- Cigar sold in auction to anonymous buyer in Palm Beach, Florida on Wednesday
- British prime minister smoked it in Paris in 1947 trip to receive Medaille Militaire
- Airman who flew him home to Britain kept the cigar after it was snubbed out
A cigar half-smoked by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill has sold for just over $12,000 during an online auction.
An anonymous collector from Palm Beach, Florida won the Wednesday auction for the four-inch cigar, which the British prime minister smoked during a 1947 trip to Paris.
Boston-based RR Auction says Churchill smoked the cigar on May 11, 1947, at Le Bourget Airport.
The company says a British airman, Corporal William Alan Turner, kept the cigar after his crew flew Churchill and his wife to and from Paris.
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill is seen with his trademark cigar in 1939. A cigar he half-smoked in 1947 on a trip to receive France’s highest military honor has sold for $12,000
During the trip, two years after VE Day, Churchill went to the Palace des Invalides where he was awarded France’s highest military honor, the Medaille Militaire.
Included in the auction was a photo signed by the prime minister that shows him with the cigar in his hand at the airport.
Corporal Turner’s pencil annotation on the rear of the photograph reads: ‘A photograph I took from the doorway of York MW101 at Le Bourget airport, Paris, on 11th May 1947 just before we flew black to Northolt. He is surrounded by French ex-servicemen with whom he had been chatting. He stubbed out his cigar in an ashtray when he came aboard, and I took the remains into protective custody.’
The label on the La Corona cigar from Havana, Cuba, includes Churchill’s name.