Two great men

This coming Friday will see the funeral and memorial service for Henry McCreath in Berwick-upon-Tweed. This coming Friday is also the 50th anniversary of the funeral of Winston Churchill.
I make no apology for mentioning them in a blog about rural matters.
Henry McCreath was born in June 1915 in Berwick.

Most of his career was in the grain trade- early on in the family grain business and, after the war, in the same business that he resurrected with his brother Geoff (another great man) who was my father-in-law (H.G.McCreath & Co). He had a distinguished career being well known to farmers in the Borders and Northumberland, being President of the UK Agricultural Supply Trade Association in 1972/3, being a J.P. and chairman of the bench and finally being given honorary Freedom of Berwick at the age of 96, three years ago.
He was a man of great determination which not only served him well in business but also in his greatest challenge; surviving the Japanese Prisoner of War Camps in Changi and along the Burma/Siam railway and the river Kwai. He was taken prisoner only a week after arriving in Singapore as a Captain in the 9th Northumberland Fusiliers yet throughout his incarceration was committed to the men who served with him.
For many years the only people with whom he could talk about his horrendous experiences were the others who knew what it was like- the members of his local FEPoW (Far East Prisoners of War) group for example. I suspect that farmers too were good to deal with in that respect- straightforward, no-nonsense and not too obviously emotional. Farming is a fairly solitary occupation after all.
I was at school near Westerham in Kent where Winston Churchill lived for the last few years of his life near his beloved Chartwell.

I remember, as a young boy, going to wave up at his upstairs window at which he appeared on his 90th birthday. I remember too the activity surrounding the date of his death, the church service in the local church and then the pageantry of his funeral.
In some ways flawed, in others inspirational, he too will be associated with the 2nd World War. Like Henry he too appreciated the countryside whether it was portraying it in his painting or encouraging the farmers and Land Girls in their wartime production.
So it is time to remember two great men; leaders in peacetime and in war whose funerals coincide 50 years apart.