unwatched and unheralded, Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip drove to St. Paul's by a circuitous route—leaving the panoply and glory of the day to Sir Winston. The Queen could scarcely help remembering how she first knew and admired the wartime Prime Minister when she was a girl, and how later, on her ascension to the throne, he guided her in her first steps in statecraft.

As Churchill's coffin was carried up the nave, the choir intoned I Am the Resurrection and the Life. There were no flowers, but many flags and banners from old campaigns. Between the bier and the altar rested Churchill's tokens of office: his black-draped sword, the great carved lion that is the Churchill family crest, sashes bearing the medals and honors of a lifetime of great achievement. The pallbearers—Churchill's old wartime colleagues and chiefs of staff—moved quietly to their seats.

As the regular, short Anglican funeral service proceeded, the first hymn to be sung was John Bunyan's

Who would true valour see,

Let him come hither;

One here will constant be,

Come wind, come weather . . .