When Sir Winston Churchill stepped aboard the Stratocruiser ‘Canopus' in London on December 1, 1953 for the historic ‘Big Three' meeting in Bermuda, it was with cries of ‘Bon Voyage' from all parties in the House of Commons ringing in his ears.

Working up until one hour before departure at 11.37 p.m., the British Prime Minister had successfully side-stepped giving a definitive answer to a Socialist question on whether he would discuss Russia's possession of the hydrogen bomb with President Eisenhower.

“Many of these ideas are already current in the world, and on the other side of the ocean,” he said.

Taking off late from London with Captain James Percy at the controls, ‘Canopus' began its second VIP journey in a week to Bermuda (the first being to bring the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh here at the start of their Commonwealth tour) with a first stop in Shannon, Ireland to refuel and repair a leaky door. Thereafter the Prime Minister slept in one of the specially-installed bunks as the four-engined, double-decker aircraft droned through the darkness to Gander, Newfoundland for another refuelling stop prior to the final leg.

Meanwhile, on the Island that merits a mere mid-Atlantic dot on world maps, the Governor, Sir Alexander Hood, was exhorting Bermudians to behave themselves and put up with the inevitable inconveniences security and other arrangements would place upon them as the world tuned in.

“These three great men and their assistants come here to attempt to recreate a world fit for the ordinary decent citizens to live in,” he said. “I am sure you will leave them to their task, untroubled and in peace. Our own lives may be upset by the strains upon our resources (but) these are small things compared to the honour of having Bermuda selected for this meeting. The eyes and ears of the whole world will be straining towards Bermuda.”

Meanwhile, American servicemen were straining on the parade ground to understand the barrack-square bark of British Army Captain J. Neill, guard commander of the 1st Battalion, Royal Welch Fusiliers, who was charged with rehearsing a group of US Marines, Navy and Air Force personnel as well as his own regiment for President Eisenhower's welcoming reception at the airport. In the end, American officers were drafted in to translate to their carbine-toting countrymen what “slope arms” and “stand at ease” meant in their own parlance.

On Front Street, the Legislative Council was galvanised into passing an eleventh-hour ‘resolve' for ?19,750.9s.3d. to meet Bermuda's expenses for the Big Three conference - ?12,000 for the current event and ?7,677 to repay the Castle Harbour hotel and others following postponement of the originally scheduled July conference due to Churchill's illness.

At 1.31 p.m. on December 2, ‘Canopus', with its exalted human cargo, touched down at the Civil Air Terminal, rolling to a halt with Sir Winston clearly visible peering through a window. Just two days into his 79th birthday, the rotund, grey-suited figure emerged smiling, cane in hand, but minus the trademark cigar. Ranged before him on the blustery tarmac were the plumed Governor and Lady Hood, an honour guard of the Fusiliers, a phalanx of dignitaries, a copy-hungry international Press corps, dozens of US servicemen and Police on security detail, and 600 wildly cheering citizens.

Doffing his Homburg to Sir Alexander Hood, Churchill proceeded to inspect the puttee-legged, khaki-clad British military honour guard, some of whose members represented army pioneers in the days when weapons of mass destruction meant pickaxes, shovels and axes.

In their distinctive white aprons and carrying such tools on their shoulders, these Fusiliers added a distinctive and unique touch.

Not for the first time on this trip, their mascot, a magnificent, long-horned goat named Billy, took precedence in the Prime Minister's affections. Discovered during inspection of the British battalion, Churchill was instantly attracted to the hairy quadruped, which he beamingly patted before moving on to the well-dressed humans whose ranks were so swelled that Parliament could not raise a quorum and adjourned.

Further inland, the Devonshire Post Office wasn't having a good day either, thanks to the untimely arrival of a Gas and Utility Company truck driven by Wilbur Smith, which made history of its verandah and nearly did the same to little Susan Thompson.

Having worked his way through the dignitaries, the media savvy Churchill approached the motley tribe of scribes and snappers, telling them he was “glad to be back in Bermuda again” before adroitly introducing his sartorially splendid Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, and his eponymous black hat. Eden prophesied that “the work we are going to be doing here will be of service not only to our country but to the peace of the world”, following which Churchill provided a series of classic photo op gestures before the duo zoomed off to the Mid Ocean Club to settle in.

At the ultra-exclusive Tucker's Town venue that would be the headquarters of the Big Three for the duration of their stay, all was in readiness. Churchill's suite included a very small living room, dining room and twin-bedded room with shortwave receiver. Laniel's suite was of similar size, while Eisenhower's was considerably larger. Everywhere, flower arrangements had been executed by the Garden Club, while the kitchen was on 24-hour duty to prepare anything from caviar to baked beans.

Security was so tight that more than one intrepid photographer and sightseer was temporarily arrested until they could talk their way and film to freedom.

On the first day, while Sir Winston lunched and took his afternoon nap, the British delegation, including his son-in-law cum private secretary Christopher Soames, was hard at work preparing the summit's order of business.

En route was the Premier of France, Joseph Laniel, winging his bumpy way to the Island on an Air France constellation, accompanied by Foreign Minister Georges Bidault; a retinue of 25 experts and advisers; and a list of near-ultimatums. Among other things the French delegation would insist that: 1. The British should join the European Defence Community. 2. The US would give written or oral assurance to keep a minimum number of American divisions in Europe. 3. The Soviet proposal of a four-power conference would be sincerely accepted. 4. There would be no envisaging of a definitive plan for carrying on the war in Indo China for a protracted period. 5. After peace negotiations over Korea, a conference which included Red China would be called to settle all Far East problems.

When Laniel's blue and silver aircraft touched down at 11.31 a.m. on December 3, Sir Winston and Anthony Eden were on hand to greet him - along with the Governor, the usual grocery list of dignitaries and officials, the Royal Welch Fusiliers honour guard, and another flock of curious citizens. Both the overcoated Laniel and Foreign Minister Bidault eschewed the waiting microphone, although it was reported that the French Prime Minister had a prepared statement in his pocket “but was not given a chance to read it”.

Before the conference began on December 4, Laniel, Bidault and his wife, and senior members of the French delegation went sightseeing, with resident artist Antoine Verpilleux as their interpreter. Highlights included Laniel slipping on the matting leading to the Crystal Caves, and the Aquarium, which the Bidaults revisited later.

Just after noon the same day, ‘Columbine', the aircraft carrying President Eisenhower, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, and a very large retinue, drew up to the terminal at 12.19 p.m. to a much grander ceremony, as befits a Head of State.

Both Churchill and Laniel were on hand to greet the US President, as well as the Governor, the usual ‘A' list of dignitaries and officials, and a greatly augmented military presence. In addition to the Royal Welch Fusiliers and Royal Navy sailors, there were representatives of the US Marines, Navy and Air Force, an honour guard of US Air Police, and a colour party carrying the US and Presidential flags.

Addressing the assembled company, Eisenhower said it was “a very great privilege to meet on this beautiful spot among old friends”, and thanked the crowd for the cordiality of his welcome.

“I trust and know that our conversations here will result in better understanding among the people involved and, I sincerely hope, with mutual benefit to our respective countries,” he said.

Among those cheering her President on was fellow American and 23-year-old polio victim Colleen Moore, whose wall-top perch on her second airport visit of the week allowed her to see the major players close-up.

Once back at the Mid Ocean Club, the Big Three, sitting in vintage wicker armchairs, exuded well-practiced bonhomie, providing the Press with a 20-minute feast of photographs, small talk and jocular quips. Churchill, waving a six-inch cigar and giving his famous “V for Victory” sign, wanted to see a movie taken of the photographers, while Eisenhower bemoaned forgetting his camera, and Laniel's silence was attributed to his lack of fluency in English.

With the US President elected chairman of the summit's first meeting, the trio got down to serious business for the rest of December 4 - so serious, in fact, that they had little time to change into formal gear, and arrived late at Government House for a banquet attended by “prominent Bermudian legislators” who were themselves fresh from weighty deliberations over whether or not to approve payment of ?625 for a car already purchased by the Trade Development Board for the original postponed summer summit.

If the Government House menu was a model of diplomacy dining - it included filet of English sole tout Paris, new (as opposed to old) green peas ? la fran?aise, salad Churchill and baked Alaska - the guest list was more an early case of ‘Feed the Goat'. While ladies were excluded, Billy the Goat made a welcome appearance in the dining room “to the delight of all present”.

Elsewhere, delight was not what Bermuda Militiaman, Private S. Wilson, experienced when guard commander Captain D.H. Burns put in an unwelcome appearance on the Mid Ocean Club clifftops and discovered the soldier fast asleep. For his somnolent twist to the term ‘on the rocks', the soldier's wake-up call was 14 days in the local forces' jail.

On December 5, machines at the Bermuda Press Ltd. ran hot overprinting two denominations of commemorative postage stamps while Laniel took to his bed with a chill. Eden and Dulles went swimming in the morning. In the afternoon, while the British, French and American Foreign Ministers prepared a final reply to Russia's offer of a Big Four conference in Berlin, Churchill and Eisenhower met to discuss tactics for such a meeting, relating their discussions directly to the future of the projected but still-faltering European Army plan.

“There is no doubt in diplomatic quarters at the Castle Harbour Hotel (where all but the top echelon of the Big Three conference were staying) that Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov would attack the proposed rearmament of Western Germany within the European Defence Community in the opening stages of the Big Four Ministers meeting,” the Press reported.

Arriving from Paris on December 5 was burly Lord Ismay, Secretary General of NATO, who declared that he was merely an observer at the Big Three Conference, with no powers to commit the 11 nations not represented in Bermuda to anything. Advising the leaders on Western defence matters was his realm.

On December 6, Churchill spent the morning attending to State papers while the protestant Eisenhower went to church at the US Base chapel and the Roman Catholic Bidault followed suit at St. Theresa's.

Hardly had the service there ended than he was assailed by reporters demanding news of his leader's health. Despite saying he was “very much better”, a French spokesman later announced that the ailing Laniel would not be well enough to attend the next day's meetings. In France, Madame Laniel cancelled her proposed flight to Bermuda in light of other reports that termed her husband's condition “excellent”.

Later still, a French source admitted that the French premier was seriously ill with “incipient pneumonia” and too weak to actively participate in the summit conference, although he was instructing Bidault and the French delegation from beneath the percales. So, while physicians Lord Moran and Bermudian Dr. H.C. Curtis kept an eye on their famous patient, the Big Three became the Big Two, who spent the Sabbath afternoon getting down to hard military facts on the Western defence of Europe against potential Communist aggression preparatory to an imminent NATO council meeting in Paris. Atomic weapons, the economics of European armament production, and the size of American forces in Europe was at the crux of their discussions.

Despite the new responsibilities thrown on the French Foreign Minister by Laniel's indisposition, word leaked out that Bidault was desperately seeking spare time to pursue his chief interest: mushrooms, and had called for literature on the 365 fungoid varieties cultivated in Bermuda.

Writing from Cherry Hill Park in Paget, French-born Susie Kerley fretted in a Letter to the Editor that the vanquished of the Second World War (Japan, Italy and Germany) were now producing goods “full scale again”, and she wondered if France would be “exterminated again”. In response to a Bermuda shop assistant's insensitive query, ‘What have the French done?' Ms Kerley cited historical facts from both World Wars, and speculated that if every Englishman became a Francophile “perhaps we might keep the peace a little longer”.

With Eisenhower scheduled to depart for New York on December 8, where he would address the United Nations assembly, the ‘Big Three' raced to finish their deliberations in two hours. Later, when White House Press Secretary James Hagerty said he “presumed” that discussions on Far Eastern problems were over, he was challenged on how the three world powers could consider and dismiss them all in such a short time.

At 1.15 a.m. on December 8 the leaders issued a communiqu? reaffirming their joint unity and solidarity of purpose regarding the Free World. While not disclosing any new strategy in the cold war, they re-emphasised the established policy of “hoping to come to a peaceful solution of East-West problems through the strength of the free peoples”. If there were any new tactics, they would only emerge with time, and certainly not before a Note was submitted to the Soviets in response to their proposed Four Power German summit - rumoured elsewhere to take place in January, 1954.

Meanwhile, in the US, Senator Joseph McCarthy's attack on the policies of Eisenhower and Dulles convinced a large number of hitherto unworried Britons that the existing Anglo-American alliance was in danger on both sides of the Atlantic.

On December 8, the French delegation minus Laniel left for Paris. On December 9, while Churchill rode with his friend ‘Ike' to the airport, where another full ceremony awaited the departing US President and top members of his delegation, the French leader made an unannounced ambulance ride to the King Edward VII Memorial Hospital for X-rays.

Forty minutes after landing in the US, Eisenhower was at the United Nations proposing to create an international atomic energy agency under UN auspices, to which the world's powers would contribute their stockpiles of uranium and fissionable materials, thus making “peaceful power from atomic energy no dream of the future”. Elsewhere, “authoritative sources” hotly denied that Churchill had tried to talk the US President out of making the speech, and in Sweden Lady Churchill prepared to accept her husband's Nobel Prize for Literature, at the same time revealing he was writing another book which would “burst upon the world” before he retired. She received a telegram from her devoted ‘Winnie' wishing her good luck, sending her his love, and promising to keep his fingers crossed while she read the acceptance speech he had written.

Back in balmy Bermuda, Churchill was in excellent form and singing a very different tune at the Mid Ocean Club, where he was the guest of honour at the Speaker's Dinner. The rotund legend assured his wine-warmed audience that a British garrison would be re-established in Bermuda “within a few months” adding, with a twinkle in his eye, “if they can find accommodation”. He also mischievously suggested that the Island should become an annual or tri-annual meeting place for Commonwealth legislators, and praised Bermuda for its pivotal role in the outcome of the Second World War when, during an unannounced visit to the Island in January, 1942, he asked us to “make enormous concessions of its rights, habitats and balance of life in order to draw the United States into the life structure we then alone were holding aloft”. Put simply, he was saying ‘Thank You' for giving up what became the US Base lands.

Commemorative stamps were selling like hot cakes - so much so, in fact, that some sub post offices had run out in a matter of hours.

When Churchill arrived in Hamilton at 3.30 p.m. on December 9, an estimated 10,000 people filled the streets to see him inspect the local forces who had aided in security duties at the Mid Ocean Club. Union flags fluttered from the buildings and every conceivable vantage point, including rooftops and balconies, was dripping with ecstatic humanity. At 2.50 p.m., as they waited, a horror scene unfolded in the skies above the harbour. Two light seaplanes belonging to Bermuda Air Tours collided in mid-air, with one crashing into the sea, taking 23-year-old US Navy pilot Herbert Buswell with it. Fortunately, the ‘plane landed in shallow water close to the Paget shore, where well-known Bermudian spearfisherman Ross Doe was quickly on the scene in his speedboat. Diving fully clothed into the water, he successfully disentangled the unconscious pilot from the submerged cockpit, assisted by US Navy Lt. J.G. Lee, gardener Aimee Percque, and postman Earlston Tuzo. A passing nurse, Mrs. David Gamble, gave first aid and artificial respiration until the ambulance arrived.

Meanwhile, the Hamilton crowd, high on the news of the British garrison's return, gave Churchill a welcome so tumultuous it brought tears to his eyes. That night, the popular Prime Minister and the recovering Laniel left together on ‘Canopus', with the cheers of an estimated 1000 rain-soaked citizens ringing in his ears.

“Be sure to keep a cheer for the British garrison when it returns,” the great man advised at the end of a short speech in which he thanked the Governor and citizenry for its kindness.

“We have enjoyed our visit to these beautiful Islands, and I trust that our work here will not go unrewarded. Thank you very much indeed. Good luck Bermuda.”

So saying, Churchill prepared to mount the aircraft steps, but not before one last and very personal farewell to his favourite friend, Billy. Held by an NCO, and somewhat troubled by the powerful lights and popping flash bulbs, the rain-dappled goat soon calmed to the familiar stroking of the hand that had guided Britain so expertly in war and peace. Then, watched by the Governor and his family, and the usual dollop of dignitaries, his rounded shoulders disappeared into the night. Awaiting him in Britain was “a heap of Parliamentary troubles” over a Socialist move to overthrow his Government on African issues and a Conservative Party revolt on Egyptian policy.