Churchill cried often in public

Churchill was a man of letter and a man of action.  Graduating from Sandhurst, he was a military man by trade and training.  During the WWI when he was released from the five-man War Council, he immediately resigned from Government and went to the Western Front to become a battalion commander with the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel.

Though a macho guy he might be, he cried in public on numerous occasions in his “long and not entirely uneventful” life. Here is one example.

When Churchill visited Paris on 11/10/1944 (after the liberation of Paris and before the end of the war), de Gaulle treated him with a splendid parade along Ave Champs-Elysees from Place de la Concorde to Arc de Triomphe.  They laid a wreath at the Arcde Triomphe, at the Clemenceau Statue, and at Foch's tomb.  The crowd chanted “Chur-chill!” and according to Eden, “not for one minute did Winston stop crying . . . he could have filled buckets.”

Janice once asked me how this “Victory Walk” compared with the victory parade for President Woodrow Wilson in December 1918.

There is no comparison.  There were about two million people (war time Paris population was only one million) came out to welcome President Wilson─“the  most massive display of acclamation and affection ever heaped upon a single human being.” As it was Americans who came to the rescue when England and France locked in a bloody stalemate with Germany from 1914 to 1917.