The Bold Life of Young Winston Churchill

On the night of Tuesday the 12th of December 1899, a 25 year old Winston Churchill heaved himself over the fence of the state model school in Pretoria. It was here that Winston was being held as a British prisoner of war by the Afrikaans forces during the heart of the Anglo-Boer war in South Africa. As he crouched and hiding behind some sparse bushes contemplating his next move, Churchill faced his own personal crossing of the Rubicon moment. The success of the escape plan depended on Winston being joined by his two co-escapees, but Captain Haldane and Sergeant Brockie were nowhere to be seen. Churchill had little time to make his decision. Should he clamber back over the fence to regroup with Haldane and Brockie, or seize his opportunity and make the perilous 300 mile journey to freedom alone? For a man like Winston Churchill, there was no turning back. As a young man, Winston Churchill was fiercely ambitious and supremely self-confident. Despite being born into the British aristocracy, attending prestigious schools from Harrow to Sandhurst, young Winston knew that something more was needed to propel him to the hearts of success that he envisioned for himself. And that thing was fame through military glory. As a boy, he dreamed of going to war, and when as a young man he was confronted by the realities of it, he embraced it wholeheartedly. He wanted nothing more than to be seen by his compatriots as a courageous war hero, not just for glory's sake, but for the doors it would open in his political career. His ambition he did not try too hard, and for this, he was dubbed by his critics as a medal hunter, a self-advertiser, and by a reporter of the Daily Chronicle as Pushful the Younger. After graduating from the Royal Military Academy in 1895, Churchill received a commission as a second lieutenant in the 4th Queen's Own Hussars Regiment. Using his mother's social influence, he secured a posting to South America where the Cuban War of Independence from Spanish rule waged on. He engaged in a few skirmishes while in Cuba, but was strictly speaking a military observer and came away from there with little to add to his resume. In October 1896, he travelled with the Hussars to Bombay in India. Although it was considered the jewel in the crown of the empire, the British army constantly struggled to subdue the local population groups that rose up against their colonial masters. Churchill was convinced that such would be the perfect setting in which to make his name, but he suffered months of boredom with little to no military action. The following year, and while in London on leave from his military duties, Churchill learned of the uprising of the Moman rebels in the Swat Valley of North West India, which is present-day Pakistan. Calling in a favour from General Sir Bindon Blood who led the Malakand Field Force to quash the uprising, Churchill wangled his way into a posting as a war correspondent. He then quickly secured assignments as a journalist with the Pioneer newspaper and the Daily Telegraph. But alas, fame still eluded Churchill and he left India without the medals he so keenly desired. Churchill then made his way to the Sudan and Northern Africa to fight the Mardists, followers of the Muslim leader al-Mahdi. Despite engaging in bloody battle and likely having killed a few combatants himself, fame still eluded young Churchill. His unit was stood down from the fighting in September 1898 and Winston returned to England. Becoming impatient with his as yet unfulfilled quest for prestige, Churchill chose to then resign from the British army and have his first crack at local politics. This proved a disaster after Churchill stood for but lost a local by-election in Oldham, Lancashire. He returned bereft and defeated to his childhood home of Blenheim Palace where he pondered his next move. What young Winston needed was another war. And he didn't have to wait long. Tensions on the southern tip of Africa between the British Cape Colony and the two independent Boer Republics were reaching a fever pitch and Churchill foresaw the Empire's next colonial war taking place in South Africa. The Second Anglo-Boer War, or South African War, commenced on 11 October 1899, kicking off while Churchill was still en route to South Africa as a journalist reporting for the Morning Post newspaper. The British colony of Natal, located in the south-east of present-day South Africa, was a conflict hotspot and by the time of Churchill's arrival, the town of Ladysmith had already been besieged by Boer forces. Churchill found himself stuck at escort at a British garrison which was hardly more than a dusty shantytown 80km south of Ladysmith. Churchill resented being stuck in escort, wishing only to be at the centre of the conflict where he could not only report on events, but more importantly, enjoy opportunities for fame and glory. His lucky break came when on 15 November 1899, he was invited by his friend, Captain Elmer Haldane to accompany him and his men aboard an armoured train sent to patrol the escort railway line. While the train was manned by two companies of light infantry in three train cars and a seven-pound naval gun, it was a lumbering beast and an easy target for Louis Beurter, the Boer commando leader. The train was not joined by any mounted cavalry, a decision later described by General Redvers Buller as inconceivably stupid. That day, the Boer forces lay in wait to ambush the train, placing rocks across the track as it approached a bend near the Blaau Krantz river. The Boers sprung their ambush upon the armoured train with rifle and pom-pom fire. The train driver increased to full speed, but this just played into the Boer ambush. The collision between train and rocks caused its three cars to derail, although the engine remained on the track. Scores of soldiers were wounded in the derailment and the train was left stranded and vulnerable in the open. For the next 90 minutes, the British soldiers came under persistent shelling and enemy fire from the deadly accurate Boer snipers. As disastrous a situation as this was, this was Churchill's moment, and he knew it. Despite being a non-combatant and not strictly speaking permitted to participate in any combat as a journalist, he led the defence of the train and the British soldiers, coordinating the removal of the derailed cars from the tracks to allow the train engine to limp back to escort carrying 50 mostly wounded survivors. Ultimately six British soldiers were killed and another 35 were wounded before those remaining at the train crash site surrendered. To Churchill, surrender was a fate worse than death, but after encountering two Boer soldiers he realised that in his efforts to get the train running again, he had left his Mauser firearm in the engine. His only option was to surrender. After being rounded up by the Boers, the British survivors were transferred to the state model school prison in Pretoria, which operated within a hastily converted school building. Although the British prisoners were not mistreated and Churchill was housed along with other British officers who enjoyed special privileges due to their rank, Churchill is recorded as saying that the time he spent as a prisoner of war were some of the worst days of his life. Winston Churchill immediately set about trying to secure his freedom, thinking that his best bet was to appeal to all and sundry with any modicum of authority for his release on the grounds that he was a journalist and a non-combatant. In this instance however, Churchill's fame and noble birth proved an impediment. He became the Boers' most prized prisoner, and if the accounts of the Boers present that day of the train ambush were to be believed, Churchill was by no means some lowly correspondent who hid away during the fighting. While the Transvaal Secretary of State for War, Louis de Souza, was somewhat sympathetic of Churchill's situation, he was under instruction from the highest levels of Boer command that under no circumstances should Churchill be released. Churchill's imprisonment as a POW coincided with the period of the Boer War referred to by the British as Black Week. During the week of 10 to 17 December 1899, the British suffered devastating defeats at the hands of the Boers in three major battles, namely the Battle of Storumberg, Magasfontein and Kalenzo. News of these defeats reached the POWs held at the state model school and sent Churchill's disposition to new lows of despair. Having exhausted all potential diplomatic avenues to secure his release, including proposing a prisoner exchange, Churchill resolved to escape, and he needed to do so immediately. He started to devise an escape plan which grew more elaborate by the minute, starting with the idea that he and a number of other prisoners would overpower the prison guards or zarps as they were called, using dumbbells from the prison gym. From there, Churchill's plan became ever more grand, to the point that it included not only escape from the POW camp, but then marching into Pretoria and the total defeat of the Boers. While Churchill got the initial buy-in for his plan from some of the men in the camp, the plot died on the van as the other inmates were not interested in personal glory and influencing the outcome of the war, they just wanted their freedom. And so Churchill went back to the drawing board, spending his days sullenly staring at a chess board or glumly reading but finding no enjoyment from his favourite authors. He soon however learned of his friend Captain Haldane's plan to escape together with another sergeant major, Adam Brockie, who spoke both Dutch and Zulu. Their plan was simple, which was during camp dinner time to scale the back fence of the camp near the latrine block where a shadow was cast by the prison yard lights. From there, the pair would make their way to Portuguese East Africa, present day Mozambique, which was a neutral territory and thereafter back home to freedom. Haldane and Brockie made no bones about not wanting Churchill involved in their plan. They wanted to escape quickly and quietly, without the liability of Churchill's fame and inability to keep his mouth shut increasing their risk of failure, but ultimately the pair agreed to let him in on the plan, or at least the initial stages of it. The trio initially planned their escape for the night of 11 December 1899, but the presence of a Tsar prison guard who was stationed across from the section of fence they wished to climb over meant that the attempt was aborted. But on 12 December, Haldane and Brockie again had doubts about the timing of the escape. Brockie had entered the lavatory block but was worried about the presence of the guards. Churchill could not take it any longer and went into the lavatory block himself to check. Seizing the moment when a guard had his back turned, scaled the fence and crouched in wait on the other side, hoping that Haldane and Brockie would then join him. For over an hour he waited, but they did not arrive. Haldane and Brockie in fact did not even consider that Churchill would climb the fence in that moment, so much so that they returned inside thinking that they would all make a further attempt the next night. When Haldane eventually realised that Churchill had gone against his wishes by jumping the fence alone, he rushed to make his own attempt over the fence, but was spotted by a guard and had to make a hasty retreat. For a few brief moments, Haldane managed to communicate in whispers with Churchill through the fence. Haldane suggested that Churchill return back into the camp, but this was no option for Churchill, who in his own words later recalled, To go back was impossible. Fate pointed me onward. Having no compass, no map, no food apart from a few small chocolate bars and a biscuit, and not having any knowledge of the local language Afrikaans, the 300 mile journey to Portuguese East Africa would be Churchill's most difficult trial. He knew that at any moment he could be recaptured, or worse, shot, but had no option but to press on towards his goal. Churchill knew that he could never cross the distance on foot, and so resolved to stow away on a train heading east to take him as near to his destination as possible. After scaling the fence, he made his way through Pretoria, the Boer capital city. Miraculously, he encountered nobody to impede his journey and soon found himself on the outskirts of the city. He came upon a set of railway tracks, but had no way to tell which direction they travelled. Not having many options, he followed the tracks until he found a railway station. He managed a desperate leap onto a moving train and then hid away in a boxcar of a goods train for several hours. He alighted from that train before dawn as he feared detection if he remained on the train until it arrived at the next station. To Churchill's great relief, the train he had boarded he noticed was travelling towards the rising sun and accordingly eastwards. Meanwhile, back at the state model school, Churchill's escape was detected the next day on 13 December when a Boer barber arrived to give Churchill his scheduled haircut and shave, but Churchill was nowhere to be found of course. The manhunt that was launched in the wake of Churchill's escape was enormous, with the Boers conducting door-to-door searches across hundreds of miles and offering a reward for Churchill's capture, dead or alive. While all of this was going on, Churchill hoped to catch another train as it pushed its way up a nearby hill, but after waiting hours realised that no train was coming. What he didn't know was that after his escape was discovered, all Boer trains stopped running at night. Becoming desperately hungry and knowing that he had no prospects of completing his journey eastwards on foot, he took a massive risk in heading towards some lighted fires that he saw flickering in the distance. He believed the lights to be that of an African Kral or homestead and hoped that he may find some assistance from the black Africans who hated the British perhaps just a tad less than they did the Boers. As he neared the lights, he realised however that this was no African Kral, this was a Boer coal mine. In his desperation and needing aid of any sort, Churchill took the risk of knocking on the door of a house in the dead of night. To his sheer luck, Churchill had by chance chosen a house occupied by an Englishman, one of only a handful in probably a thousand mile radius. John Howard was the mine manager. Howard took Churchill in and had him fed and watered. Together with the assistance of some other Englishman at the mine, Howard hid Churchill down a mineshaft where he lay among rats and piles of coal for three days. Thereafter, Howard helped to stow away Churchill aboard a railway coal wagon headed to Lorenzo Marks, which is modern day Maputo, in Mozambique. Churchill announced himself at the British consulate on 22 December 1899, where he was initially not recognised and turned away. After a hot bath and a change of clothes, and being protected by armed Britons from recapture by the local Boers, Churchill took a boat to the city of Durban on the east coast of South Africa, where he was welcomed as a hero. There, he delivered an impromptu speech, the severity of his recent ordeal quickly fading as young Winston realised that he had accomplished what he had always set his sights on. But Churchill was not done yet, not by a long shot. Instead of returning home to England at that point, which is probably what most would have He immediately returned to the front as a lieutenant in the South African Light Horse Regiment. Adding insult to the already injured Boer pride and having let their most prized prisoner elude them, Churchill entered Pretoria on 5 June 1900 and successfully liberated the remaining prisoners of war held at the state model school. Churchill returned from war a decorated soldier, being awarded six clasps to his Queen's South African Medal. Churchill took a seat at the House of Commons in February 1901, and although his political career would later flourish and he received prestigious government appointments including Chancellor of the Exchequer, Churchill continued to serve in the military, including as a major during World War I. Churchill's political career fell among the weeds during the 1930s when he held no government position. But he again rose to prominence once the British public realised that he was right to criticise Hitler's Nazi dictatorship in Germany and the call for British rearmament. Winston Churchill became British Prime Minister on 10 May 1940, the very day that Adolf Hitler invaded France. His first weeks of leadership were marked by military disaster, but he remained, as always, persistent and steadfast in the face of adversity. Many today remember Winston Churchill as the sharp-witted, cigar-smoking, whiskey-drinking Prime Minister that saw the British to victory in World War II, but his life prior to becoming a world leader, as evidenced by the story just told, is equally as remarkable. A roadside plaque near present-day Escort in the province of KwaZulu-Natal now stands to commemorate the capture site of Winston Churchill by the Boers on 15 November 1899.