The recent passing of Queen Elizabeth II reminds us that the wartime generation has nearly vanished. We can glimpse successive photos of the future Queen from April and May 1945, the first showing her in olive dungarees, standing before one of the trucks she serviced as a military driver and mechanic. She appeared again days later at Buckingham Palace, smiling in her Auxiliary Territorial Service uniform as crowds cheered Germany’s surrender. The second image is perhaps more compelling, in that she is accompanied not only by her family, but also by Churchill.
It was a coming-of-age moment for young Elizabeth, as it was for her contemporaries, the younger Tommies who survived the final slog across northern Europe. In Churchill’s case, it seemed to those close to him a final triumphant coda. He was already five years past the life expectancy of most Englishmen, beset by periodic health problems, and far more exhausted than the public realized. Indeed, the Americans had buried Franklin D. Roosevelt just three weeks before Germany’s surrender. The stresses of war took a toll on both members of the Grand Alliance, yet neither Hitler nor the Grim Reaper had reckoned fully with Churchill’s stubbornness.1
Churchill shared in the jubilation, but he tempered it with the stark realities that still loomed. In the photo he seems slightly wary, and weary, standing with hands clasped behind his back as the king and queen wave to adoring crowds. In a broadcast to the British people that same afternoon, he cautioned that “we may allow ourselves a brief period of rejoicing,” as Japan, with “all her treachery and greed,” was yet to be defeated.This was undoubtedly true, but clearly the United States would carry most of the burden in the Pacific. Churchill’s primary concern lay, rather, with Stalin and the Soviet Union’s
