by Celia Sandys
His dispatch of 24 November described how the column had halted on their way when they reached the Boer guns which had ravaged the armoured train a few hours before:
two strangely long barrels sitting very low on carriages of four wheels . . . They looked offensively modern, and I wondered why our Army had not got field artillery with fixed ammunition and 8000 yards’ range. The commander, Adjutant Roos – as he introduced himself – made a polite salute. He regretted the unfortunate circumstances of our meeting; he complimented the officers on their defence . . . above all he wanted to know how the engine had been able to get away, and how the line could have been cleared of wreckage under his guns. In fact, he behaved like a good professional soldier should, and his manner impressed me.
In other circumstances Churchill would have needed no invitation to explain how he had cleared the line. He would have plunged into a discussion of the action, no doubt telling the commander how he could have better conducted the battle. However, the war correspondent was anxious to play down his participation in the action. He had already, by the skin of his teeth, escaped the mortal peril of being condemned as a combatant in civilian clothes. Having successfully confirmed his civilian status he was now bent on turning it to advantage, in order that he might be released. He need not have been so uncharacteristically modest, for by the time he arrived in Pretoria his captors were fully aware of the significant part he had played in the ambush.
The column rested near the guns while the Boers searched the wreckage of the train and its vicinity for dead and wounded. After an hour the march continued, and by evening Churchill was close to the little town to which he had advanced on foot during his first foray on the armoured train a week before: ‘It was with a feeling of utter weariness I saw the tin roofs of Colenso rise in the distance. We were put into a corrugated iron shed.’
Presently the locked doors were opened, and the prisoners invited to dry themselves around several campfires. Food was provided, in the shape of strips of newly slaughtered ox to be toasted over the flames. Churchill characteristically took the opportunity to start a discussion with two brothers among the guards, ‘Afrikaners by birth, Boers by choice’.
* * *
For me, the story continued in a conversation with Alan Raubenheimer, the grandson of one of the brothers, Benjamin Raubenheimer. We chatted much as our grandfathers had done a century before – except that our lunch, at Hermanus on Walker Bay west of Cape Town, was a good deal more appetising than the toasted ox served by the campfire at Colenso.
‘Field Cornet Benjamin Raubenheimer was thirty, and had taken part in the opening battle of the war at Talana Hill,’ said his grandson. ‘He was a very patriotic Boer and enjoyed his discussion with Churchill. At the time the war was going well for the Boers, but Churchill was confident Britain would win.’
‘Was it a friendly discussion?’
‘I think they agreed to disagree. At any rate my grandfather offered Churchill his blanket.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘My grandfather wrote about that. It was a blanket with a hole in it, worn like a cloak.’
‘Ah, but what your grandfather didn’t say was that he at first refused it. I think he was just being polite. The incident is recorded in our family history. My grandfather pressed the offer again, and it was gratefully accepted.’
‘What,’ I wondered, ‘did your grandfather think of mine?’
‘Oh, he later wrote it down. He remembered Churchill as a nice young man to talk to who never gave any trouble.’
A depressed Churchill spent a fitful night sharing Raubenheimer’s blanket with Lieutenant Thomas Frankland of the Dublin Fusiliers – destined, fifteen years later, to die as a colonel on the beaches of Gallipoli. His spirits revived with daybreak, and he began to think of escape. He planned to burrow beneath the straw that covered the floor of the shed and hide until the column had marched off, but was thwarted when a guard ordered them all outside.
After a breakfast of cold toasted ox, left over from the previous evening, and rainwater from a large puddle, the prisoners continued on their way. They halted for a rest close to the Boer lines around Ladysmith, and Churchill’s dispatch records some of the banter which passed between the Boer commandos and the captured British troops. The Boers, he wrote, ‘are all keen politicians and as curious as children’. It was clear that they had a loose but effective form of discipline. One old Boer questioned the wisdom of using an armoured train, saying that if the Field Comet ordered him into one, he would reply, ‘Field Cornet, go to hell.’ Another declared: ‘The English died for their country while the Afrikaners lived for theirs.’ Churchill sensed that the Boers were not as confident as they made out, and, seeking to encourage their fears, told them that the real war had not even started. Indeed, it is doubtful if anyone taking part in that conversation on the veldt could have imagined the carnage which lay ahead.
The British observation balloon at Ladysmith was visible to the column of prisoners: ‘High above the hills,’ wrote Churchill, ‘to the left of the path, hung a speck of gold-beater’s skin. It was the Ladysmith balloon. There, scarcely two miles away, were safety and honour . . . Beleaguered Ladysmith, with its shells, its flies, its fever, and its filth seemed a glorious paradise to me.’
Ten hours’ marching, which included fording the chest-deep Klip River, brought the column in mid-afternoon to that night’s camp. There, although soaked to the skin, Churchill was sufficiently refreshed by tea and bully beef to feel equal to further argument in the Field Comet’s tent. It was his antidote to captivity. In the war of words – probing the thoughts of his captors, and planting the seeds of doubt among them – the prisoner retained the initiative. After an evening thus spent, the officers and men were directed to separate areas. Not unnaturally, Churchill accompanied the officers. His mind still firmly on escape, it was a choice he soon regretted.
For his London readers, the African veldt would have been as alien as the surface of the moon. Churchill’s dispatches were the equivalent of today’s television news reports from remote comers of the earth, and were equally effective.
The dark shadow of Bulwana mountain flung back over the Dutch camp, and the rugged, rock-strewn hills rose about it on all sides. The great waggons were arranged to enclosure a square, in the midst of which stood clusters of variously shaped tents and lines of munching oxen. Within the laager and around it little fires began to glow, and by their light the figures of the Boers could be seen busy cooking and eating their suppers, or smoking in moody, muttering groups. All was framed in the triangular doorway of the tent, in which two ragged, bearded men sat nursing their rifles and gazing at their captives in silence.
After Churchill’s companions had fallen asleep, he peered through a tear in the tent, and discovered that four sentries were posted outside it in a manner which denied any attempt at escape. Had he gone with the men rather than the officers he might have had some chance of getting away, as they were less closely guarded. At midnight the sentries were changed, and Churchill again assessed the situation, looking through the tear at the nearest guard: ‘He was quite a child – a boy of about fourteen – and needless to say appreciated the importance of his duties. He played this terrible game of soldiers with all his heart and soul; so at last I abandoned the idea of flight and fell asleep.’
At first light the prisoners were roused and told there was to be a five-hour march to the railway station at Elandslaagte. ‘We stood up – for we had slept in our clothes and cared nothing for washing – and said we were ready.’ The commandant of the laager brought breakfast of more tea and bully beef, apologising for the plainness of the food and explaining that it was all his men had themselves. He then sought his prisoners’ assurance that they were satisfied with the treatment they had received. Churchill’s dispatch reported: ‘We gladly gave him this assurance, and with much respect bade goodbye to this dignified and honourable enemy.’ Once again, the account of this civilised farewell makes odd reading a century l
ater.
It was late morning when the column reached Elandslaagte. By now it had been joined by prisoners taken in other engagements. Their imminent arrival had attracted a crowd of colourfully dressed Indians, near-naked tribesmen and stout Boer women – the latter bearing rusks for the hungry prisoners. While he was drawing rations from the railhead a Boer soldier, Johannes Nortje, heard that the son of Lord Randolph Churchill was a prisoner, and asked for him to be pointed out. He remembered Churchill as ‘a small young man, standing slightly aside, who was resolute in appearance and constantly scanning the horizon and all activity around him, unlike the other prisoners, who were downcast and dejected’.
The section of track through Elandslaagte fell under the jurisdiction of a railway official named Willem Punt. The story of what befell Churchill on his arrival at the station has been handed down through the family, and was told to me by his grandson, also Willem Punt.
‘It began to rain, and when the prisoners were told to take shelter in the baggage room, Churchill was taken to one side and put under guard in the ticket office. But the fun started when they were all told to board the train. One or two officers who had just joined the party objected to travelling with a newspaper man.’
This seems extraordinary, given Churchill’s military background and his recent exploits. It is possible that the officers feared the consequences of Churchill’s determination to escape.
‘My grandfather,’ Willem Punt continued, ‘told the officers that they would have to put up with the newspaper man. He was unaware of the newspaper man’s identity but I’m sure that in any case he would have ignored the officers’ objections.’
Among the people crowding curiously around the carriages, Churchill wrote in a dispatch on 30 November, was a young doctor who, seeing Churchill’s bandaged hand, enquired if he was wounded. The doctor’s great-niece, Angela Caccia-Lloyd, came forward and identified him in response to my broadcast: ‘He was Thomas Visser. He was in charge of a number of ambulances. When he looked at Churchill’s hand he found the wound had begun to fester, and he sent for proper dressings.’ Had he known more about Visser, Churchill would have approved of him. He was a patriot who, within a year of treating Churchill at Elandslaagte, was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment because of his anti-British activities. He would go on to become a prominent doctor, politician and benefactor in South Africa.
Placed in charge of the guards aboard the train was one Paul du Plessis. ‘This was because his English was the best among the guards,’ his son Daniel told me. ‘Churchill offered my father £5 if he could produce a bottle of brandy, but unfortunately he couldn’t find one.’ It is debatable who was the more unfortunate – Churchill without the brandy, or du Plessis without the money. £5 was equivalent to £300 at today’s prices, and there is no doubt the Morning Post would have footed the bill.
In his dispatch of 30 November Churchill introduced one of his guards to the readers of the Morning Post: ‘His name was Spaarwater . . .’ His granddaughter, Martha Bam, has carefully preserved a faded but still legible note written in pencil on a scrap of paper:
The Bearer, H.G. Spaarwater has been very kind to me and British officers captured in the Estcourt armoured train. I shall be personally grateful to anyone who may be able to do him any service should he himself be taken prisoner
Winston S. Churchill. Nov. 17 1899
Spaarwater, wrote Churchill in his dispatch, was a farmer: ‘In times of peace he paid little or no taxes. The Field Cornet, he remarked, was a friend of his. But for such advantages he lay under the obligation to serve without pay in wartime, providing horse, forage and provisions . . . He was a polite, meek-mannered little man, very anxious in all the discussion to say nothing that could hurt the feelings of his prisoners, and I took a great liking to him.’ The Morning Post’s readers were then treated to an account of a good-hearted political discussion between the two men before the dispatch again turned to thoughts of escape while the train was in a tunnel. ‘The possibility had, however, presented itself to Spaarwater, for he shut both windows and just before we reached the entrance opened the breech of his Mauser to show me it was fully loaded.’
The story handed down through Spaarwater’s family confirms much of Churchill’s account The only significant difference concerns this incident in the Volksrust tunnel. ‘Here,’ Spaarwater told his family, ‘Churchill whispered that every man had his price, and that the guards would be richly rewarded if they looked the other way in order that their prisoners could escape. But I was not to be bought.’
Pencilled note from Churchill for H.G. Spaarwater, who guarded him on the train journey from Elandslaagte to Pretoria. (Martha Bam)
Spaarwater never had the chance to use his captive’s note of recommendation. He was killed in action a year later.
Another of the guards was nineteen-year-old Daniel Swanepoel of the Krugersdorp Commando, whose daughter, Johanna de Wet, I met at her home on the outskirts of Cape Town, where she had assembled her daughters and grandchildren so they could hear the story. She produced a photograph of the youthful Swanepoel proudly standing in uniform with his Mauser and fixed bayonet. ‘My father sat opposite Churchill throughout the twenty-four-hour journey, and at Germiston station brought him a cup of coffee,’ she said. ‘Father thought it was made with burnt potatoes rather than real coffee, but Churchill seemed to like it.’
From what Mrs de Wet’s father had told her, Churchill appears to have dominated the compartment. His guards were uncertain of his status, and thought he must be ‘some kind of big man, perhaps a general’. Swanepoel remembered seeing some of the prisoners saluting Churchill when they arrived at Pretoria, which convinced him of his importance.
‘My father later became a prominent Johannesburg businessman with a large butchery,’ Johanna de Wet told me. ‘He said that meeting Churchill changed his life. You know, they corresponded regularly in later years. During the war my father sent him a bible signed by important people in Johannesburg.’
‘Do you have anything from my grandfather?’
‘Oh yes. Churchill sent my father a signed copy of his book [My Early Life], and even when he was Prime Minister during the war sent Christmas greetings written in his own hand and dated 25 December 1940.’
During the journey Churchill and Thomas Frankland, the young Lieutenant from the Dublin Fusiliers, met the man who had been responsible for placing the boulders on the track which derailed the armoured train. Churchill took the opportunity to leaven his otherwise serious dispatch with humour. The Boer, ‘a dear old gentleman . . . hoped we bore no malice. We replied by no means, and that we would do the same for him with pleasure any day.’
Frankland told the old man he thought his exploit warranted a medal; but the Boers, Churchill recorded, had more practical rewards, and he had been granted ‘fourteen days’ furlough to go home to his farm and see his wife. His evident joy and delight were touching. I said, “Surely this is a very critical time to leave the front. You may miss an important battle.”
‘“Yes,” he replied simply, “I hope so.”’
At Volksrust, the prisoners’ first stop in the Transvaal, the guards were changed: ‘The honest burghers who had captured us had to return to the front.’ Churchill’s readers were informed that the journey continued under the eye of ‘a rather dilapidated policeman of a gendarme type, who spat copiously on the floor of the carriage and informed us that we should be shot if we attempted to escape. Having no desire to speak to this fellow, we let down the sleeping shelves of our compartment and, as the train steamed out of Volksrust, turned to sleep.’
The twenty-four-hour train journey to Pretoria ended at midday on 18 November. On a bright, sunny day, the prisoners were met by a considerable crowd. Churchill’s next despatch, dated 3 December, describes the scene: ‘ugly women with bright parasols, loafers and ragamuffins, fat burghers too heavy to ride at the front, and a long line of untidy, white-helmeted policemen – “zarps” as they were called [“Zuid Afri
ka Republik” was embroidered on their shoulder-flashes] – who looked like broken down constabulary . . . Now for the first time since my capture I hated the enemy.’ He contrasted the ‘simple valiant burghers at the front’ with the ‘slimy sleek officials’ in whose hands he now found himself: ‘Here were the creatures who had fattened on the spoils.’
At first Churchill was put with the soldiers, who were to be marched off to an enclosed camp at Pretoria’s racecourse. A photograph shows Churchill, still wearing the Irish Fusilier’s forage cap, standing nonchalantly to the side of an assembly of soldiers in pith helmets. The men’s morale was suffering from the events of the past three days, which led Churchill to tell them to brace up and show the onlookers that they cared for the cause for which they fought. When they responded positively to his leadership, he began to think how an uprising and escape, or even a rebellion, might be organised.
It was a thought which he was to develop in the days ahead, but meanwhile, having been reunited with the captured officers, he hastily scribbled a note which he handed to his captors when he arrived at the States Model School, which was being used to housed British officers who had been taken prisoner: ‘Morning Post, London. Captured unarmed 15th Frere detained Pretoria urge release meanwhile instruct Robertson Club Durban act for me. Churchill.’ ‘Robertson, Durban Club’, was what he actually meant.
EIGHT
The States Model School
