Follow the leaders
LINDSAY SUTTON travels on a very personal Cold War mission to Fulton in the state of Missouri
IHAVE a very personal connection to Winston Churchill’s famous Iron Curtain speech in America.
Only once did my father relate his war-time experiences, and his own ‘Iron Curtain’ story. No glorification, no exaggeration, nothing withheld.
From his D-day landing to the liberation of a camp, this ‘ordinary Joe’, a tank commander with the Coldstream Guards, needed his son to know and to learn. And then the book was closed. He recalled how army leader Bernard Montgomery told his tank commanders in Northern Germany: “Gentlemen, I want you to get up to the port of Kiel, on the Baltic, as fast as you can. You will secure this area and stop our friends and allies, the Russians, from taking Denmark.”
The Cold War had begun. Almost exactly a year later – on March 5, 1946 – Churchill made his famous ‘Iron Curtain’ speech in the little university town of Fulton, Missouri. There he stood, in the mid-West of America, next to US President Harry Truman, who had encouraged his visit with a hand-written invitation.
This week marks the anniversary of that landmark speech. Yet still today, more than 70 years on, thousands of tourists – Americans and British alike – visit the USA’s National Churchill Museum, on the campus of Westminster College in Fulton, to see, hear and feel the impact of that visionary speech by the man deemed to be the UK’s ‘Greatest Briton.’
The speech focussed on the words: “From Stettin on the Baltic to Trieste on the Adriatic, an Iron Curtain has descended across the Continent.”
The 72-year-old leader, recently immortalised in the Darkest Hour movie – Gary Oldman won an Oscar and a BAFTA for portraying the wartime PM – alerted the world to the importance of deterrence against Russia and her expansionist policies, and called for a “special relationship” between the US and Britain to boldly combat this threat.
Such was the impact, worldwide, that Westminster College decided to open a museum in Churchill’s honour. It is a fine and thoughtprovoking museum. No true Brit could fail to be moved by what is on display, and to feel proud of the high regard in which Churchill is held by most Americans.
The museum in Fulton, which is two hours west of St Louis and the great Mississippi River, shows graphically what Churchill and the British people endured in war.
There’s the wreckage of the Blitz in London and all our major cities; the defiance when Britain stood alone against Nazi Germany; and the personal history of Churchill, warts and all.
His derring-do, youthful, military history in India, Khartoum and South Africa; his national stature as a young MP in Oldham and then Manchester; his political causes and catastophes before his great leadership opportunity of World War Two. Then, his ejection from office and his celebrated Cold War speech. It’s all there in all its glory.
Outside, there is a huge bronze statue of Churchill in typical pose, an English Garden and even a Christopher Wren-designed church – St Mary’s from bombed-out East London. It was rescued, dismantled and brought to America stone by stone, to be rebuilt as an active church at Westminster College.
Nearby, in the ‘Brick District’ is a characterful, brick-paved Main Street, with its restored theatre and welcoming foyer café, local shops, and the friendly Beks restaurant. Fulton is certainly a heart-warming experience for the thoughtful tourist.
It’s only a couple of hours from St Louis, with its famous 630ft high Gateway Arch on the mighty Mississippi, its splendid National Blues Museum, and its revived Loop District, where Chuck Berry played at the Blueberry Hill Club each month.
So many reasons to visit Missouri.