Churchill the Young Warrior, page 12
Jennie and Winston Churchill would have experienced those changes in urban density and the transformation from romantic Victorian gaslight to the stark reality of post-Edwardian electric lighting and all its other features. Meanwhile, the new technology of the outdoor gas lamps brought pedestrians out into the street when they would otherwise have remained at home at night. Now some people loitered in the narrow cobblestone alleyways that were shrouded in darkness at night—except when moving closer to the gas lamps. And there was the poisonous yellow fog which cast sinister shadows on the walls of the buildings. Horse-drawn hansom cabs and carriages seemed menacing and dangerous as they noisily clip-clopped or raced their way through the London streets with the clatter of wheels on cobblestones.
Victorian police constables, who were few and unsophisticated, were also ill-prepared and unaccustomed to prevent the more morbid and violent types of crimes. Their normal affairs were drunkenness and petty thievery or burglary, and arguments between spouses that led to someone being roughed up. Crimes like theft, and violence arising out of jealousy or revenge, were commonplace and understandable. But these new crimes were beyond belief and—as far as the Metropolitan Police were concerned—entirely without motives.
CHAPTER NINE
WINSTON UNDER FIRE
WINSTON’S FINANCES BEGAN TO IMPROVE WHEN the Morning Post paid him for his letters from the Sudan and he benefited from serialization rights of his novel. On the other hand, he’d had to reject two offers from newspapers asking to report from two different war fronts on their behalf. But it was a good sign of his popularity as a military and political journalist. Having his name in the eyes of the public spread rumors that he was about to enter politics, and many people said he’d be sure to do well, since he had his father’s ability. But now he had to return to his regiment in India.
Before leaving, he socialized with a young woman whom he’d met before, but he was not a regular socializer, except among politicians with whom he felt the air was buzzing with opportunities. Nor was he a womanizer. He was a cerebral man and too full of ambition for frivolity. Although he didn’t imagine he’d be like Jennie, keeping one man after another on tenterhooks for her favors, nor could he imagine being tied to one woman for life.
He left for India soon after he turned twenty-four, having now decided he’d retire from the army in a matter of months and enter a life of politics. He debated with Jennie from Bangalore on where he would stand for election. Whether he was musing on his own future or simply trying out a few new lines for his novel, he described the Mahdi, who was an orphan, and wrote in his letter to her; solitary trees grow strong, and a boy deprived of his father’s care often develops a vigor of thought which may restore in later years the heavier loss of earlier ones.
It was unusual for mother and son to exchange intellectual ideas, particularly as they related to psychology. There was something almost Freudian in his relationship with his mother, who appears to be more like his lady friend. Their relationship has been described as infatuation. But infatuations are generally considered to be short-lived, whereas their relationship lasted a lifetime. They adored each other. And he wished to share every thought with her and whatever he wrote. He never stopped writing to her, wherever he happened to be. They were mutual admirers.
Freud was bound to be another influence in understanding the motives and quirks of people he would have to get along with, influence their thinking, and sometimes even manipulate them. Like him, the young Freud was a modern man, an iconoclast who broke traditional customs and attitudes, particularly where open discussion about sex was concerned. Freud was not a typical Victorian. He was a neurologist studying the nervous system of lobsters in order to understand how human beings worked. His old colleague, Dr. Breuer, had tried to hush him up whenever he talked about sex, because he said people were touchy and would be offended. But Freud realized that sexual instincts were fundamental to life and could not be ignored, since there’d be no life without them. Winston was not a typical Victorian either; he possessed the facility of absorbing what was useful to his career and rejecting anything that was surplus to it.
Winston left India for London towards the end of March, deciding he could earn more as a writer, whereas being an officer in the army cost him money in keeping up appearances. He thought of adapting his book into a history of the war in the Sudan and, on the way back home, spoke with Lord Cromer in Cairo. Cromer directed him on the major events leading up to the loss of the Sudan and the heroic death of General Gordon, who was beginning to be viewed as a martyr to savagery. Cromer introduced him to the Khedive of Egypt, and the two young men behaved together like a couple of schoolboys at Harrow.
He was in London when a by-election was called in Oldham, and he delivered his election speech as a Tory Democrat, as his father had been. He promised to legislate on behalf of the aged poor as generously as possible. He opposed Home Rule in Ireland because he knew it would end in violent conflicts. He was opposed to compulsory restrictions on alcohol but supported voluntary temperance. And he followed Prime Minister Lord Salisbury in maintaining superiority of naval power, as well as protecting imperial frontiers from mischief-making and violent aggression.
He was received with enthusiasm by the constituents, but felt that public opinion was against the Conservatives, and so they would be unlikely to be his constituents. He spoke eight times a day as the election built up to its finale. The Conservatives were defeated, as he’d expected. Nevertheless, Salisbury was encouraging about his performance, and the experience earned him his spurs.
The question of what to do now filled his mind. He need not have worried; there was always a war somewhere in the Empire that required reporting on or leadership. To a politician who asked him to speak in Birmingham, he wrote of possible war in the Transvaal in November, where he planned to go as a special correspondent.
Ever since the Jameson Raid, the wary relationship between Britain and the Boer Republics was discussed keenly across the world, with all its misunderstandings. The dispute was also vigilantly watched and debated by the opposition party in Parliament, where there was division between those who felt that war would be necessary and those who attempted to prevent it.
Authorities in the Transvaal had been heavily rearming for three years, while the well-armed police kept watch on the Outlanders, and German engineers busily built a fortress to dominate the city of Johannesburg. Supplies of ammunition arrived from Germany and Holland to arm the Transvaal, the Orange Free State, and the Cape Dutch. Consequently, the British Government increased its Natal and Cape garrisons.
When an ultimatum came from Pretoria on October 8 for the withdrawal of British forces from the frontiers of the Boer Republics, it gave Britain only three days to complete its withdrawal. The issue had finally come to a head. And the Boers took the initiative by advancing their forces towards the Cape and Natal.
The British General Sir Redvers Buller had been named Commander-in-Chief of the Army Corps, and had orders to proceed to Table Bay in the Cape. “Buller,” the British Colonial Secretary Chamberlain said to Winston, “may be too late … Mafeking may be besieged.”
According to Churchill in later life, the British War Office was underfunded and isolated from reality. Nevertheless, their intelligence report was sent to General Buller, who replied that he “knew everything about South Africa.”1
“Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy,” Churchill wrote in later life, “or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter.” Once the signal for war is given, the Statesman becomes the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events. “Antiquated War Offices, weak, incompetent or arrogant Commanders, untrustworthy allies, hostile neutrals, malignant Fortune, ugly surprises, awful miscalculations …” All play their role as soon as war is declared. He cautioned readers to bear in mind that however sure we are that we can easily win, there would be no war if the enemy did not think the same thing of his own chances.
Buller was an interesting choice of Commander and a fairly typical British officer. According to Churchill, he looked stolid, said little, and whatever he did say was incomprehensible. Since he couldn’t explain things, he didn’t attempt to. He grunted or nodded instead, or shook his head. He had displayed bravery and skill in his youth and filled sedentary administrative positions in Whitehall ever since. With his name known to the public, they had confidence in him.
“My confidence in the British soldier is only equalled by my confidence in Sir Redvers Buller,” said Prime Minister Lord Salisbury on November 9, 1899.
Churchill explained the phenomenon like this: “He plodded on from blunder to blunder and from one disaster to another without losing either the regard of his country or the trust of his troops …”
Winston Churchill duly received a request from the Daily Mail to leave for South Africa as their war correspondent. Not content with one fee, he also offered his services to the Morning Post to travel from east to west and sell them another series of articles.
Chamberlain gave Winston an introduction to the British High Commissioner in Cape Town, Sir Alfred Milner, who was thought highly of by some, but as a bit of a manipulator by others. Milner was intriguing in South Africa to prevent the two Boer Republics—the Orange Free State and the Transvaal—from remaining independent of the Crown. As negotiations continued with President Kruger, war with the Boers seemed inevitable. Winston decided to take a cine-camera and film the war, but was outdone by an American film company with professional equipment. Feeling it would be advantageous to have officer status before the war started, he decided to apply to a British Yeomanry Regiment. Then he recalled a friend of his father who was Adjutant of the 9th Yeomanry Brigade in South Africa.
He hurriedly bought a new compass and had his telescope and field glasses repaired. Then he took a train to Southampton and sailed to Cape Town with his father’s former manservant, as the war was about to begin.
South Africa
Immediately on arrival, Sir Alfred Milner told him the Boers had mobilized a far greater number of men than he had expected, and the town of Ladysmith was now threatened. Winston and a fellow reporter learned next day that 1,200 British soldiers had already surrendered. This was not a popular war with the British public, who sympathized with the poor Afrikaans-speaking farmers who were fighting for independence from the British Empire. They were descended from Dutch colonists who had fled from the Netherlands because of religious persecution. Most were Huguenots who also came from France and Germany during Catholic persecution. And here they followed the Dutch Reform Church. They had since become hardy pioneers who knew the habits of all the animal life in Southern Africa, as hunters, which meant they were fine sharpshooters or snipers who knew how to make every bullet count. They also knew how to appear as if from nowhere, and strike. Then they’d wheel in an instant and ride their small ponies swiftly away, to disappear into the bushes or vanish into the open landscape.
Naturally enough, they resented the British “rednecks” who wanted to take their land away from them, with all the possible wealth from the diamond and gold mines, which was really all the political clash was about. Without minerals the territory was uninteresting to the British, but the mines now made it valuable. And the richest places to find them were at Kimberley in Bloemfontein in the Free State, and on the Reef of the Transvaal.
Their train brought them to East London, and they hurried to Durban on a small coastal vessel, with the intention of reaching Ladysmith by rail. On arrival in Durban at midnight, Winston found his close friend, Barnes, on a hospital ship bound for home after being shot in battle, and learned that Ladysmith was now isolated. General Buller had been sent from England under orders to relieve Ladysmith, but was unlikely to arrive for at least three days. And there were no certainties in war. It would take Buller’s army several more days while waiting for his stores to arrive for transportation to the battlefront.
They left for Pietermaritzburg, the provincial capital in the heartland of rural Natal. But they found the line went no further north. Winston hired a special train. When they reached Colenso on the other side of the Tugela River, the Boer Army was spread across the track to prevent further access north.
Cornered by a heavy enemy gun they couldn’t argue with, they joined the battalions of British troops. This was hilly inland country, not far from mountains. They found a good cook and some good wine, pitched their tent at Estcourt railway yard, and entertained friends. Winston thought the British military in South Africa had underestimated the situation, and he was critical of the authorities and the British fighting men who had surrendered.
They took a Colenso train as soon as they could, and followed an officer to the trenches on the edge of town, which were now deserted. The Boers had vanished. It was something they were adept at from their experience as hunters of shrewd wild animals. They had extraordinary patience to wait until exactly the right time to strike. They had no respect for the formal ways with which British troops were ordered into line and regimented so that they were sitting targets for Boer sharpshooters.
Winston and Atkinson—the other journalist—rode with the British troops close to Colenso, then mounted a steep hill that gave them a view of the Tugela River. They were suddenly surrounded by armed British horsemen, but they had no difficulty in convincing them they were not the enemy. They learned that Ladysmith was blocked with the British cavalry inside. They discussed their best move and agreed to withdraw if General Joubert of the Boers decided to advance on the town. Winston was sure it would be unnecessary. Their armored train left Estcourt early in the morning with them and a hundred and fifty men on board, heading for Colenso. When the train arrived at Chieveley they heard that the Boers had stayed there overnight.
A messenger now warned them that some fifty Boers had been spotted by the railway. Then they rounded a hill that overlooked the railroad and were fired on by artillery which struck one of their trucks. The engine driver put on full steam to run at top speed down the line, intending to bypass the ambush. But a heavy stone deliberately placed on the line derailed a breakdown truck and two armored trucks in front. Winston ran out of the stationary train to organize men to dislodge the truck straddling the line.
A British naval gun opened fire, but was struck by a shell and ceased. The British gun crew opened fire from the protection of one of the armored trucks, and killed two Boers. Rifle fire and a Maxim-gun were aimed at them, with the pounding of artillery shells. It continued for an hour. Four British soldiers were killed and thirty wounded.
Winston sauntered around the train to study the situation and see what he could do about it, as cool as ever under fire—he simply ignored it. Then he helped the engine driver carry twenty wounded men and place them in the tender. They picked up more men as they managed to drive the engine very slowly in the direction of Frere.
The British commander attempted to get his men to a farmhouse nearby and fought the Boers from cover. But two British soldiers by the train held up white handkerchiefs for a ceasefire and surrendered. The commander had no alternative but to join them. Their hearts weren’t in it. But Winston was still walking along the line, and ran into two Boers who raised their rifles. He turned swiftly and ran back to the engine along the track, with bullets cracking behind him, missing him by inches. He headed for an embankment to find shelter, but found no cover, so he kept running. Nothing struck him. He clambered up a bank and crawled on hands and knees beneath a fence at the summit. He found a small hollow there and took cover in it.
Sitting down, panting, and looking round him, he found himself about two hundred yards from a river where there was cover. He was about to leap up and make a dash for it, when a Boer horseman galloped straight at him, then reined in his pony and shouted. Winston realized he’d left his pistol behind on the train as the Boer raised his rifle and sighted it to aim at him. Winston instantly raised both hands, and was taken prisoner by the Boers.
CHAPTER TEN
A PRISONER OF WAR
WINSTON’S INITIATIVES AT THE DERAILMENT OF the train and his imprisonment by the Boers captured the newspaper headlines, since the British public was keenly interested in what was happening in South Africa, without clearly understanding the motives of either side. His manservant, Walden, went to Pietermaritzburg to take care of Winston’s kit, and wrote to inform Jennie that her son was unlikely to have been wounded. He added that all the officers he spoke to believed that Winston and the engine driver would be awarded with a medal for their bravery.
Winston would write later on to a newspaper that he’d had to be patient while the Boers treated their prisoners like cattle when they rounded them up and marched them across the countryside for two days. After showing his press credentials, he was locked up in the ticket office of a tiny rural railway station at a dorp named Modderspruit, from where a train eventually took them to Pretoria. There they were escorted to a State school in the center of the capital city, which had been requisitioned for prisoners of war. As a result of the press publicity, General Joubert treated Winston’s account that he was an unarmed newspaper correspondent with skepticism, and instructed that he must be kept under lock and key for the rest of the war because of the damage he could do.
Winston wrote directly to the Boer Secretary for War while he spent weeks in prison, to deny that he had taken any part in the military action. But a Boer officer who had been there said he’d led volunteers when the British officers were in a state of confusion. He also wrote to Jennie. He spent his twenty-fifth birthday writing letters in prison. One was to the Prince of Wales, in which he informed him that prisoners were now members of the Transvaal State Library, so he was improving his education. He also wrote to an American friend as a result of borrowing library books, that he had been studying financial combines in the United States and their enormous power horrified him—the merchant princes of the empire were one thing, but this form of capitalism, with its trusts, monopolies, and cartels was overstepping the boundaries of power. He shared his thoughts that there would be a great war in the next century for the existence of the individual in the face of the conglomerates.
