My prayer partners last night at the Wednesday night service had just come back from a family trip to Disney World and the other Orlando area attractions. They were there with seemingly hundreds of British spring breakers, judging from the accents, they said.
That got us talking about London and my two years there when I met Noel (in 1986).
The photo is of 7 North Audley in London, which used to be the United States Navy Europe Headquarters until they moved fulltime to Naples, Italy, where our four star had alternated his time back in the day.
Our particular staff duties moved out into the countryside of England, to Molesworth, where they remain to this day.
But I was privileged to live in London when the HQ was still in central London, on Grosvenor Square right across from the old American Embassy (which also moved to a cheaper, less central part of London since then).
Historic places. 7 North Audley was Eisenhower's HQ during World War II. I believe much of the planning for the D-Day invasion happened right there (as well as in Churchill's wartime bunker nearby). The 24 hour Marine guards in the building used to say the sixth floor flat where the DCINC lived (he was NAVEUR's deputy, another four star) was haunted since the war. I think they liked the idea of a Gothic thriller story right in our own building!
The American embassy itself had an accessible roof where American ambassador Joseph Kennedy (the president's father) used to sit with his staff during/after bombing raids over London in WWII, surveying the damage. In a bio of Churchill's wife Clementine I read a couple of years ago, I confirmed the story that she would accompany him walking around London in the dark after a bombing raid, assessing the damage and comforting their people. It was, in so many ways, Britain's finest hour. They knew their cause was the right one and they loved their PM and his wife.
Fast forward to 1986 and I was riding a bike to work from my flat in Primrose Hill to 7 North Audley because the buses only ran once an hour at 5 AM and the Tube did not run at all until 6AM. I bought the bike the day I met Noel, it turns out. And I was so tired from my purchasing
adventure I nearly did not go to the Wakefield Cycle Passion Plays being presented at the church down the street from me that night. But I went and so did Noel. The rest is, as we say, history . . .
