Winston Churchill: An Informal Study of Greatness

by Taylor, Robert Lewis

  Of the ménage, she had the least reason to be composed. The Churchills by now had two daughters and a son: Diana, born in July, 1909, Randolph, born in 1911, and Sarah, who had come along soon after the war started. With two small children and an infant, a tiny income, and a husband whose rash acts were England’s principal gossip, the former Miss Clementine Hozier could scarcely have been reconciled to his colorful decision. By a kind fortune, for her and for the nation, his holiday amidst the bursting shells would be wholly unsanguinary, and would indeed provide an episode of high comedy in a generally bleak drama.

  The warrior first went to France and visited Sir John French (in his last weeks as commander-in-chief), who was talked into offering Churchill a brigade. When news of this reached Asquith, his frenzied reply was, paraphrased, “For God’s sake, don’t give him a brigade — don’t give him anything more than a battalion!” One of the minister’s associates said later that Asquith was afraid that Churchill, perhaps under cover of darkness, might march the brigade directly on Berlin.

  The command eventually simmered down to colonel in charge of the 6th Royal Scots Fusiliers. Several extant sources, including “Captain X,” who wrote his small, anonymous memoirs, contribute valuable data on the union.

  Churchill arrived early on an afternoon and held a compulsory levee in his headquarters, described by Captain X as a “more than usually dirty farm.” The new C.O. took an elevated seat in a corner of the orderly room and asked that the company commanders be brought in one by one and formally introduced. This was accomplished in a hushed and constrained atmosphere; the rest of the officers were then presented. During the absurd ritual, the figure in the chair, says one bystander, “looked uncommonly like Napoleon, with the same forward thrust in his pose, the same brooding scowl, the hand in the tunic, and even the same baldish head with its vagrant forelock.”

  After the presentation, several awkward minutes ticked by as Churchill regarded everybody stonily. “It was not easy to parry this unconventional attack on one’s composure,” wrote Captain X. “It was necessary to stand at attention, of course, so that no relief could be sought in the diversion of a mere social and friendly observation. I found myself forced to stare hard back at him and trust to time to bring this, like all other trials, to an end.” When fully five minutes had elapsed without so much as a whisper breaking the tension of the room, the extraordinary new commander got up and lumbered out. There was no possible way to tell whether he liked or disliked what he saw.

  His first order, issued via the adjutant, read, “Clear the cats from the orderly room.” This was done. Next day he held a second levee, of a vastly different character. It was as verbose as the other session had been mute. Also, Churchill had presumably found fault with the way the sergeant major was dressed for the opening. For the repeat performance, the unfortunate stood by the doorway outfitted with every device known to the soldier of that period, with a full pack, including pup tent, a rifle with bayonet attached, various things like hatchets, spades, frying pans, and hand grenades attached to his belt, and on his face a look of terrible misery. He had anticipated correctly: there were titters as the company passed him going in.

  The eccentric chieftain was seated in his old place. When his visitors were settled into uncomfortable attention, he opened his mouth and said, hoarsely, “War is declared, gentlemen, on the lice.” “With these words,” declared Captain X, “did the great scion of the house of Marlborough first address his Scottish Captains assembled in council. And with these words was inaugurated such a discourse on Pulex Europaeus, its origin, growth, and nature, its habitat and its importance as a factor in wars ancient and modern, as left one agape with wonder at the erudition and force of its author. I became forthwith a prey to the most lively apprehensions lest I should fall a victim to its foul attentions, in which event I saw but little likelihood of ever being clean again.”

  Fate at last had thrown in Churchill’s path a captive audience of the first rank. He rumbled on with facts, statistics, philosophic generalities on lice, and some capital anecdotes about individual lice who had made their mark. It was an entertaining if unusual wartime speech. When it was concluded, he ordered the entire battalion to turn-to and get after the enemy on the double. Soldiers and officers assembled at various spots on the grounds, and, taking a few precautions to avoid the inquisitive gaze of the farm ladies, peeled off their clothes and began tossing them into pots of boiling water. The operation took three days; when it was over the lice had thrown in the towel. They were finished — the only major defeat they had suffered thus far in the war.

  After its first shock, and resentment, the battalion began to take pride in having a former Cabinet minister at its head. For two or three weeks only a few persons got his name and rank correctly; “Viscount Churchill” led the list of mistakes, and there was frequent usage of “Lord Churchill,” “Sir Winston Churchill,” and even the “Duke of Churchill,” as in Pretoria. The Royal Scots were and are a proud unit, with traditions of accomplishment dating back to 1678, when its Highland forebears were prominent, as one of its members says, “chiefly in certain hanging dramas not altogether unconnected with the stealing of cattle.” A rank outsider, and an Englishman at that, coming in to take over was nearly sure to have trouble, and anybody but Churchill might have wrought a lasting breach between battalion and leader. But he undertook the improvement of his officers and men with such hilarious verve that they relaxed and watched him with great satisfaction. He invited the company commanders to dine with him in the headquarters mess, and they were astounded at the gorgeous style in which he received them. The setting he had contrived was more reminiscent of a London club than of a squalid French farm on the western front. It was noted in the conversation that Churchill, by now, had learned the name, history, tastes, and preferences of every officer present. “No doubt he sought to win us,” says Captain X, “but for that he is only to be admired, and his capacity for coaxing and charming the best even out of the most boorish is a gift which I never ceased to wonder at. He materially altered the feelings of the officers toward him by this kindliness and by the first insight we thus gained into the wonderful genius of the man.”

  The enthusiasm of the troops kept pace with that of the officers, but for different reasons. Somebody divined, and passed along down the line, that the Duke of Churchill was bound to have connections. Whereupon there started a tremendous flow of letters between France and Scotland, seeking favors and services of the most bizarre kind. A woman living near Glasgow wondered if the duke could help locate her errant husband, who had stolen her father’s pig and was reported to have joined the Fusiliers, presumably using the pig as an entrance fee. One member of the battalion, a Mr. MacGregor, slightly rheumatic, submitted a request for a month’s vacation in the South of France, and a corporal named Muckleroy set in motion a claim to the peerage. There were any number of petitions for raises in pay, and one or two for shorter hours. A wife in Edinburgh, who had cousins in Düsseldorf, wondered if it would be possible to switch enemies; she hadn’t kept up with the war very well and thought it wouldn’t matter to anybody who they were fighting so long as they fought somebody. “If it wouldn’t be inconvenient,” she added courteously. “The Adjutant grew more rapidly bald in the conduct of his administrative duties in this period,” says Captain X, “as the Colonel insisted on the most scrupulous justice being done to every inquiry, however trifling.”

  Once the lice were cleaned up and the cats cleared out, Churchill undertook several changes of procedure. The first of these, and the hardest to swallow, was a prohibition on the use of “Yes, sir” and “No, sir” in response to orders. From now on all orders would be answered with the simple “Sir.” The officers of the 6th Royal Scots have told how they struggled to capture the shades of inflection necessary to make the tiny word cover its many meanings. (One fellow went so far as to declare it “a silly little monosyllable.”) For instance, should the commander ask the balding adjutant, “Do the men
seem to be taking to the new music program?” the resulting “Sir!” might easily be construed to indicate that they were having a bad time. The fact is that they were. Although he himself was practically a monotone, Churchill was a staunch believer in the therapeutics of song. He had decreed that the men, henceforward, would sing, individually or in groups, every time they found themselves in motion, even if they were only going to the privy.

  In theory, as some of the Royal Scots have since admitted, this melodic support was worth while — singing on the march lessens fatigue, or at least disguises it. But Churchill’s regimen was thought to be extreme. By bad luck, the 6th Fusiliers were about as unmusical an outfit as could be found outside a Chinese monastery, and for most of the men to lower or elevate their pitch half a tone was a severe trial. Despite their other fine qualities, the Scotch are not a melodic race. In all of recorded history, they have produced but a handful of composers worthy of any notice at all. And to make matters worse, the Fusiliers knew only one song, a one-verse job not suitable for use outside the barracks. Using the generic word “paint,” it went as follows:

  “I’ll paint, and you’ll paint,

  We’ll both paint together — oh

  Won’t we have a hell of a time,

  Painting one another, oh!”

  *

  It was the custom to switch “paint” for one or another of the lively Anglo-Saxon verbs, producing a quatrain that any soldier might be proud to try. Churchill had noticed, and balked at, this “inexhaustible fountain of impurity” during the very first march on which he accompanied the unit. Passing through the village of Merris, with its pretty girls waving and blowing kisses, the men had written new chapters in Scotland’s meager musical annals. The commander was badly shocked as his charges leaned into the faces of the innocent jeunes filles and screamed:

  “Won’t we have a hell of a time,

  mg one another, oh!”

  *

  That evening, the adjutant, who now had practically no hair left at all, posted orders for a gigantic sing in a neighborhood bam — a “rehearsal.” It was to be a regular thing. A number of new and antiseptic tunes were tried out, many of them of a religious nature. They went down badly. On the occasion of the next march, out came the paint again. Incredibly enough, in Churchill’s eyes, the women seemed to like it, and appeared to be gesticulating wildly toward handy copses and haymows. It was later decided that they had caught sight of various field rations that were furtively being brandished to augment the paint.

  The following rehearsal was held in a bog, where the men seemed to catch on to the new songs a lot faster. Progress from then on out was slow but steady.

  Churchill soon announced a battalion parade, with the company commanders mounted. This was a bitter pill, since the 6th Fusiliers were an infantry unit and nobody knew anything about horses. Furthermore, the function was to be performed in step to the company piper, who had asthma and besides could play only snatches of “The Campbells of Redcastle.” The parade turned out to be a perfect nightmare of confusion. The commanders got on their unaccustomed mounts all right, but the horse carrying Captain Foulkes wandered off to a sink-hole to drink, while his company continued to march across the field. Churchill sat on a white mare and watched. The men arrived at a fence and seemed indecisive. Some of them marked time while others climbed over, attempting to maintain a certain cadence. As the roll was being taken, it was noted that D Company, the entire company, was missing. However, to everybody’s relief, before the roll was finished, young Lieutenant Sinclair came lurching up on a wretched-looking animal, reined in before Churchill, saluted, and said, “D Company absent, sir.” There was a murmur of appreciation when the colonel returned the salute and nodded as if the report were the most natural thing in the world. It was at this point that the saddle girth of Captain Whelkins broke and spilled him into the mud (the day was damp). To relieve the situation, Churchill called out, “Wheel!” and the majority of the company commanders inexplicably found themselves behind their men. It was a tense moment. In Captain X’s account, he says, “Sometimes I was beside my company, sometimes in front, sometimes behind.” One horse walked through a company, nuzzling men out of the way. The parade ended in what has been described as “a melee of blasphemous humanity and outraged horseflesh.” Churchill studied it impassively throughout.

  A few days later the great news arrived. The 6th Fusiliers were moving up to the trenches. As the western front went, this was a quiet sector, but Churchill promised the men that he would strive to his utmost to keep them from getting dull. In a brief but unsettling speech, he said, “We will go easy at first: a little digging and feeling our way, and then perhaps later on we may attempt a Deed.” An outsider would have got the notion that, whatever they did, it would be independently of the main Allied effort. In any case, his words did nothing to comfort the unit. On previous visits to the front lines, the Fusiliers, like all other troops past and present who are not ordered to go out and get killed, were content to idle the days away, now and then peering through a telescopic sight, flinging jibes and jokes at the hidden enemy across the turf, doing their laundry, and once in a protested while planting a little wire. It seemed evident that Churchill was deliberately going to try to make somebody mad. Captain X has said that “our attitude to trenches was hostile and more than ever hostile in view of the possibility of a definite rupture with whatever enemy chanced to be opposite to us.”

  The black pall was temporarily rolled away by a classic dinner the colonel threw in celebration of the impending gore. He went into nearby Hazebrouck and chartered the Station Hotel, in its entirety, for a fete in the Marlborough tradition. He took the precaution of inviting two guests in addition to his own officers — the brigade major and the officer commanding the divisional train — and then blandly drew on them for almost unlimited goodies. A couple of lieutenants who checked later, after the unit and the town had recovered, decided that Churchill, out of his own pocket, had literally bought up all the liquors offered for sale in Hazebrouck. The dinner got off to a whooping start. The piper was drunk within half an hour and spent the whole evening stamping in circles around the table playing a new tune he had learned, not inappropriately entitled “The Drunken Piper.” His contribution was characterized as “a most devilish row.” Churchill delivered an eloquent, if overlong, address in which he touched on his “three ties with Scotland” — his wife, his constituency, and his regiment. At the suggestion of a subaltern, this was corrected to include scotch whiskey. Toward the end of the speech, the transport officer slid under the table and was laid out with a brandy keg under his head. As soon as Churchill subsided, and it was not soon, the brigade major weaved to his feet and started to address the group but was told to “sit down and mind your manners.”

  The dinner had started at seven thirty, and at eleven, when the liquor was exhausted, many of the company headed vaguely for home. Only a handful made it. Unluckily, they had nearly all come on horseback, as Churchill had been trying to teach them to ride. Flinging out of the hotel, they leaped on, or at, their mounts (one man actually put a foot in a stirrup, gave a healthy push, and sailed clear over and into a puddle), and clattered away over the village cobbles. A train was coming into the station, and the crossing gate was down, but several of the guests put the gate back up and halted the train. “What’s going on down there?” yelled the engineer. “Dinner breaking up,” he was told.

  The bulk of the guests were finally located in three main towns: Meteren, Rouge Croix, and Strazeele. Churchill publicly commended the adjutant for the exceptional job done on search. The man, now completely bald, made charts of the countryside, dividing it into twelve segments, each to be explored by a sergeant with a small salvage party. While Meteren, Rouge Croix, and Strazeele turned up the bulk of the diners, a number of smaller towns had suffered damage, too. The transport officer was belatedly found in the shattered billiard room of the hotel, but the doctor was overlooked altogether. He reported in tw
o days later: he had been taken ill at a farm where he was trying to buy a flock of sheep and had received excellent medical attention from the French farm family.

  Before going up to the front, Churchill acquired a French tin helmet, in a vivid blue, which he wore during the rest of his time with the battalion. It got to be a widely known landmark and starred in many photographs printed across the world. The actual trip to the trenches was accomplished by marching and in omnibuses. His assignment was to relieve the Gordon Highlanders near Ploegsteert, in the Armentières sector. Churchill established his headquarters in a nunnery, where the cooking was said to be superb, and made an official statement to his officers. “Here we are,” he said, “torn away from the Senate and the Forum to fight in the battlefields of France.” There was little to be contrived in the way of a reply except the usual “Sirs,” although one lieutenant said later that he greatly admired Churchill’s choice of the literal “tom away.”

  The good people of Ploegsteert cheered warmly as the battalion marched through, and Captain X observed that “had they only known, [our arrival] meant that most of them would say farewell to their homes within a very few days as a result of the retaliation of the enemy for the bellicose attitude of our Division as a whole.”

  Churchill’s personal attitude changed sharply as the unit approached the guns. He began to take on a professionally martial manner and seemed to be quietly playing a role pitched somewhere between Marlborough and Napoleon. At 3 A.M. on the night before they entered the lines, he sent orderlies to arouse everybody to “make preparations against a possible gas attack.” Since gas had not been reported that far back for upwards of a year, one of the officers, declining to rise, with suitable oaths, cried, “What for? The man’s daft!” “Colonel says the wind has shifted to the right direction, sir,” answered the orderly. Nobody got up, and the gas did not materialize. The next night at 2 A.M. the battalion crept into the trenches. Word from the colonel was soon sent along the lines that tomorrow was the Kaiser’s birthday. There was considerable exclaiming over this, the men not knowing quite what was expected of them. It was bitterly regretted that they had not remembered to get him anything, and one or two offered to bake him a cake. “We may expect a bombardment,” said Churchill’s next message, clearing the air. Sure enough, not long after daylight, a couple of enemy guns spoke up and knocked several grooves in a Fusilier parapet. Two men scornfully grabbed shovels and began to repair the damage, in the style of children playing at a beach. Churchill came sprinting up with a look of terrible agitation. “Throw them down!” he cried. “Stand back — leave everything as it is — they mustn’t know that they’ve harmed us.”