by Celia Sandys
The barber had lost his money, and the gaolers had lost their most important prisoner. Consternation now turned to panic. The odious Field Cornet Malan stormed about the building telling the trembling guards that General Joubert would hang them if they could not produce Churchill. A thorough search of the school and its grounds produced nothing more than the missing prisoner’s letter to de Souza. At 9.30 Commandant Opperman ordered a roll-call, which finally confirmed that Churchill had indeed flown.
For the moment the Boers could only guess at the manner of his escape. Among the rumours was one that he had been disguised as a woman, and at first the authorities, like Marie de Souza, suspected either complicity or slackness among the sentries. Opperman’s handwritten report to de Souza concluded: ‘In my view the only way he could have escaped was by bribing one or more of the guards, because the guards were so placed that it would have been impossible for him to escape without their knowledge.’
One sentry, Stephan Schotel, who had been on duty at the time of the escape, was to harbour a resentment of Churchill all his life. His only consolation, he later told his wife, was the humiliating way in which he believed Churchill had got away – by horse cart, hidden in one of the containers used for emptying the latrines. Was Schotel, I wonder, the guard who, turning away to light his cigarette, gave Churchill the few seconds he needed to scramble over the fence? Standing so close to the latrine, he would not have believed that a prisoner could have eluded him. His version of events persists in his family to this day.
In fact, Opperman’s report was passing the buck: in a properly run prison, the escape by Privates Cahill and Bridge five days before Churchill’s would have alerted him to the loopholes in his regime. Churchill, though, could afford to take a lenient view of the sloppy discipline. On reaching safety he telegraphed de Souza: ‘Escape not due to any fault of your guards.’
The misleading reference in Churchill’s letter to ‘the arrangements I have succeeded in making in conjunction with my friends outside’ had its intended effect. The Boers, assuming there were accomplices at large in Pretoria, wasted considerable time and effort searching the houses of possible suspects. The Pretoria magistrate’s search warrant revealed their belief that Churchill was hidden in ‘a certain house in this town inhabited by certain parties, to be pointed out by Detective Donovan’. Donovan must have worked by trial and error rather than on any actual information, for a great many houses were searched – including that of Dr Gunning, the Deputy Commandant at the States Model School, who came under suspicion because he had an English wife.
The Reverend Godfray gave up his Sunday services at the school, worried lest he be suspected of complicity in the escape. (Later, when Pretoria was occupied by the British, Godfray would claim to have assisted Churchill’s flight. Haldane poured scorn on this claim, as Godfray was not much regarded by the British officers, and was invariably accompanied by the commandant throughout his visits. Churchill also denied it in a letter dated 30 November 1900 to Godfray’s niece, Miss Haccquoil, who had written to him about her uncle’s story.)
The government’s annoyance at the escape of their important prisoner just as they were about to let him go was reflected in its erratic response. A number of English living in Pretoria, including a nurse from the hospital adjacent to the States Model School, were evicted from the Transvaal, and several policemen suspected of complicity were sent to the front. One girl who had smiled at the prisoners on the other side of the railings was fined £25, while another was accused of distracting the guards by dropping a ring. Marie de Souza’s diary records: ‘Saturday 16th. Churchill’s flight has caused all this unpleasantness – houses searched and girls arrested for writing love letters. It is cruel!’
The handwritten ‘wanted’ poster.
The initial description issued by the authorities on 13 December described Churchill as: ‘About 5ft 8in or 9in, blond with light thin moustache, walks with slight stoop, cannot speak any Dutch, during long conversation he occasionally makes a rattling noise in his throat.’ On the eighteenth a handwritten poster offering £25 for his recapture ‘dead or alive’ was posted at Government House, Pretoria. It was accompanied by a photograph ‘taken most probably about 18 months ago’, and a more complete, if unflattering, description:
Englishman, 25 years of age, about 5 feet 8 inches in height, medium build, stooping gait, fair complexion, reddish brown hair, almost invisible moustache, speaks through his nose, cannot give full expression to the letter ‘s’, and does not know a word of Dutch. Wore a suit of brown clothes, but not uniform – an ordinary suit of clothes.
The poster was issued by an official named Lodk de Haas, a volunteer from Europe in the Hollander Corps who was the secretary in the Commission of Peace and Order, which was responsibility for security in Pretoria. He later confided in a South African diplomat he met in Belgium, Ambassador du Buisson, that he had been sufficiently concerned by Churchill’s escape to put up the reward money personally. In 1908 Churchill and de Haas were to correspond personally about the poster. Churchill, while thanking de Haas for his good wishes on the occasion of his marriage, added: ‘I think you might have gone as high as £50 without an overestimate of the value of the prize – if living.’
Some doubt has been cast on the authenticity of the handwritten poster. This seems to have arisen as a result of the appearance of bogus printed posters which purported to be original reward notices and which included a translation into English – in a typeface which was not designed until 1928. There can, however, be no doubt that the poster issued by de Haas was handwritten, in Afrikaans. In a letter dated 13 December 1944 to Mrs Kathleen Hill, Churchill’s personal private secretary, de Haas wrote: ‘I enclose a photo of the proclamation written and signed by me during the Boer War offering £25 for the escaped Prisoner of War Churchill, dead or alive.’ Soon after this de Haas visited No 10 Downing Street, following which, on 27 December 1944, he again wrote to Mrs Hill, drawing attention to an error in the English translation on the false poster, a copy of which had been reproduced in My Early Life: ‘The correct English rendering is not “on behalf of the Special Constable to anyone” but “to the Special Constable who . . .”In other words my offer was made to the police and not to the general public.’
Rumours soon began to circulate of Churchill’s recapture, and a number of suspects were actually apprehended, including a young British soldier with a resemblance to Churchill who was captured in the Eastern Transvaal and paraded before the authorities in Pretoria.
As Marie de Souza had feared, measures were now taken by the prison authorities to prevent further escapes. A twice-daily roll-call was instituted; no visits were allowed to patients being treated in Pretoria’s hospital; prisoners were confined within the main school building after 8.30 p.m.; and sleeping on the verandah was prohibited. Additional measures, such as the prohibition of beer and newspapers, were simply punitive, and were implemented with delight by Field Cornet Malan, in response to public opinion in Pretoria.
Within twenty-four hours of Churchill clambering over the iron railings, a formal inquiry was convened under Advocate Schagen van Leewen and H.W. Zeiler, a judicial commissioner. It achieved no more than to show that discipline in the prison was extremely lax. One of the guards, Corporal Scheepers, reported that a restless Churchill would walk around the compound until three or four in the morning. It was established that of the nine guards who should have been on duty in and around the building when the escape took place, only eight were in fact present. The sentry who might have seen Churchill climbing the fence was missing. When the guard changed at 8 p.m. the post was again occupied, but the sentry, Jan Montgomery, noticed nothing unusual when Churchill passed within five yards of him as he walked into Skinner Street. The only startling revelation made by the inquiry was the earlier escape of the two private soldiers, which the guards had thought inadvisable to report to their superiors.
The blustering Malan levelled the charge of breaking parole at Church
ill, leading Adrian Hofmeyr to comment: ‘A man gives his parole, and yet he is guarded by men armed to the teeth . . . some of these officials will do anything for a fig-leaf.’ Shamefully, on 16 December, with motives it is hard to fathom, the Daily Nation, a Durban paper, sought to blacken Churchill’s character: ‘Mr Winston Churchill’s escape is not regarded in military circles as either a brilliant or an honourable exploit. He was captured as a combatant, and, of course, placed under the same parole as the officers taken prisoner. He has, however, chosen to disregard an honourable undertaking, and it would not be surprising if the Pretoria authorities adopted more strenuous measures to prevent such conduct.’ The piece was erroneous in all respects.
The allegation that Churchill broke his parole would prove impossible to scotch, in spite of various legal actions he would bring over the years to contest it. In some ways it is not surprising, for his trail of immense achievements, political and otherwise, would inevitably leave in its wake those who would jump at any chance to disparage him. The story was still being repeated as late as 1964, when, while taking part in a ninetieth-birthday television tribute to Churchill, the former Labour Home Secretary Herbert Morrison said: ‘I think I remember his name in the Boer War where he was taken prisoner and then was put on parole and then broke his parole.’ Lord Morrison, as he then was, subsequently apologised. It is probable that he did not appreciate the full implications of his words, having himself been a conscientious objector when of military age, and thus unaware of military traditions. Even while I was researching this book, an eminent British newspaper editor asked me how I would deal with ‘the matter of Churchill breaking his parole and leaving his friends in the lurch’.
The question of parole is conclusively dealt with by reference to the Transvaal Archives Depot. As the correspondence between the State Secretary of the Transvaal, F.W. Reitz, and General Joubert makes clear, the authorities were determined to guard Churchill at least as closely as the other prisoners. Then, when he had escaped, Joubert, furious that the man over whose release he had been dithering had made off of his own accord, did his best to malign the fugitive by implying he had broken his parole, suggesting to Reitz: ‘I wonder whether it would not be a good thing to make public the correspondence about the release of Churchill to show the world what a scoundrel he is.’ Reitz, knowing that Churchill had never in fact been offered parole, declined to publish any documents, as he knew that an attempt to defame Churchill by releasing the correspondence would be likely to backfire.
That Churchill had abandoned his friends was another myth connected with his escape which would provide fertile ground for those who sought to disparage him. The first shots came in 1900 from Lord Rosslyn, who had arrived in South Africa as a war correspondent at the beginning of that year, joined Thorneycroft’s Mounted Infantry, was taken prisoner, escaped and then recaptured. In his book Twice Captured he wrote of Churchill: ‘He was not a persona grata with his fellow prisoners, and, as far as I can ascertain did not play quite fairly with the others who concocted the plot but according to them followed the principles of sauve qui peut [every man for himself] rather than shoulder to shoulder.’
Churchill wrote to Haldane, who had himself escaped from the States Model School in March 1900, enclosing a copy of the offending page of Rosslyn’s book, together with his recollection of what had actually occurred. Haldane’s reply has been lost, but in 1935, amplifying his unpublished diary, he wrote that Churchill’s account ‘threw quite an unexpected light on the matter, and I replied that I laid no blame on him for departing when he did’.
Churchill had no need to pursue the issue further, as William Blackwood & Sons, the publishers of Twice Captured, halted the distribution of the book, and agreed to delete the offending passage from future editions. Thus, the ‘unexpected light’ remained, for the moment, unexplored.
The matter was not dealt with entirely to Churchill’s satisfaction, as copies of the book were already in circulation. However, he at least had the satisfaction of publicly humiliating Rosslyn when he spoke as guest of honour at the annual dinner of the Pall Mall Club on 25 October 1900. In addition to defaming Churchill, Rosslyn had cast serious aspersions on certain British regiments and commanders, and it was this which Churchill took as his cue as part of a wider-ranging speech. He began lightly: ‘“Twice Captured”. That is a curious title; it is not a very difficult thing to be captured. [Laughter] A man might just as well call his book “Twice Bankrupt”. [Laughter]’ He ended this part of his speech: ‘I think it intolerable that a person who, by his own fault or folly, has fallen in the mud, should endeavour to hide his own ignominy by splashing mud over other people.’
Telegram from General Joubert to F.W. Reitz, the Transvaal State Secretary, suggesting: ‘I wonder whether it would not be a good thing to make public the correspondence about the release of Churchill to show the world what a scoundrel he is.’ (National Archives Repository, Pretoria)
The story that Churchill had deserted his friends was again aired in 1907, in an attempt to discredit him when he was to speak in support of a Liberal candidate at a by-election. The allegation was made to Major Sandham Griffith, an acquaintance of Haldane’s. Griffith thought this an unfair tactic, and even though he supported the Liberal’s opponent, he wrote to Haldane asking him to send a telegram to the effect: ‘[I] contradict absolutely [the] statement that I ever said Churchill deserted me in Pretoria.’ In his letter Griffith explained that ‘this statement about cowardly desertion’ came from a friend, who had been told it by ‘a lady who said she heard it from you’. Haldane did as he was asked, with the result, as reported to him by Griffith, that the lady denied ever making the allegation. Haldane copied the exchange of letters to Churchill, saying: ‘The enclosed correspondence may amuse you . . . I kept no copy of my reply to Griffith but it was in terms of [the] telegram he suggested I should send him.’ Whatever his private feelings may have been, Haldane, to date, had supported Churchill whenever the allegations about his conduct during the escape were aired publicly.
His stance began to change in 1912 when Blackwood & Sons, in Blackwood’s Magazine, again suggested that Churchill had not played fair with his fellow prisoners, and Churchill brought an action for libel against them. The hearing was scheduled for 20 May that year. According to his diary, Haldane, by 1912 a brigadier, was summoned to a meeting on 25 April by Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, who wanted him to testify in his favour. The resulting discussion revealed that they had interpreted events differently. While Haldane had already declined Blackwood’s request to give evidence against Churchill, he now also declined to testify in his favour in the detailed manner he wanted.
According to Haldane’s note of their meeting, when he was asked to state that Churchill had behaved ‘quite fairly and properly’, he replied that, ‘believing him to be a man of honour, I would be prepared to go into the witness box and depose that, having heard his statement which, however, differed from my own view, I would accept his word in the matter and assume he had escaped with no idea he was not behaving fairly to Brockie and myself.’ Whereupon, in Haldane’s words, Churchill ‘assumed a browbeating air and said that if I would not give him support he would state in Court that Brockie and I had funked going’.
It is perfectly possible to imagine Churchill, seated in his imposing office, haranguing his visitor, who, being a long way below him in the military pecking order, wished to avoid a quarrel with someone who could do his career real harm. However, Haldane stuck to his guns. He took the view, he said, that Churchill should not have gone alone, and would not have words which suggested otherwise put into his mouth. If Churchill would send him his proposed statement, Haldane would inform him what he would be prepared to say.
In the event, Blackwood’s chose not to defend the case. Haldane wrote to Churchill’s friend and lawyer, F.E. Smith, three days before the date set for the hearing: ‘I see by the papers, however, that the case is fixed for Monday next when it is impossible for me
to be in London. As it is undefended I do not suppose my absence will make any difference to Churchill or you.’
From that moment Haldane seems to have developed an increasingly jaundiced view of Churchill’s actions, and to have become considerably embittered against him. The publication in 1930 of Churchill’s autobiography My Early Life, which gave his own heroic version of his escapades in South Africa, inevitably left the impression that on the occasions when Haldane and he acted in concert on the armoured train and in the prison escape, the soldier was eclipsed by the younger war correspondent. The fact that so were all the others who came within Churchill’s orbit would have been little consolation to the man who retired in 1925, after a distinguished military career, as General Sir Aylmer Haldane.
In a letter in April 1931 to Lord Knutsford, a Conservative politician, Haldane wrote that My Early Life maintained ‘what I honestly think is a fiction so far as his escape enters into it’. This judgement was tempered with an honest appreciation of Churchill’s qualities, which he had observed at close quarters, and the letter continued: ‘Though I have not much faith in him, I admire his undoubted courage, physical and moral, and we can’t afford in these days of sloppy statesmen to ignore that quality.’ Nevertheless, the bitterness was palpable.
