BRIDGETOWN, Barbados – On June 4, 1940, Winston Churchill stood in the House of Commons and painted the picture of a country that would refuse to bow to the pressures of a German annihilator. In one of his three most celebrated speeches, “We Shall Fight on the Beaches”, the victories which he depicted were not from a standpoint of having the physical and numerical upper hand, but victories won on a sheer mental decision to reject defeat. Of young soldiers he said, “There never has been, I suppose, in all the world, in all the history of war, such an opportunity for youth. The Knights of the Round Table, the Crusaders, all fall back into the past – not only distant but prosaic; these young men, going forth every morn to guard their native land and all that we stand for, holding in their hands these instruments of colossal and shattering power, of whom it may be said that: Every morn brought forth a noble chance And every chance brought forth a noble knight”.
