Layout 8 - Winston Churchill

Getting There:
“With Fond
Memories of
Commando”
They flew the most important person in
Britain across enemy-patrolled seas
and continents, but when they realized
they had become celebrities, they
separated for the good of the cause.
W I L L I A M V A N D E R K L O O T
My father met Winston Churchill in London in
1942. They were last together in New York in
1946. Quite a bit happened in between.
I first began to understand the stature of Winston
Churchill in 1963, when I was in a sixth grade history class.
Our assignment was to bring in something—an article, artifact
or photograph—that tied our family or community to
World War II.
All I knew was that my father was a pilot during the
war—but like many of his generation, he spoke very little
about his experiences. My idea was to bring in his leather
flight jacket or his logbook. My father was out of town, but
my mother had a better idea. She handed me an inscribed
photograph that had been presented to my father, and suggested
I bring that to class instead.
The next day, our classroom was full of wartime artifacts.
One student had a Japanese flag, another his dad’s
helmet, and someone even brought a bayonet. Our
teacher walked around the class and looked at each
student’s item. When she came to me, she picked up the >>
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Mr. VanDerKloot (billvdk@gmail.com), the son of Churchill’s wartime
pilot, is the Peabody Award-winning producer of documentaries and children’s
programming. He is based in Atlanta, where he spoke on this
subject to the Churchill Society of Georgia.
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