London, London! June 2007 Part 4

Always having been fascinated by the whole WWII era, two of my 'must-sees' visiting London were the Churchill War Rooms and the Imperial War Museum. I spent hours between the two.

The Command Center for Churchill and the General Staff. The white phone at the far right is the direct line to Churchill.

The Churchill War Rooms, from the guidebook: During the dark days of World War II, Winston Churchill and his War Cabinet met in these War Rooms beneath the Government Treasury Chambers. They remain just as they were left in 1945 [with the addition of Madame Tussaud-type figures, as lifelike as can be dressed authentically in the uniforms of the day, putting pins in maps, talking on the phone...eerie].

Churchill's quarters in the bunker: his bed, and his desk.

I found this experience, of this visit, to be very emotional. These were the men who held Hitler at bay until America woke up and joined the war effort.

The Imperial War Museum, fittingly enough, is housed in part of the former Bethlehem Hospital, immortalized as...in the vernacular pronunciation...'Bedlam', the hospital for the insane.
These mammoth guns sit before the entrance. I always think of them as the lesser cousins of 'The Guns of Navarone'. Looking at the size of the people at the right, maybe these ARE the guns of Navarone.The smallest existing boat that evacuated soldiers from Dunkirk. The advancing German army was threatening 330,000 French and British soldiers trapped on the beaches.

Field Marshall Bernard Montgomery was the hero of El Alamein and Africa, as well as a continual thorn in Eisenhower's side. This is his personal tank, totally restored (of course).