The Boer War

by Martin Bossenbroek

  What better publicity for a young man burning with political ambition, who wanted nothing more than to be a celebrity. The only trouble was that Churchill couldn’t take advantage of it. He was still imprisoned in Pretoria. It was already December 1899 and nothing had come of his requests to the Transvaal authorities for a discharge on the grounds of his civilian status. On 8 December he tried a different tack. He sent De Souza another letter, to be forwarded to Joubert, using his word of honour as ammunition. ‘If I am released I will give any parole that may be required not to serve against the Republican forces or to give any information affecting the military situation.’

  Surprisingly enough, this letter prompted Joubert to think things over again. A few days later it turned out that he had indeed changed his mind. On 12 December he sent a telegram to the state secretary, Reitz, giving his consent to Churchill’s release in exchange for his word that he would return to Europe and give a true account of his experiences as a prisoner of war in the Transvaal. But he added a postscript which reveals his misgivings. ‘Will he tell the truth? He probably has something of his father’s nature.’

  Joubert’s suspicions were warranted, but not for the reason he thought. In the meantime, Churchill had grown increasingly impatient. Instead of waiting for a reply, he devoted his ingenuity and energy to finding some other way to regain his freedom. From the very moment of his capture he had been trying to think of ways to break out. Once in prison, he and a couple of young officers and soldiers had hatched a sensational plan. They weren’t simply going to escape; they were going to overpower the guards, free the 2000 non-commissioned officers and soldiers on the racecourse, occupy Pretoria, abduct Kruger and the rest of the Transvaal government, and broker an honourable peace. It was a hare-brained scheme, the kind of melodrama that Churchill relished, but the senior British officers put an end to it.

  In that case, he’d have to settle for something less ambitious. He knew Captain Haldane was hatching a plan in cahoots with a fellow inmate, a sergeant-major who had passed himself off as a lieutenant. The impostor was A. Brockie of the Imperial Light Horse. The partnership suited Haldane. Brockie knew the country and spoke Afrikaans as well as an African language, which would be an asset on their journey to the Mozambique border, 450 kilometres away. Churchill wanted to join them, but they turned him down. To make their escape it was important for them not to be missed for several hours. There were no roll calls in their prison. Churchill, however, was something of a celebrity and his absence would be noticed at once. So they said, rather not. But Churchill persisted. Mindful of his heroic exploits on the ambushed train, Haldane found it difficult to refuse him. In the end he relented and won Brockie’s consent as well. It was an extra risk, but so what? The three of them would escape together.

  The plan began to take shape on 9 December. It was fairly straightforward, but timing was of the essence. A latrine shed stood at the far end of the yard, near the iron fence. Hidden inside it, unseen by their guards, they would wait for the right opportunity. Early evening would be best, a few moments when the sentries were distracted. They would sprint to the iron fence, scale it as quickly as possible—from there they would be in full view—then drop down into the garden of the abandoned house next door. There, Haldane would reveal the rest of the plan.

  They set the date for the evening of Monday 11 December. Churchill was nervous but he nevertheless wrote a farewell note to De Souza, intending to leave it on his bed. He must have gloated over passages like ‘I have decided to escape from your custody’ and ‘regretting that I am unable to bid you a more ceremonious or a personal farewell’. In any event, it helped to relieve the tension. When evening fell, Haldane, Brockie and Churchill were ready to go, but it all came to nothing. A sentry stationed beside the shed refused to budge and the plan had to be postponed.

  The following evening—Joubert’s consent to Churchill’s release had already arrived in Pretoria, but hadn’t yet reached the state secretary’s desk—it looked as if their escape would be foiled again. The sentry was back in the same place. The three would-be fugitives grew restless and started pacing back and forth between the veranda and the shed. Suddenly Churchill saw his chance. He was alone in the shack, when the sentry strolled away to talk to a comrade. This was a golden opportunity. It was too dangerous to fetch the others, so he decided to go first; they could follow later. It was now or never. He dashed to the fence, hoisted himself up, hesitated, lowered himself again, then clambered to the top. Now! His jacket caught on the ironwork and in a flash he saw the glow of a sentry’s cigarette, not 15 metres away. He tugged at his jacket, pulled himself free and dropped lightly into the garden below.35

  The abandoned mine

  Witbank, 15 December 1899

  The rats weren’t the worst part of it. They made off with Churchill’s candles and occasionally scurried over him, startling him out of his sleep. But what he couldn’t stand was being cooped up underground with nothing to do, alone and bored to tears. How long had he been here? Was it one day? Two? He had lost all sense of time. It seemed interminable. When the mine manager, John Howard, returned, he would explain that he wanted to be on his way. With food, a pistol, an escort and if possible a horse he’d be able to cover the last stretch to the border. After all, he had managed to get this far on his own. From what Howard had told him, the Boers believed he was still hiding out in Pretoria, though in fact he had left the first evening. He had been lucky, for sure, incredibly lucky. But then he always was.

  Looking back, it was strange to think how he’d sauntered out of Pretoria, like someone taking an evening stroll. The truth is that he’d been scared to death. Fear had gripped him from the moment he climbed over the prison fence and landed in the garden next door. He’d spent more than an hour there, crouching in the bushes, waiting for his two companions. He’d even exchanged a few whispered words with Haldane on the other side of the fence. Haldane and Brockie had decided not to risk it. The sentries seemed to sense something was up and were more vigilant than usual—though it hadn’t occurred to them to investigate outside the grounds. If Churchill couldn’t return without being caught, he should continue alone. That was Haldane’s advice.

  It wasn’t ideal. Churchill spoke neither Afrikaans nor an African language, he had no map and no compass. His companions were going to bring those, along with some biltong and a few opium tablets, the allpurpose painkiller. All he had with him was cash—a decent amount, £75 to be exact—and four bars of chocolate. The house they had believed to be unoccupied was teeming with people. But climbing back over the fence would be idiotic. No, he would continue on his way and hope that his luck would hold.

  He put on the hat a fellow inmate had given him, straightened his clothes, smoothed his trousers, stepped out of the bushes and ambled to the gate. He made a point of passing close to the window, trying to look as if he had every right to be there. Out in the street he caught sight of a guard, less than five metres from where he stood. He turned his face away, fought back the panic and the urge to run, and strolled casually into the bustling street. No one even noticed the young man in a dark suit, humming softly to himself.

  By the time he reached the outskirts of the city he had worked out a plan. The railway line to Lourenço Marques was his best bet. Nearing a small station, he managed to clamber onto a goods train and hide in a heap of empty coal sacks. At least that would get him out of Pretoria and, what’s more, he was heading in the right direction. The next morning, just before dawn, he jumped off the train. He had no idea where he was, but he found a pool of water, quenched his thirst and spent the rest of the day in hiding. When darkness fell, he looked for a suitable place to repeat the procedure of the day before. He found the perfect spot on an incline where the tracks rounded a bend. The train would be forced to slow down.

  Churchill’s luck seemed to have run out. He waited for hours, but there was no sign of a train. Around midnight he gave up and started walking along the tracks. This would get him at le
ast ten, 15 kilometres further. It was hard going. He had to keep making detours to dodge a station here, a house there, sentry posts on every bridge. The moon was full and, to avoid detection, he had to scramble through reeds and wade through water. He couldn’t keep it up much longer. Suddenly he saw campfires in the distance. A kraal, he thought, and decided to try his luck. He had heard that the Africans disliked the Boers, and his English banknotes would probably help too. As he drew closer, he realised he had been mistaken. The fires were ovens, the kraal was a coal mine. He must be on the outskirts of the mining district of Witbank and Middelburg.

  This discovery put everything in a different light. In Pretoria he had been told that a few Englishmen had stayed on here to keep the mines running until they could start extracting coal again. But how was he going to find them? There were a few houses nearby, one made of brick. Should he take the risk and knock on the door? He felt for his money. He could promise far more, a thousand pounds, if that’s what it took. It was half past two in the morning. The alternative was to keep trudging through the open veld. Churchill walked up to the house and knocked on the door.

  It worked like magic—as if the knock had restored his legendary good luck. The tall man who appeared in the doorway was John Howard, the manager of the Transvaal and Delagoa Bay Collieries, a fellow countryman and someone who was willing to help. Churchill had chanced on the only house for miles around where he would not be turned over to the authorities. Howard assured him that ‘we are all British here, and we will see you through’. He was true to his word. He offered Churchill whiskey and roast lamb while he went to confer with his colleagues. To remain there and continue working they had been obliged to take an oath of neutrality. Helping a fugitive would put them at risk, but all four—Howard’s secretary, an engineer from Lancashire and two Scottish miners—agreed at once. For the time being, Churchill could take refuge in the mine. They gave him a mattress, blankets, candles, a bottle of whiskey and a box of cigars. And good wishes from the engineer, Daniel Dewsnap, who, by coincidence, came from Oldham, the constituency in which Churchill had unsuccessfully stood for parliament six months earlier. ‘When you go to Oldham again, lad, they’ll all vote for you. Good luck!’36

  He had scaled a fence, strolled out of Pretoria, hopped on a train, stolen past sentry posts and, with the help of generous compatriots, found a sanctuary in the bowels of a coal mine. So far, Churchill’s escape had been a great adventure, borne along by chance and incredibly good luck. And its protagonist was a daring young man with faith in himself and his extraordinary destiny.

  But the story of Churchill’s escape is more than a series of colourful anecdotes. It raises the question of what it meant for the Transvaal—and to a lesser extent the Orange Free State—to be a country at war for the first time. It wasn’t about organised violence as such. Military campaigns, on a larger or smaller scale, were nothing new to the Boers. But apart from their few brief confrontations with the British in 1880–81 and the Jameson Raid in early 1896, they had always been conducted against indigenous adversaries, on or within their borders. And they had generally come to a predictable—successful—end, without seriously disrupting the country’s political or economic life. The present war with Great Britain was of a different magnitude and a totally different order. The largest and most powerful empire on earth had resolved to bring the Boer republics to their knees and was directing all its military, economic and human resources to that end. For the Boers the threat was internal as well. This applied in particular to the two branches of industry that were of crucial economic and military importance to the republics, namely the railways and the mining sector. The mines employed huge numbers of British citizens. How were the Boer authorities to deal with them?

  As far as the railways were concerned, the solution was fairly straightforward. The only direct line through the Orange Free State—the southern line and its few branches—was already run by the state and was therefore not an immediate security problem. In the Transvaal, the Dutch-owned Netherlands-South African Railway Company—a source of pride as well as a headache to Kruger and Leyds—had acquired a virtual monopoly in the years before the war and was operating on all trunk lines. Only the local line from Pretoria to Pietersburg in the north was still in the hands of a British company. When, on the grounds of the company’s neutrality, its director refused to make the line available to the military authorities, he and his British staff were deported and the line was taken over by the Netherlands-South African Railway Company. The same happened to lines in Natal and the Cape Colony, which the advancing Boers required for military purposes.

  At this stage the company’s principal function was to support the war effort. Kruger and Leyds had much to be proud of. The concession awarded to the company in August 1884, which they had subsequently fought to retain, proved to be a long-term investment with the best possible return. Since 1895 the company had been a massive contributor to the Transvaal treasury. After the Jameson Raid it had played an important part in building up the Republic’s substantial arsenal. And now, its new director since late 1898, J.A. Kretschmar van Veen, was dedicating its facilities and services to the Transvaal’s war effort.

  He was obliged to do so under article 22 of the concession, which provided that ‘in times of war or in the event of internal unrest the Government may take control of the railway and everything required to operate it, for defence purposes or in the interests of public order, and may wholly or partly suspend regular traffic, subject to payment of compensation to the concessionary’. On 29 September 1899 the Volksraad had decided to invoke that provision. From then on, the Netherlands-South African Railway Company came under the control of the military authorities and functioned as the Boer forces’ railways division. It provided transport for Boer commandos, British prisoners of war, war casualties, horses, mules, oxen, wagons, guns, munitions and supplies of every kind. The company’s staff also repaired and guarded bridges and crossings in Natal and the Cape Colony that retreating British troops had destroyed. In addition, its management offered favourable terms to any of its employees who wanted to join the Hollander Corps or any of the Boer commandos.

  But Kretschmar van Veen did far more than was formally required by article 22, and even that, he felt, wasn’t sufficient. He saw the concession as more than just a business contract. It represented the trust placed in him by the Transvaal government. ‘We have a moral obligation in all circumstances to merit that trust... We are a Dutch company and we are in business to make money, but what we possess is a Transvaal railway. The first can be neutral, the second cannot.’ Inspired by his belief, he also put the company’s central workshop in Pretoria at the army’s disposal. There, besides building hospital trains they also cast horseshoes, produced munitions and even repaired and assembled artillery, complete with mounts.37

  This kind of loyalty and commitment obviously couldn’t be expected of the mining industry. The most vehement opponents of the Kruger regime were to be found in and around Johannesburg: the mine owners, frustrated by the oppressive monopolies, and the Uitlanders, deprived of political rights. One didn’t need to agree with the British Liberal parliamentarian James Duckworth—‘If the Rand had been a potato field, there would have been no war’—to appreciate the extent of the gold industry’s impact on the Transvaal, if only on its demographics and its social and cultural life. Because of it Johannesburg had evolved into a dynamic centre of business and finance. It was the fastest-growing city in the world, where population figures rose and fell to the rhythm of the stock market, where life itself was in a rush. English was the lingua franca, the majority of the white population originated from and maintained ties with Great Britain, while many had links with Cape Town and London. In short, the enemy.

  This was a serious problem for the Boer leaders. Johannesburg was a breeding ground for conspirators, a potential fifth column, within 50 kilometres of Pretoria. Deporting them all would cripple the goldfields and deprive the Boers of the revenue
they needed to fight the war. Leaving them where they were would be a considerable security risk.

  By and large, the problem resolved itself. As from June 1899 it was clear that people were apprehensive and many were starting to leave the mining areas. Political tensions were mounting—the talks between Milner and Kruger in Bloemfontein collapsed early that month—and everyone could see they were preparing for war. A large fort was being built on the crest of Hospital Hill, in central Johannesburg, and at this point it was nearing completion. It formed part of the fortifications the government had decided to build after the Jameson Raid. The fort was intended as a defence against attacks from outside, but it also served—intentionally—as a warning to the local population. Unfortunately, it was more effective in that respect than the authorities had expected. Rumours spread like wildfire among the Uitlanders. The Boers were going to bomb the mines from the fort. They were going to send foreigners to the front to form a human shield. They were going to stand by while unemployed black miners plundered the city. They were going to starve them to death.

  These anxieties triggered a migration. September saw an exodus, early October a frenzied flight, in goods wagons filled to the gunnels. The Boer leaders in Pretoria tried in vain to stem the flow. Even they didn’t want the entire population to run off, especially not the educated, white working community. They assured the mine owners there was nothing to fear as long as the mines continued to operate. For most, this came too late. Even the promise of generous bonuses for experienced personnel fell on deaf ears. Mines closed down, one after the other. Between June and mid-October 1899 an estimated 100,000 whites and as many Africans, coloureds and Asians left the Rand.