14. Churchill left Washington on January 14, 1942
The entire White House staff gathered to bid Winston Churchill farewell on January 14. So did the President and a no doubt heavily relieved Eleanor Roosevelt. After three weeks of Churchillian behavior, she did not share her husband’s good opinion of the British Prime Minister. He hadn’t been gone a week when FDR had a cloakroom in the White House basement converted into a Map Room and communications center, along the lines of Churchill’s. The White House Map Room was a restricted area. Not even the Secret Service were allowed in. It was staffed by officers of the US Army and Navy, and the President visited it whenever he felt the whim to do so. He did so frequently. His long career as a stamp collector had made him a lover of maps, and he enjoyed the privacy of the room.
For the rest of the war, all communications between the White House and Churchill, Stalin, and Chiang Kai-Shek were filed in Roosevelt’s Map Room. It was staffed 24 hours per day. Situated near the elevator used by Roosevelt to move between the residence and his office, it was convenient for the President. It became his habit to visit the Map Room twice a day, in the morning on his way to work and in the evening before retiring. It was a habit he learned from Churchill and adopted wholeheartedly. During major military operations, he could visit the Map Room several times as the day unfolded, following the progress on maps provided to the President by the National Geographic Society. Meanwhile, Eleanor regained the use of the Monroe Room, and the rooms occupied by Churchill were aired out and thoroughly cleaned of the evidence of his ever-present cigars.
