These down, he decided to take a hitch at religion, with which he had been inoculated repeatedly at Harrow, though it never properly took hold. He read Winwood Reade’s The Martyrdom of Man, of which, in a Conan Doyle story, Sherlock Holmes was to remark to Watson, “Let me recommend this book — one of the most remarkable ever penned.” Broadly speaking, Reade’s work is theological, but it does very little for organized religion, since (after a brilliant summary of the main events since Adam) it decides that humankind has nothing to look forward to after death. Not religious to start with, Churchill was by no means evangelically seized by Martyrdom; neither was he to get the call from Lecky’s Rise and Influence of Rationalism and History of European Morals, which gave him, he said, “a predominantly secular view.” Churchill’s religion, or lack of it, has been the source of wide speculation over the years. It has been flippantly suggested that he has a well-organized religion of his own, requiring no outside gods. A few anecdotes, perhaps apocryphal, support this view. During the last war, he was asked by a well-meaning clergyman, “Mr. Churchill, are you prepared to meet your God?” “I’m perfectly prepared,” said Churchill. “The question is, is God prepared to meet me?”
Among the most valuable books he found in this period was Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, which he read several times from cover to cover, practically committing it to memory. Then he tackled Shakespeare, finding the sacred plays and poems as eloquent as advertised but somewhat verbose and involuted for everyday use. Nevertheless, he plowed through the lot. His style was affected by his reading course. A number of his fellow officers recall that his speech became more richly upholstered with every volume he mastered. Indeed, he developed into such a nuisance around headquarters that he was finally sat on, in the literal sense of the word. At one point, when he had monopolized the conversation for nearly an hour, his mates grabbed him up, pinioned him on the floor, and then shoved him under a sofa, where they kept him captive all evening while they played cards.
The unfailing monotony of barracks, or bungalow, life in Bangalore eventually got on Churchill’s nerves. Early in 1897 he wangled a three-month leave to go to London, where he and his mother applied pressures to get him more profitably situated. By a miracle, a nasty tribe of Indians called the Pathans, brigands and torturers, had just erupted on a northern frontier and Sir Bindon Blood was called upon to quell them. Churchill was at the racecourse at Goodwood, a little better than three pounds ahead, when he heard the encouraging news. He promptly telegraphed Sir Bindon to remind him of the promise made at Deepdene. Then he caught the next boat train for India. He was on fire to get at the Pathans, for whom, all in a twinkling, he had developed a raging hatred.
In Bombay he found a somewhat equivocal answer from Sir Bindon Blood, saying, “Very difficult; no vacancies; come up as a correspondent; will try to fit you in. B.B.” This was a poser, as Churchill admitted freely. His series on Cuba for the Graphic had been gleefully received but had got him no further offers. Journalistically speaking, he was between engagements. But he hopped confidently around to the office of the Allahabad Pioneer, a local journal, and had no trouble browbeating the editor into putting him on the staff. And then he had some good news from his mother, who, keeping abreast of developments by wire, had stormed Fleet Street in his behalf. The Daily Telegraph had agreed to make him a war correspondent, for the slightly depressing sum of five pounds per column. Churchill was temporarily set back by this niggardly arrangement. “It was not much, considering that I had to pay my own expenses,” he complained.
In Bangalore, he wheedled his commanding officer into extending his leave. Then he took his dresser, a confused child named Mohammed Bey, and an armload of books and boarded a train for the front, the whereabouts of which was hazy in his mind. At the station he said, “Give me a couple of tickets to Nowshera. How far is it?” The clerk looked at a map covering a whole wall, made a few calculations, and replied, “Two thousand and twenty-eight miles. Sahib wish a round trip?” Churchill was obliged to sprint back to his house for an additional sack of rupees. The trip took five days and passed comfortably, with Churchill propped up on some cushions reading the books and Mohammed Bey twirling a water-soaked punkah, to keep off the heat and the flies.
Facing the Pathans near Nowshera, the railhead, was a segment of the British Indian Army known as the Malakand Field Force. Churchill and Bey joined it without incident, making the last leg up to the mountains by pony cart. Sir Bindon Blood was temporarily absent, having chased over to a neighboring valley to quell the Bunerwals, a tribe not quite, but almost, as nasty as the Pathans. Hearing that the latter were celebrating, the Bunerwals had understandably voted to kick over the traces, too. Accordingly they had oiled up their handful of antique muskets and opened fire on a British-owned jackass. Blood at this time was a man past middle age, a worn and harried but devoted officer. For years his life had consisted in quelling upstarts. He was interrupted at every turn. If he sat down in his Bombay club, he was likely to be handed a note on a salver, saying, “Rush up to Poontang and quell the Durkees.” He even took night calls, like a country physician. His family’s whole history was adventurous; its most distinguished member, a Colonel Blood, had given the line something to shoot at by trying to steal the crown jewels, in the time of Charles II. A guard had caught him on the Tower stairs and had him arrested, but the attempt was much praised in court circles, even by the King himself. In waiting for Blood to quell the Bunerwals, Churchill, by his own story, “acquired an entirely new faculty,” one that he was to refine to famous heights of artistry. He learned to drink whiskey. Heretofore, he had downed wine, and even brandy, in recommended British style, but had avoided encounters with whiskey. In a flash of vision now with the field force he saw whiskey as man’s best friend, giving it priority over the traditional dog. Of all the accounts of this distilled epiphany on the hilltop, his is incomparably the best.
After commenting adversely on the heat and favorably on his discovery, he wrote, “Wishing to fit myself for active service conditions I overcame the ordinary weakness of the flesh. By the end of five days I had completely overcome my repugnance to the taste of whiskey. Nor was this a momentary acquirement. On the contrary the ground I gained in those days I have firmly entrenched, and held throughout my whole life. Once one got the knack of it, the very repulsion from the flavour developed an attraction of its own; and to this day, although I have always practised true temperance, I have never shrunk when occasion warranted it from the main basic standing refreshment of the white officer in the East.”
Churchill’s candor in connection with his quick and lasting toehold on the bottle is refreshing in a world filled with inveterate apologists. Perhaps because of the proscribed delicatessen at Eden, the majority of mankind spends a great deal of time feeling guilty about something or other. Only infrequently do people come along who can pick a course, stick to it, and remain perfectly satisfied through thick and thin. Churchill is pre-eminently one of these; his early liberation from doubt shows today in his face, which has real character. It is the strong, well-nourished face of a man who long ago decided to drink what he pleased, gorge at will, suit himself in any way it seemed convenient, and in general to follow lines of self-centered behavior popularly supposed to stamp the countenance with a look of weakness. It is a free-enterprise face, somewhat gothic in feeling. The heroic visage stands out in healthy contrast among cautious, remorseful drinkers.
His brother officers warmed to him in the Indian mountains as he demonstrated an easy ascendancy over veterans who had been drinking whiskey since long before his birth. By the day of Sir Bindon’s return from the Bunerwals, Churchill was established on the road to a continuous and sober whiskey-drinking career that has had few parallels in his time. And now, said Blood, the hour had struck for quelling the Pathans. The Malakand Field Force became mobile. To accompany it in style, Churchill had to buy two horses and hire a groom; he also bought some military haberdashery formerly owned by soldiers who h
ad fallen during the campaign. The fighting in these mountains differed from that in the Cuban jungle, being dangerous. Properly speaking, Churchill had never been exposed to fatal warfare before. The three brigades of the force moved carefully from one hostile area to another and at length, in the Mamund Valley, had the intense satisfaction of being fired upon. A few minutes later, the battle was joined in earnest. Churchill asked and got permission to penetrate into the most forward sector, where a couple of officers and a few Sikhs were arranged on the outskirts of a suspiciously empty village.
The village and the countryside suddenly sprang to life. Voicing a number of unsettling animal yelps, a group of Pathans dashed out of the houses; and from all the mountain ledges others dropped in clusters. Their first fire wounded a Sikh in the calf of the leg and felled one of the officers. When two Sikhs attempted to drag him back, a second burst drove them off, and the leading Pathan, a hideous and apelike giant, fell upon his body with flashing sword. It was at this point that the descendant of Marlborough showed his colors. The drums and trumpets of Malplaquet and Blenheim were sounding hotly in his ears. With that aroused spirit which was to cause Adolf Hitler such acute suffering, he drew his own sword, uttered a frightful rallying cry of Harrow (where he had won the Public School Fencing Championship) and advanced singlehanded to the attack. The Pathan pulled up, frozen by what appeared to be a series of novel but highly expert flourishes. Then he dropped his blade, picked up a handy rock, and let fly. Here again Churchill displayed traces of the cunning and resourceful first duke. He tossed his own sword aside and drew his revolver. His first shot sent the Pathan howling and limping toward the mountains; the second and third accelerated his pace wonderfully. As Churchill looked around, however, he saw himself to be at this moment the one-man apex of the Malakand Field Force’s thrust into the Pathan hills. Supporting the wounded officer, he beat a quick retreat, with a covering fire from the more judicious troops to the rear.
These latter cheered his progress down the slope. Several of them said afterward that the rescue was among the finest examples of individual valor they had ever seen. But Churchill was far from finished; like J. P. Jones, he had not yet begun to fight. Flushed by the prehistoric male fever of combat, he laid down his human burden and snatched a Martini-Henry rifle from the hands of a dead trooper. He straightened up, making a splendid target, and fired about forty rounds at the rapidly advancing arc of Pathans, who began to drop on all sides while others leaped forward in great numbers. The British lieutenant colonel in charge crawled up and yelled, “Dash to the rear and try to bring up the Buffs!” “Sorry, but you’ll have to put that in writing,” replied Churchill, as he drew a bead on the closest tribesman. The lieutenant colonel gave up and crawled back to his Sikhs, who were demoralized, somebody said, as much by the superhuman conduct of Churchill as by the imminence of an untidy death.
Despite the reckless defense put up by the correspondent of the London Daily Telegraph and the Allahabad Pioneer, the situation was about as dark as it could be. The unit was nearly surrounded and out of ammunition; its members awaited the climax of what promised to turn into a very messy tribal fiesta. As they watched, little clouds of Pathans burst from behind rocks everywhere and started on in a last, furious rush. And then, in the best American movie style, the shrill and garbled notes of bugles at the charge sounded at the foot of the hill. “Get down, Churchill, for God’s sake!” cried the lieutenant colonel. “It’s the Buffs and the 11th Bengal Lancers!” The relief party swept on up past the commander, and past Churchill, who had thrown down his rifle and retrieved his sword, and into the enemy, who fled in wild disorder. The battle was over. It was said to have been the first time the Pathans had ever been balked by a cub reporter working at space rates.
For his part in the Malakand campaign, which continued for some weeks further, Churchill won rewards both military and journalistic. He was mentioned in dispatches, an extraordinary honor for one so young. Sir Bindon stated that the officer commanding the forward force “has praised the courage and resolution of Lieutenant W. L. S. Churchill, 4th Hussars, the correspondent of the Pioneer newspaper, who made himself useful at a critical moment.” Journalistically, the restless subaltern climbed even higher. His pieces were an instantaneous success. Indeed, they were the talk of London. Since Cuba, his style had matured and his knowledge had widened. Perhaps equally important, he had a good deal more to write about. While the Pathans were without incendiary grass-snakes, they were well organized and venomously disposed, and Sir Bindon Blood’s army was obliged to take every tactical advantage to bring them under control.
The Story of the Malakand Field Force, an expanded collection of war articles by Winston Spencer Churchill, was published in book form in March 1898. Among the rich harvest of comments it reaped was a letter to the author from the Prince of Wales, afterward King Edward VII. It went as follows:
My dear Winston:
I cannot resist writing a few lines to congratulate you on the success of your book! I have read it with the greatest possible interest and I think the descriptions and the language generally excellent. Everybody is reading it, and I only hear it spoken of with praise. Having now seen active service you will wish to see more, and have as great a chance I am sure of winning the V.C. as Fin-castle had; and I hope you will not follow the example of the latter, who I regret to say intends leaving the Army in order to go into Parliament.
You have plenty of time before you, and you should certainly stick to the Army before adding M.P. to your name.
Hoping that you are flourishing, I am, Yours very sincerely,
A.E.
*
It was a kindly and generous encouragement from a royal prince to the promising son of an old drinking companion. Churchill never forgot it. Many years later, he in turn would stand staunchly by Edward’s grandson, who was renouncing the throne to marry an American divorcee. On that controversial occasion, bidding the young King good-by, his peculiar hat in one hand and his favorite walking stick in the other, Churchill recited the lines by Andrew Marvell on the beheading of Charles I, tapping out the meter on the floor:
“He nothing common did, or mean,
Upon that memorable scene.”
*
Churchill of course prized this stick even more highly after it had rendered its historic service. Toward the close of the Second World War, he was making a tour of Roehampton Hospital and met a veteran who was having an artificial leg fitted.
“With your special limb you will be able to walk without extra support,” Churchill commented.
The soldier said, “I think so, sir, but I have a favor to ask. I’d like that old stick of yours.”
Churchill hesitated a moment, then replied, “Here are my heart, my hand, and my stick. Now you must take good care of this bit of wood — it’s been all over the world with me.”
Chapter 10
NOT ALL the talk about The Malakand Field Force was rhapsodic. With a sublime disregard for consequences that endures to the moment, Churchill stepped on a lot of expensively shod toes. The whole book, though brilliant, was written with an Olympian finality that would have been more digestible from the pen of, say, Napoleon, or Wellington. The second lieutenant resolved problems of military procedure that had plagued the British General Staff for years. In connection with one sweeping censure, he said, “I am aware that those who criticise an existing state of things ought to be prepared with some constructive legislation, which should remedy the evils they denounce. Though it is unlikely that the Government of India will take my advice, either wholly or in part, I hereby exhort them to quit the folly of a penny-wise policy, and to adhere consistently to the principles of employing British and native troops in India in a regular proportion.”
Churchill advised the government to retitle many ranks in the Army. “Deputy-Assistant-Adjutant-General” should be “Brigade Adjutant,” he said, and “Deputy-Assistant-Quartermaster-General” should be “Brigade Quartermaster.”
> The question was raised in London, even by some of the friendliest critics, What the deuce did this have to do with the Pathans? One fellow, as keen about changed titles as Churchill himself, suggested that the title of the book be changed to A Subaltern’s Hints to Generals.
Nevertheless, the notices were sufficiently excited to warm the heart of any beginning writer. “A wisdom and comprehension far beyond his years” was attributed to the author in one leading paper, and in others there were like hosannas. An editorial defect irritated nearly everybody. Being awkwardly placed in India, Churchill had entrusted the proofreading to the only literary member of his family, an uncle who had once composed a sprightly monograph on Devonshire subsoil. The uncle was a leisurely chap, and his correction of Churchill’s proofs had apparently taken place during a light nap. The finished product was filled with typographical miswhackers of the most embarrassing kind. He had scored with particular violence on punctuation, seemingly having gone at it much as one dances the conga — “one, two, three — comma; one, two, three — dash,” and so on. The Athenaeum was moved to describe the volume as “Pages of Napier, punctuated by a mad printer’s reader.”
Winston Churchill: An Informal Study of Greatness Page 13
