With the Nazi army retreating, Churchill picnicked in Holland on the west bank of the Rhine River with Gen. Bernard Montgomery and Field Marshall Alan Brooke in February 1945.
Allied armies had already crossed the Rhine and invaded Germany, and though the area was secure, German artillery and snipers were a threat. It is unclear what was served. Churchill’s favorites were ham or beef sandwiches with mustard on very thinly sliced bread. Among Churchill’s favorites was cognac. There were spirits, but not for Montgomery, who once said to Churchill: “I neither drink nor smoke and am a hundred percent fit,” to which Churchill replied, “I drink and smoke, and I am two hundred percent fit.”
Martin Gilbert captions this photo “Churchill picnics in Holland with Montgomery before a gentle boat trip into Germany, he had sworn to defeat, The Rhine March 1945” in Churchill at War: His Finest Hour: in Photographs 1940-1945 (2004)
See Cita Stelzer. Dinner with Churchill: Policy-Making at the Dinner Table. London: Short Books Ltd., 2011; Imperial War Museums. Churchill Lunching on The East Bank of The Rhine with Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery and Field Marshal Sir Alan Brooke. Photograph made by No 5 Army Film & Photographic Unit, Northwest Europe 1944 – 1945: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/search?query=Brooke%20with%20Winston%20Churchill%20and%20Field%20Marshal%20Montgomery&items_per_page=10