Churchill

by Celia Sandys

  It would be some time before Howard could be publicly credited with his part in Churchill’s escape, but nevertheless he was under suspicion. A Boer commandant and five burghers arrived at the mine in early 1900 with the intention of taking him to Pretoria for interrogation. He saw only two courses of action open to him: to bribe them, or, because it was a matter of his life or theirs, to shoot them. He ushered them into his dining room for whisky and refreshments, inviting them to lean their rifles in the comer next to the door, then left the room, ostensibly to change for the journey. He returned with his hands in his pockets, and a loaded pistol in each hand. Standing by the rifles, he offered the Boers £50 on the spot and a further £200 when the war was over if they would go away. They accepted his offer and returned to Pretoria, to report that Howard had disappeared.

  By this time Howard had also helped Haldane and Le Mesurier, who escaped four months after Churchill, to safety. It seems an extraordinary coincidence that, with no word having passed between them, they should have found refuge and help at the same coalmine. But the mine was near the railway which both provided the fugitives with a directional guide towards the nearest neutral territory and offered the possibility of a ride. It was entirely to be expected that they would take the same route. Like Churchill before them, Haldane and Le Mesurier were in dire straits as they approached the area of Witbank. Churchill, having eaten only a little chocolate and walked a long way through difficult country, had been hungry and physically exhausted after thirty hours on the run. Heading towards what he hoped might be a friendly bantu kraal, he had found himself at Howard’s house. Haldane and Le Mesurier, out of food after six days, approached the Bantu for help and were directed to the British miners in the vicinity. Haldane later wrote of his amazement at discovering that Churchill had been there before them. From Witbank onwards their escape was arranged in much the same manner as Churchill’s.

  It had soon became apparent to Charles Burnham that he himself would have to travel with the wool if he was to be successful in smuggling Churchill across the border. None of the goods trains ran all the way to Lourenço Marques, and unless he was present to smooth their journey, the wagons might stand interminably in sidings awaiting their turn for onward movement. Claiming that a sharp fall in wool prices was imminent, and that there was thus a need to avoid any delay, Burnham obtained a travelling permit from the Field Cornet, paid the railwaymen at Witbank to hitch his wagons to the next train that came through, and rode with them in the guard’s van. At Middleburg a further bribe speeded his consignment as far as Waterval Onder, where the wagons spent the night in a siding.

  Churchill’s Route to Freedom

  Having plied the guard with whisky, Burnham had no trouble in effecting an introduction to the guard of the next train, although it was intimated that another bottle would help for the next leg. To purchase this and to have dinner, Burnham went to the local hotel, where the proprietor assured him that Churchill had passed that way two days before, dressed as a Roman Catholic priest. Heartened by the circulation of this false rumour, which he hoped would put any hunters off the scent, Burnham returned to the station, where the relief guard coupled his wagons to a passenger train bound for Lourenço Marques.

  The train reached Komatipoort with only one alarm when, at Kaapmuiden, Burnham had to entice an armed Boer away from Churchill’s wagon with the offer of a cup of coffee at the station stall. At Komatipoort, where the train waited for the night, the customs officer agreed that in order to avoid delay the consignment could cross the border without being searched. However, the following morning the stationmaster on the Portuguese side at Resana Garcia steadfastly refused to allow the goods wagons to accompany the passenger train, although he promised to send them on by the very next goods train, which would arrive in Lourenço Marques late that afternoon.

  The passenger hidden in the wool, unaware of anything that had happened en route, had been looking forward to ‘the excitement of rejoining the Army’ and ‘the triumph of a successful escape’. He had also been ‘haunted perpetually by anxieties about the search at the frontier’. It was thus with some apprehension that he had faced the night stop in Komatipoort, but once the train was through Resana Garcia and away from the border area, ‘I pushed my head out of the tarpaulin and sang and shouted and crowed at the top of my voice. Indeed, I was so carried away by thankfulness and delight that I fired my revolver two or three times in the air as a feu de joie. None of these follies led to any evil results.’

  Arriving in Lourenço Marques at 4 p.m., Churchill, black from the coal dust in the bottom of the wagon, slipped down between the couplings and, ‘mingling unnoticed with the Kaffirs and loafers in the yard – which my slovenly and unkempt appearance well fitted me to do – strolled my way towards the gates and found myself in the streets of Lourenço Marques’.

  Burnham, who had been briefly arrested for loitering while waiting near the wool trucks, set off for the British Consulate. Churchill followed some yards behind. At the Consulate the secretary thought the dishevelled caller was a fireman from one of the ships in the harbour, and told him to come back during office hours. The subsequent altercation brought the Consul first to an upstairs window and then to the door. ‘From that moment every resource of hospitality and welcome was at my disposal.’ That evening, Churchill’s penchant for hats, well known in his later life, manifested itself in Lourenço Marques, where, in Burnham’s words, ‘We drove to a store where he bought a complete rig-out and a cowboy hat’ To Howard they telegraphed: ‘Goods arrived safely.’

  Churchill then sent an amusing telegram to the editor of the Pretoria newspaper the Standard and Diggers News to say he would be happy to give them details of his escape when he was next in Pretoria, which he estimated – optimistically, as it turned out – would be in March. The editor published the telegram from the escaped prisoner in the same edition which carried an advertisement calling for volunteers to guard prisoners of war.

  A small coaster, the Induna, was sailing that evening for Durban, and lest Boer agents should attempt to kidnap Churchill, ‘nearly a dozen gentlemen escorted me to the ship armed with revolvers’. Where others would have taken the opportunity to relax for the first time in many days, Churchill now completed a dispatch of almost five thousand words to the Morning Post: ‘It is from the cabin of this little vessel . . . that I write the concluding lines of this letter.’ This was the ‘extra chapter’ which, in his letter to Lady Randolph, Oliver Borthwick had prophesied only a week before.

  ELEVEN

  A Soldier Again

  ‘Youth seeks Adventure. Journalism requires Advertisement. Certainly I had found both. I became for the time quite famous.’

  WINSTON CHURCHILL, My Early Life

  WINSTON CHURCHILL WAS NOW A household name. The hero of the armoured train had cocked a snook at the Boers by climbing over their prison wall, evading his pursuers and returning to the fray. He was soon to be elevated to the senior ranks of the army by Ogden’s cigarettes – boasting themselves ‘British Made by British Labour’ – which would feature him in their cigarette-card series ‘Leading Generals at the War’.

  Churchill arrived off Durban on board the Induna during the afternoon of Saturday 23 December 1899. Some twenty troopships and supply vessels were at anchor in the harbour, and three more, crammed with troops, were circling outside it awaiting pilots. Ashore, considerable excitement had been aroused by the headline in that morning’s Natal Mercury: ‘WINSTON CHURCHILL’S ESCAPE – ARRIVES HERE TODAY’. Durban’s pre-war population of eighteen thousand had been swelled to thirty thousand by Uitlander refugees, for whom Churchill’s triumph was a welcome antidote to what became known as the ‘Black Week’ of the Boer War. While he had been escaping and making his way across the veldt, the British Army had suffered three staggering defeats, at Magersfontein, Stormberg and Colenso. The casualties incurred – two thousand wounded and nearly a thousand killed – had been on a scale hitherto unimagined, and had shaken British c
onfidence in the certainty of victory.

  On 9 December Lieutenant-General Lord Methuen, who had been given the task of relieving the beleaguered British garrison at Kimberley, had ordered an assault on Magersfontein Hill – the very hill which the amateur cartographers in the States Model School had overlooked, and on which Louis de Souza had placed his finger when Churchill had forecast the relief of Kimberley once the British had crossed the River Modder. Now it barred the way of Methuen’s advancing forces, and would need to be taken before the siege could be raised.

  The Highland Brigade under Major-General Andrew Wauchope was ordered to make a night march of three miles, to be followed by a dawn assault in drill-book formation against an enemy whose position was but sketchily known. Over three thousand British troops in a closely formed column walked towards a trap set by men who better understood the changing nature of warfare. As the day began to break, a ripple of fire from the hill tore through their massed ranks. The Highland Brigade went to ground. Pegged down, without water and under a blazing sun, they exchanged fire with the largely unseen enemy for nine hours. By the afternoon morale began to slump, and a trickle of men rearwards turned to a flood. Over nine hundred British dead and wounded were collected from the battlefield the following day. Among the dead was General Wauchope, whose body was found within two hundred yards of the Boer trenches. Personal bravery was no substitute for outdated tactics.

  One Black Watch survivor, ‘A Perthite who was there’, evoked the feeling in the ranks after the disaster.

  Why weren’t we told of the trenches?

  Why weren’t we told of the wire?

  Why were we marched up in column?

  May Tommy Atkins enquire.

  Why were scouts not sent forward?

  Why were no scouts on our flank?

  Why attack in quarter column?

  Who made the mistake? Give his rank.

  Do they know his name in old England?

  Do they know his incompetence yet?

  Tommy has learnt to his sorrow,

  And Tommy can never forget.

  There had been a similar débâcle at Stormberg, where on 10 December an attempt had been made to recapture a strategic railway junction. Lieutenant-General Sir William Gatacre’s force, having been misled by a guide during a night march to the objective, was badly mauled by the enemy. Seven hundred men were missing or captured.

  Within a week of these two disasters Buller himself had suffered a serious repulse in an attempt to cross the Tugela River and relieve Ladysmith. The main attack, which was to cross the Tugela at Colenso, was to be preceded by a crossing some three miles upstream by the Irish Brigade under Major-General Fitzroy Hart. Like Gatacre, Hart was misinformed by a guide. As a result his brigade found itself in a loop of the Tugela, being shot at from both sides from a distance of only a few hundred yards.

  Meanwhile, at Colenso itself, twelve British field guns had come into action well in advance of the infantry which had been detailed to screen them. They were met by an overwhelming volume of rifle fire. Their commander, Colonel Long (the Estcourt garrison commander who had ordered out the armoured train), and his second in command were severely wounded. The gunners stuck to their guns, but were eventually forced into cover.

  With Hart in trouble and the guns abandoned, Buller called off the operation. His main concerns were now to extricate Hart’s men and to recover the guns. The survivors of the Irish Brigade eventually staggered back, while three officers and half a dozen gunners volunteered to retrieve the guns. The odds against them were overwhelming, and after two of the twelve had been recovered, Buller forbade any further attempts.

  The casualties, no more than 5 per cent of the force involved, had not, proportionally, been as severe as those at Magersfontein or Stormberg. Only about 150 had been killed, and half of the 750 wounded were fit again after a few weeks. Buller himself had been badly bruised in the ribs by shell fragments, but admitted only to being a little winded. The army returned to their base at Frere, the small town near which Churchill had been captured. The battle had been a serious reverse rather than a disaster, and the troops’ morale remained unimpaired. But Ladysmith was still under siege.

  As a result of the three setbacks – Magersfontein, Stormberg and Colenso – the War Office appointed a new Commander-in-Chief in India, Field Marshal Lord Roberts, and relegated Buller to command the forces in Natal.

  It was well known that Roberts and Buller were members of the opposing ‘rings’, Indian and African respectively, of the British military hierarchy. Roberts, who first made his name in Afghanistan, had the support of the War Minister, Lord Lansdowne, who had been Viceroy when Roberts was Commander-in-Chief in India. Buller belonged to the those whose association was with the African service. Their uneasy relationship could not have been helped by the telegram Roberts received a week before he sailed for South Africa: ‘Your gallant son died today. Condolences. Buller.’ Lieutenant Freddy Roberts, a galloper on Buller’s staff, had died attempting to save the abandoned guns at Colenso.

  For the moment, the people crammed along the Durban quayside were able to forget Black Week as the Induna, with their hero on board, slipped between the larger ships and steamed into a harbour decorated with flags. As the little ship approached the jetty, reported the Natal Mercury, Churchill was ‘detected on the captain’s bridge, his round boyish face shielded by a large brimmed hat. The instant he was recognised a ROUSING CHEER went up from the crowd which had gathered and as Mr Churchill bowed his acknowledgements he became the cynosure of all eyes, and all voices joined in one loud acclaim of welcome.’

  With no vacant space at the quayside, the ship was forced to triple berth. No sooner had she tied up than an admiral, a general and the Mayor of Durban came aboard to greet Churchill. They were followed by a welcoming crowd who swarmed over the two intervening ships, carried him shoulder-high, and, in the words of the Natal Mercury, ‘heedless of the dirt of coaling operations . . . would not be content until he had favoured them with a speech’. Once on shore, outside the African Boating Company’s offices, Churchill gave his first, impromptu, public wartime speech. If it was not as measured and polished as his later oratory, the tone is unmistakably Churchillian.

  . . . We are in the midst of a fierce struggle with vast military power, which has grown up in the heart of this country, which is resolved at all costs to gratify its reckless ambition by beating the British out of South Africa. [Cries of ‘Never!’ and a voice: ‘Never while we have such fine fellows as you!’] When I see around me such a crowd as this, such determination and such enthusiasm, I am satisfied that, no matter what the difficulties, no matter what the dangers and what the force they may bring against us, we shall be successful in the end. [Cheers and a voice: ‘God bless you, my boy!’] . . . You will see in this country the beginning of a new era, when peace and prosperity shall reign, so that the Cape may be in fact as well as in name a Cape of Good Hope. [Tremendous cheers]

  The crowd now commandeered the speaker and hauled him, seated in a rickshaw, through the streets to the steps of the town hall, where a cart had been drawn up as a platform from which he was again expected to speak. Hatless, hands on hips and with a Union Jack hoist beside him, he made his second battle-cry of the day, though not until the crown had sung ‘Rule Britannia’:

  I need not say how grateful I am for the great kindness you have done in your welcome to me. When I see this great demonstration I regard it not only as a personal kindness to me, and as a demonstration of hospitality to a stranger [Cries: ‘You’re not a stranger!’], but as a token of the unflinching and unswerving determination of this colony to throw itself into the prosecution of the war. [Cheers] . . . With the determination of a great Empire surrounded by colonies of unprecedented loyalty we shall carry our policy to a successful conclusion, and under the old Union Jack there will be an era of peace, purity, liberty, equality and good government in South Africa. [Cheers] I thank you once again for your great kindness. I am sure
I feel within myself a personal measure of that gratitude which every Englishman who loves his country must feel towards the loyal and devoted colonists of Natal. [Tremendous cheers]

  Churchill’s words were reported by the press as reverently as if they were statements of official intent uttered by the newly arrived Commander-in-Chief himself. They were still commanding many closely-printed column inches a week later, the Natal Witness reporting on 30 December: ‘He said we had not yet arrived at the half way house in the great struggle but would carry the campaign to a successful conclusion and under the Union Jack peace, liberty, purity, equality, good government would be established in South Africa.’ This was a political vision towards which Churchill and General Botha would work together during the next decade.

  Churchill was rescued from the crowd by the town Commandant, Captain Percy Scott. In the relative quiet of Scott’s office he gave the assembled reporters an account of his escape, carefully tailored so as not to compromise John Howard and the others who had sheltered him at the mine.

  When he left, he found that he had still not finally escaped the enthusiasm of Durban. The Natal Witness reported: ‘From the Town Hall to the Railway Station Mr Churchill’s journey was a triumphant procession, an ardent Britisher waving a Union Jack in front of Mr Churchill’s rickshaw . . . ordinary passengers, of which there was an exceptionally large number, had considerable difficulty in getting to their seats . . . Mr Churchill was accommodated in a reserved compartment and seemed considerably relieved to escape from the good natured attentions of the crowd.’ When, after much delay, the train steamed out, the crowd gave ‘a final cheer for the gallant gentleman who waved his final adieus from the carriage’.