The great Armored Train episode started as a piece of military stupidity and ended in a personal triumph for Churchill. His name was quite literally sung throughout England, even as the heroes of medieval legend became staples in the musical diet of the land. Churchill’s song went as follows:
You’ve heard of Winston Churchill;
This is all I need to say —
He’s the latest and the greatest
Correspondent of the day.
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Forty miles to the north of Estcourt, Sir George White was encircled at Ladysmith by strong units of hard-riding Boers. It was judged by the British commander at Estcourt that the thing to do was send down a reconnoitering party via the railway, on which service had been suspended. The vehicle selected for this foolhardy venture was a locomotive and six armored trucks, with a 6-pound naval gun and crew together with a company of the Dublin Fusiliers and a company of the Durban Light Infantry. Now an armored train is only as strong as its railroad’s weakest culvert, and to remove a culvert requires the use of but a single stick of dynamite, or less. Churchill was brash enough to point this out at headquarters, but the commander (by proxy) said, “Nonsense! Why, a handful of ignorant, ill-equipped rustics would never dare ride against Her Majesty’s artillery!”
Unfortunately for England, the high-level thinking of the whole Boer War was pitched in just about that key. At the start, it was opined at No. 10 Downing Street that the skirmish would be over in three months and that the total cost to the government would be around ten million pounds. Churchill’s contract with the Morning Post had a clause that gave him a minimum four months of employment. As it turned out, the war lasted three years and cost England something over two hundred million pounds, or twenty times the original estimate. Complacency was never higher. In reply to an offer of help from Australia, the War Office had cabled, “Unmounted men preferred.” The several units of cavalry on hand were regarded as quite adequate to quell this mounted enemy. Before Buller left England, Intelligence had sent him several volumes on the theater of operations, but he had returned them with a note saying that he knew “everything about South Africa.”
It would be difficult to underestimate a foe more dangerously than Britain did the Boers. Because they were generally bucolic, canting, and untutored, they were thought to be a military joke. After all, it was argued, what could these bushmen know of cavalry maneuvers? It was doubted if they could even ride a straight line. What they could do, though, was ride for days on end with little food or rest, cover with dazzling speed a country they knew thoroughly, and think for themselves, according to the rules of common sense rather than those of antiquated army textbooks. The Boers had been toughened by a code of religious spartanism incomprehensible to the average Britisher. They were a suspicious people, with an implacable God, and were disinclined to frivolity or friendship. If immigrants settled within a day’s ride of a man’s farm, that neighborhood was viewed as congested, and he picked up and moved. A Boer usually carried a Bible with him and read it as he did his chores, accepting the Old Testament as the Law and discarding the New as untested and disreputable. In the main, a man’s chores consisted in caring for huge herds and in hunting, at which he was expert. Most Boers were exceptional shots and could drop an antelope or a wildebeest, in which the country abounded, at distances up to several hundred yards. Agriculture was in bad repute with the Boers; for some reason they thought it sissified. Also, herds were movable while crops were uncomfortably fixative. Household recreation in the Transvaal depended upon the daily singing of a collection of pretty frightening hymns that left no doubt where a person was likely to lodge if he strayed from the paths of righteousness. Further spicing up life, each family annually made a giddy expedition a hundred or so miles to the nearest church for Holy Communion. And now and then a number of Boers got together to war on the nearby natives — the Zulus, the Hottentots, the Tembus, and the Swazis.
Captain Haldane was chosen to lead the Armored Train into the little-known land of these strange and hostile folk. It was an assignment to which he had not aspired and he talked it over gloomily with Churchill. “Never mind,” said the latter, “I’ll go along with you. I consider it my duty to the Morning Post.” Haldane was said to have brightened up perceptibly, it having become gospel that including Churchill in the roster of any company was tantamount to dividing the management. Preparations got under way forthwith. The train creaked out from a siding, the engine in the middle of a string of six cars. It was loaded with the naval gun and crew, the infantry climbed aboard, Churchill and Haldane took up a stand beside the engineer, and they all rolled off into the bush, to the accompaniment of some halfhearted cheers.
All went serenely for about fourteen miles, or to a spot some little distance beyond the tiny station of Chieveley. Haldane had called a halt at Chieveley to telegraph their progress to the commander at Estcourt. Rolling along now, they suddenly noticed several groups of riders who seemed to be hurrying to a hill between the Armored Train and home. “Back, men!” cried Haldane, and he ordered the engineer to throw the train into reverse. Before this was accomplished, Churchill jumped down and sprinted to the (now) rear truck, which he mounted, and then crouched down with his eyes just above the steel plates. From the hill, three or four lazy puffs of white smoke arose, and shrapnel zinged off the armored sides. British Intelligence had neglected to determine that the Boers had for months been obtaining a new kind of Maxim gun and other artillery from Germany. Starting back, Churchill heard an unpleasant whistling over his head and threw himself on the floor, as a series of sharp explosions shook the front of the train. It had just occurred to him that the Boers might also be apt to tamper with the track when there came a paralyzing shock and the train skewed off the rails to a grinding, bumpy stop.
The situation was decidedly awkward. The rustic hymn-singers had bushwhacked the reconnoitering party almost directly between two hills, from which poured a steady and accurate rifle fire. For a group of unprofessional illiterates it was a competent maneuver. Churchill scrambled out of his car and was able to see that the two front trucks had overturned, badly injuring several occupants. As he ran up toward the engine, a shrapnel burst struck near by and grazed the engineer, who was in the act of leaping from his cab. The man was outraged; he was a civilian, he pointed out, and entitled to all the civil benefits of a democratic state, which included freedom from shrapnel. “Be calm!” cried Churchill, and then gave him a singular bit of comfort: “Nobody is ever wounded twice on the same day.” The engineer wrapped some cotton waste around his cuts and seemed much keener. “Furthermore,” Churchill went on, expansive and happy in the emergency, “devotion to duty will win you fine honors.” Even as the shrapnel struck around them, his memory was in its usual working order. Eleven years later, he arose in the House of Commons and recommended the engineer and his fireman for the Albert Medal.
The Armored Train as a whole was in a condition of wild confusion, but Churchill appeared to take on a new personality as things got worse. He trotted back and forth, in full view of the enemy gunners, advised Captain Haldane, joked with the Irishmen, gave crisp, sensible directions, and altogether had a splendid time. In his opinion, he told Haldane (who was directing the return fire), by uncoupling the overturned trucks, a train crew could clear the debris and enable them all to break out for home. Haldane assigned him nine workers, whom Churchill spurred to courageous effort by standing carelessly on an eminence and smoking a cigarette. From all accounts, the fact that he did not get hit was a marvel of good chance, since the bullets and shells were whistling and crashing about with increased fury.
When the trucks were freed, Churchill had the engineer push the wreckage from the tracks and try to re-engage the other cars. This proved useless. The engine itself got clear; the rest of the train was trapped. Haldane and Churchill loaded the forty-odd wounded into the engine and tender, and, with the Dublins and Durban soldiers creeping along close beside, the bruised party started back.
Some of the wounded men were clinging to the cowcatcher and sitting on top of the cab. Slow as the engine went, the pace was too much for the exhausted soldiers, who fell two hundred yards to the rear. Churchill jumped down and ran back to join them. His act was simultaneous with a charge from the hills by Boer horsemen. “Go ahead! Get the wounded out,” he yelled to the engine crew, waving his arms, and to the infantry he said, “Take cover, men. It’s everybody for himself.”
Churchill dashed for a ravine and threw himself down, then crawled along rapidly, but a rider pulled up on the far bank and threatened him with a rifle. Churchill felt for his revolver, remembered that he had left it in the engine, and threw up his hands. The rider motioned him toward the Boer lines. Churchill has since said that this was a bitter moment in his life; he had been on the scene for one day and for him the war seemed to be over. Besides, he was unaccustomed to defeat. He walked along, occasionally scowling up into the not particularly hostile face of his captor. Indeed, he was obliged to admit to himself that it was a moderately attractive face, rather English in feeling, a far cry from the barbarous expressions of the Indians and Dervishes he had been fighting. He was to remember the face of this victorious Dutch farmer with a real shock six years later when, as Under-Secretary for the Colonies, he welcomed a delegation of leaders from South Africa in London. “And this is General Botha [soon to be the first Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa],” said a functionary performing the introductions. “The Right Honorable Winston Churchill.”
They shook hands and studied each other carefully.
“Don’t you recognize me?” asked Botha.
“Aha!” cried Churchill. “The day of the Armored Train!”
“It was I who took you prisoner. I myself.”
Several persons present have verified that Churchill, while wholly gracious, was unable to resist commenting that, had he had his Mauser, it would probably have been a different story. General Botha looked unconvinced, but they went into lunch and enjoyed a friendly reminiscence. Their acquaintance, begun under adverse conditions, developed into a friendship that was much valued by both of them. Botha visited Churchill frequently and worked in close co-operation with him during the First World War.
But the Botha of the day of the Armored Train, a subordinate officer in the Boer cavalry, delivered his unusual prize and turned to other duties. The sky had been overcast, and now it began to pour rain; the weather was a bedraggled match for Churchill’s spirits as he stood in a leaky tent and awaited his fate. He was not reassured to consider that, as a civilian who had engaged in active fighting, he could legally expect a quick court-martial and a trip before an official firing squad. The Boers looked him over with interest. At length, a field cornet came up and, with a delightful British accent, said, “We are not going to let you go, old chappie, although you are a correspondent. We don’t catch the son of a lord every day.”
It had been decided to send him south to the Boer capital of Pretoria as a formal prisoner of war.
*
On the evening of Churchill’s capture, the following letter was sent to the general manager of the Natal Railways:
Sir: — The railwaymen who accompanied the armoured train this morning ask me to convey to you their admiration of the coolness and pluck displayed by Mr. Winston Churchill, the war correspondent who accompanied the train, and to whose efforts, backed up by those of the driver, Wagner, is due the fact that the armoured engine and tender were brought successfully out after being hampered by the derailed trucks in front, and that it became possible to bring the wounded in here. The whole of our men are loud in their praise of Mr. Churchill, who, I regret to say, is a prisoner. I respectfully ask you to convey their admiration to a brave man. I am, dear Sir, yours truly,
J. Campbell
Inspector, Natal Government Railways
*
A member of the wounded party wrote back to his mother in London: “If it hadn’t been for Churchill, not one of us would have escaped.”
According to the English historian, Ephesian, several men high in the government said that, beyond a doubt, if Churchill had been a regular officer he would have been awarded the Victoria Cross.
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The subject of these panegyrics recovered his good spirits when he learned that the firing squad had been cheated. He began to talk with his old gusto. He was marched to the headquarters of General Joubert, to whom he gave important advice. In his later writings Churchill omitted these events preliminary to his departure for Pretoria, probably because his efforts were unavailing. First of all, he assured Joubert that the entire Boer campaign was futile, and, in effect, urged him to turn over his sword. Waiting to be removed to the lockup, he painted a black picture of the enemy cause. General Joubert listened courteously, then, after a whispered conversation with his aides, decided to go on with the war. At this point, Churchill became slightly abusive and demanded to be released, on the ground that he was a civilian. A lieutenant in the room afterward said he had the distinct impression that the prisoner was threatening to sue. In any case, his attitude in brief was: “You’ll be sorry. And don’t come whining to me later. I won’t have the least sympathy for you.” Presumably, Churchill had forgotten that a few hours ago he was grateful not to be shot.
The Boers heard him out, informed him that “had it not been for you, we should have captured the engine,” and sent him on his way, to Churchill’s offended astonishment. He was compelled to walk across fields for six hours in a driving rain, without food or drink. He noted uneasily that his captors finished this trip in perfectly fresh condition, and he began to wonder about the probable length of the war. Near the small town of Colenso, they slaughtered an ox and roasted it over an open, sputtering fire. That night, sleeping on a pile of straw in a shed, Churchill reflected on escape. But each time he sat up, he stared into the impassive, leathery face of an armed Boer guard.
The trip by train to Pretoria began the next day at Elandslaagte station. Churchill once more became voluble. He argued all the way down, having hit on some paradoxical technicalities that struck him as first-rate. For instance, if he were not a civilian, why shouldn’t he be treated as a captive officer? An official replied with some skill that there was no reason not to consider him a private. The force of this quelled Churchill for nearly fifteen minutes; then he got up and went to the lavatory and tried to escape, but the window was stuck, in the historic style of all windows on all railway cars everywhere. Thanks to his eloquence he was herded with the combatant soldiers of the line when they reached Pretoria; however, a Boer colonel rescinded this order and Churchill was marched with a group of officer-prisoners to the State Model School, where they found sixty additional Englishmen. Among them was his old friend, Captain Haldane, who had been taken with most of his Dublin and Durban infantry.
We have the word of several witnesses that Churchill wasted no time in idle vapors. He got promptly to work. Before the afternoon was gone he had composed a long, rhetorical, acidulous, and thoroughly unconvincing beef. This he sent to the authorities by a janitor to whom he gave a half crown. Stripped of its verbiage, the burden of his message was that the prisoner wanted out. The authorities countered with “No.” Churchill then sent a shorter dispatch restating his conviction that he was a civilian. The authorities replied that so far as the Boers were concerned, he was a combatant officer. In submission to this, Churchill cashed a check for twenty pounds, went to the commissary, and bought a civilian suit, which he put on, complete except for a hat. He looked around for a hat and ran into a bit of luck. In one of the rooms was a Dutch clergyman whose views had not coincided precisely with those of President Kruger; that is, the man had been so foolish as to suggest that the world, if not round, was slightly bent at the edges. He was being allowed to meditate in confinement while the world smoothed itself out in his mind. Hanging from a hook in his room the parson had a sort of low-comedy black hat, with rolled-up edges and no crown. Churchill dropped in for a courtesy visit a
nd on his way out abstracted the hat. Then he borrowed a copy of John Stuart Mill’s inappropriate essay On Liberty, and went to bed, fully clothed. In a mood of unexampled self-confidence, he had decided to read awhile, get a good night’s sleep, and climb out over the fence early the next morning.
Churchill has written entertainingly about his escapade amidst the Boers, and other sources add abundant material. All agree that he proved to be the most dedicated jailbreaker since Edmond Dantès entered the Château d’If. When he arose from his first night’s slumber, he saw that an evasion was impractical in the daylight hours; the place was swarming with sentries. During the morning, according to a fellow prisoner, he proposed and abandoned four separate plans for escape, one of them involving a wholesale mutiny of the seventy officers in the school, the two thousand men in a nearby enclosure, and the disaffected cleric. The ramifications of this plan, which he sketched out in detail, transcended the prison: his notion was to go ahead and seize the capital. Churchill has never been easy to convince, but he dropped this scheme without argument when the other sixty-nine officers voted it “a trifle ornate.”
Much of his first day was spent compliantly parading himself before curiosity-seekers who had come to see “the lord’s son.” Before nightfall the guards were addressing him as “Lord Churchill,” and one of the local newspapers labeled him thus throughout his adventure. “They all talked at once, especially Churchill,” one of the prisoners has said. For about a week Churchill enjoyed his role of side-show freak, then the prison routine grew irksome. The other officers were given to playing chess, checkers, and cards, conversation-stifling amusements that he has detested most of his life, and besides, his audience showed general signs of becoming stagnate. He stepped up his escape plans and hit at length on one that impressed him as foolproof. Taking along several bars of chocolate and a can of meatballs, he would climb the fence around midnight, stroll leisurely through town, and walk the three hundred miles to Portuguese East Africa, navigating by the stars. He was to come surprisingly close to doing just that.
Winston Churchill: An Informal Study of Greatness Page 18
