Churchill watches an artillery barrage near Florence, Italy, on August 20, 1944. The trip seemed to revive Churchill’s spirits. A few weeks before, he had complained to his wife, “I am an old and weary man. I feel exhausted.” He later wrote of a firefight he observed there between German and Allied forces: “this was the nearest I got to the enemy…and heard the most bullets in World War II. (IWM NA17912)