In the spring of 1916, the young French officer Charles de Gaulle was captured at Verdun. The French demanded from the British a diversionary offensive to prevent the entire French army from collapsing. Most British troops were not yet trained for such an effort. Nonetheless, they opened an offensive on the Somme. There, the young British officer, Harold Macmillan, was almost fatally wounded.
Twenty-seven years later, the Anglo-Americans intrigued against that same de Gaulle in North Africa, and he intrigued back against the same. Churchill sent that same Macmillan from London to help resolve the dispute. De Gaulle survived as Free French leader, partly as a result of Macmillan’s diplomatic skills.
Twenty years after that, the two men were heads of their countries’ governments. Macmillan applied for membership of an international union which the other dominated. Membership was refused.
Beginning as unknown participants in great events, steadily moving over many years to the centre of them, the lives of these two intertwined for half a century.
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