My Early Life

by Winston Churchill

  Four of his soldiers were carrying him. He was a heavy man, and they all clutched at him. Out from the edge of the houses rushed half a dozen Pathan swordsmen. The bearers of the poor Adjutant let him fall and fled at their approach. The leading tribesman rushed upon the prostrate figure and slashed it three or four times with his sword. I forgot everything else at this moment except a desire to kill this man. I wore my long cavalry sword well sharpened. After all, I had won the Public Schools fencing medal. I resolved on personal combat à l’arme blanche. The savage saw me coming. I was not more than twenty yards away. He picked up a big stone and hurled it at me with his left hand, and then awaited me, brandishing his sword. There were others waiting not far behind him. I changed my mind about the cold steel. I pulled out my revolver, took, as I thought, most careful aim, and fired. No result. I fired again. No result. I fired again. Whether I hit him or not I cannot tell. At any rate he ran back two or three yards and plumped down behind a rock. The fusillade was continuous. I looked around. I was all alone with the enemy. Not a friend was to be seen. I ran as fast as I could. There were bullets everywhere. I got to the first knoll. Hurrah, there were the Sikhs holding the lower one! They made vehement gestures, and in a few moments I was among them.

  There was still about three-quarters of a mile of the spur to traverse before the plain was reached, and on each side of us other spurs ran downwards. Along these rushed our pursuers, striving to cut us off and firing into both our flanks. I don’t know how long we took to get to the bottom. But it was all done quite slowly and steadfastly. We carried two wounded officers and about six wounded Sikhs with us. That took about twenty men. We left one officer and a dozen men dead and wounded to be cut to pieces on the spur.

  During this business I armed myself with the Martini and ammunition of a dead man, and fired as carefully as possible thirty or forty shots at tribesmen on the left-hand ridge at distances from eighty to a hundred and twenty yards. The difficulty about these occasions is that one is so out of breath and quivering with exertion, if not with excitement. However, I am sure I never fired without taking aim.

  We fetched up at the bottom of the spur little better than a mob, but still with our wounded. There was the company reserve and the Lieutenant-Colonel commanding the battalion and a few orderlies. The wounded were set down, and all the survivors of the whole company were drawn up two deep, shoulder to shoulder, while the tribesmen, who must have now numbered two or three hundred, gathered in a wide and spreading half-moon around our flanks. I saw that the white officers were doing everything in their power to keep the Sikhs in close order. Although this formation presented a tremendous target, anything was better than being scattered. The tribesmen were all bunched together in clumps, and they too seemed frenzied with excitement.

  The Colonel said to me, ‘The Buffs are not more than half a mile away. Go and tell them to hurry or we shall all be wiped out.’

  I had half turned to go on this errand, when a happy thought struck me. I saw in imagination the company overwhelmed and wiped out, and myself, an Orderly Officer to the Divisional General, arriving the sole survivor, breathless, at top speed, with tidings of disaster and appeals for help.

  ‘I must have that order in writing, sir,’ I said.

  The Colonel looked surprised, fumbled in his tunic, produced his pocket-book and began to write.

  But meanwhile the Captain had made his commands heard above the din and confusion. He had forced the company to cease their wild and ragged fusillade. I heard an order: ‘Volley firing. Ready. Present.’ Crash! At least a dozen tribesmen fell. Another volley, and they wavered. A third, and they began to withdraw up the hillside. The bugler began to sound the ‘Charge’. Everyone shouted. The crisis was over, and here, Praise be to God, were the leading files of the Buffs.

  Then we rejoiced and ate our lunch. But as it turned out, we had a long way to go before night.

  * * * * * * *

  The Buffs had now arrived, and it was obstinately decided to retake the spur down which we had been driven in order to recover prestige and the body of the Adjutant. This took us till five o’clock.

  Meanwhile the other Company of the 35th Sikhs which had ascended the mountain on our right, had suffered even worse experiences. They eventually regained the plain, bearing along with them perhaps a dozen wounded, and leaving several officers and about fifteen soldiers to be devoured by the wolves. The shadows of evening had already fallen upon the valley, and all the detachments so improvidently dispersed in the morning, turned their steps towards the camp, gradually enveloped by a thunderstorm and by the night, and closely followed by savage and exulting foes. I marched home with the Buffs and the much-mauled 35th Sikhs. It was dark when we entered the entrenchments which now surrounded the camp. All the other parties had already got home after unsatisfactory, though not serious, fighting. But where was the General? And where was his staff? And where was the mule battery?

  The perimeter of the camp was strongly guarded, and we got ourselves some food amid the usual drizzle of sniping. Two hours passed. Where was the General? We now knew that he had with him besides the battery, half a company of sappers and miners, and in all about ten white officers. Suddenly, from the valley there resounded the boom of a gun, calculated to be about three miles away. It was followed at short intervals by perhaps twenty more reports, then silence. What could be happening? Against what targets was the General firing his artillery in the blackness of night? Evidently he must be fighting at the very closest quarters. They must be all mixed up together; or were these guns firing signals for help? Ought we to set out to his relief? Volunteers were not lacking. The senior officers consulted together. As so often happens when things go wrong formalities were discarded, and I found myself taking part in the discussion. It was decided that no troops could leave the camp in the night. To send a rescue force to blunder on foot amid the innumerable pitfalls and obstacles of the valley in pitch darkness would be to cause a further disaster, and also to weaken the camp fatally if it were to be attacked, as well it might be. The General and the battery must fight it out wherever they were till daylight. Again the guns in the valley fired. So they had not been scuppered yet. I saw for the first time the anxieties, stresses and perplexities of war. It was not apparently all a gay adventure. We were already in jeopardy; and anything might happen. It was decided that the squadron of Bengal Lancers, supported by a column of infantry, should set out to relieve the General with the first light of dawn. It was now past midnight and I slept soundly, booted and spurred, for a few hours.

  The open pan of the valley had no terrors for us in daylight. We found the General and his battery bunched up in a mud village. He had had a rough time. He was wounded in the head, but not seriously. Overtaken by the darkness, he had thrown his force into some of the houses and improvised a sort of fort. The Mamunds had arrived in the village at the same time, and all night long a fierce struggle had raged from house to house and in the alleys of this mud labyrinth. The assailants knew every inch of the ground perfectly. They were fighting in their own kitchens and parlours. The defenders simply hung on where they could, in almost total darkness, without the slightest knowledge of the ground or buildings. The tribesmen broke through the walls, or clambered on or through the roofs, firing and stabbing with their long knives. It was a fight in a rabbit warren. Men grappled with each other; shot each other in error; cannon were fired as you might fire a pistol at an enemy two or three yards away. Four of the ten British officers were wounded. A third of the sappers and gunners were casualties, and nearly all the mules were dead or streaming with blood. The haggard faces of the surviving officers added the final touch to this grim morning scene. However, it was all over now. So we proceeded to shoot the wounded mules and have breakfast.

  When we all got back to camp, our General communicated by heliograph through a distant mountain top with Sir Bindon Blood at Nawagai. Sir Bindon and our leading brigade had themselves been heavily attacked the night before. They
had lost hundreds of animals and twenty or thirty men, but otherwise were none the worse. Sir Bindon sent orders that we were to stay in the Mamund Valley and lay it waste with fire and sword in vengeance. This accordingly we did, but with great precautions. We proceeded systematically, village by village, and we destroyed the houses, filled up the wells, blew down the towers, cut down the great shady trees, burned the crops and broke the reservoirs in punitive devastation. So long as the villages were in the plain, this was quite easy. The tribesmen sat on the mountains and sullenly watched the destruction of their homes and means of livelihood. When, however, we had to attack the villages on the sides of the mountains they resisted fiercely, and we lost for every village two or three British officers and fifteen or twenty native soldiers. Whether it was worth it, I cannot tell. At any rate, at the end of a fortnight the valley was a desert, and honour was satisfied.

  7 The East Kent Regiment.

  Chapter XII

  The Tirah Expedition

  IN the rearrangements which were entailed by our losses on September 16 I was as an emergency measure posted to the 31st Punjaub Infantry, which had only three white officers besides the Colonel left. I have served officially as a regimental officer in peace or war altogether with the 4th Hussars, the 31st Punjaub Infantry, the 21st Lancers, the South African Light Horse, the Oxfordshire Yeomanry, the 2nd Grenadier Guards, the Royal Scots Fusiliers, and lastly, with the Oxfordshire Artillery. Very varied were the conditions in these different units in Asia, Africa and Europe; but this Punjaub Infantry business was the most peculiar of all. Although a cavalry officer, I had, of course, been trained in infantry drill at Sandhurst, and considered myself professionally competent in all minor operations, or major too, for the matter of that. The language difficulty was, however, more serious. I could hardly speak a word to the native soldiers who were perforce committed, in the scarcity of officers, to my direction. I had to proceed almost entirely by signals, gestures and dumbcrambo. To these I added three words, ‘Maro’ (kill), ‘Chalo’ (get on), and Tally ho! which speaks for itself. In these circumstances there could hardly be said to be that intimate connection between the Company Commander and his men which the drill books enjoin. However, in one way or another we got through without mishap three or four skirmishes, which I cannot dignify by the name of actions, but which were nevertheless both instructive and exciting to the handful of men who were engaged in them. I must have done it all by moral influence.

  Although I could not enter very fully into their thoughts and feelings, I developed a regard for the Punjaubis. There was no doubt they liked to have a white officer among them when fighting, and they watched him carefully to see how things were going. If you grinned, they grinned. So I grinned industriously. Meanwhile I despatched accounts of the campaign by both telegram and letter to the Pioneer and also to the Daily Telegraph.

  I now had good hopes of being permanently attached to the Malakand Field Force, and of roaming around these valleys for some time. However, the character of the operations changed. The tale of the 16th of September had been spread far and wide among the tribesmen, and of course the Mamunds probably made out they had had a great success. They exaggerated the number of our slain, and no doubt declared that their operations were proceeding according to plan. We said the same, but they did not read our newspapers. At any rate the whole frontier region was convulsed with excitement, and at the end of September the far more powerful Afridi tribes joined the revolt. The Afridis live in Tirah, a region of tremendous mountains lying to the north of Peshawar and the east of the Khyber Pass. The mountains of Tirah are higher and steeper than those on the Malakand side; and the valleys in Tirah are V-shaped instead of flat-bottomed. This greatly adds to the advantages of the tribesmen and to the difficulties of regular troops. In the middle of Tirah there is a flat plain like the Mamund Valley, but much larger, and accessible only by the V-shaped gorges through the mountain walls. This is called Tirah Maidan, and one may think of it as the centre of the maze at Hampton Court with mountains instead of hedges.

  The Government of India in their wisdom now determined to send an expedition to Tirah Maidan. Here they would find all the granaries, herds and principal habitations of the Afridi tribes. These could all be destroyed and the tribesmen together with their women and children driven up to the higher mountains in the depth of winter, where they would certainly be very uncomfortable. In order to inflict this chastisement, two whole divisions each of three brigades, say 35,000 men, together with large forces upon the communications and at the base, would be required. This army was accordingly mobilised, and concentrated about Peshawar and Kohat preparatory to invading Tirah. No white troops had ever yet reached the Maidan. The operations were considered to be the most serious undertaken on the frontier since the Afghan War, and the command was entrusted to an officer of the highest distinction and experience, Sir William Lockhart. Sir Bindon Blood, on the other hand, was to remain holding the tribes in check on the Malakand side. Our active operations thus came to an end, and about the same time reserve white officers of the Punjaubis came up to fill the vacancies in their regiment. I therefore turned my eyes to the Tirah Expeditionary Force and made strenuous efforts to be incorporated in it. However, I knew no one in high authority on that side. Colonel Ian Hamilton indeed commanded one of the brigades and would certainly have helped. Unluckily, he was thrown from his pony marching through the Kohat Pass, broke his leg, lost his brigade, missed the campaign, and nearly broke his heart. While I was in this weak position, detached from one force and not yet hooked on to the other, my Colonel far away in Southern India began to press for my return. In spite of Sir Bindon Blood’s goodwill, I fell between two stools and finished up at Bangalore.

  My brother officers when I returned to them were extremely civil; but I found a very general opinion that I had had enough leave and should now do a steady spell of routine duty. The regiment was busy with the autumn training and about to proceed on manoeuvres, and so less than a fortnight after hearing the bullets whistle in the Mamund Valley, I found myself popping off blank cartridges in sham fights two thousand miles away. It seemed quite odd to hear the cracking of rifles on all sides, and nobody taking cover or bobbing their heads. Apart from this, the life was very much the same. It was just as hot, just as thirsty, and we marched and bivouacked day after day. Lovely country, Mysore, with splendid trees and innumerable sheets of stored water! We were manoeuvring around a great mountain called Nundydroog, where the gold mines are, and where there are groves of trees whose leaves are brilliant scarlet.

  There was certainly nothing to complain of, but as the weeks and months passed away, I watched with wistful eyes the newspaper accounts of the Tirah campaign. The two divisions had plunged into the mountains and ultimately, after much fighting and casualties in those days thought numerous, had reached the central plain or basin of Tirah. The next move was for them to come back before the worst of the winter had set in. This they did promptly, but none too soon. The indignant and now triumphant Afridis ran along the mountain ridges firing with deadly skill upon the long columns defiling painfully down the river bed, and forced to ford its freezing waters ten or twelve times in every march. Hundreds of soldiers and thousands of animals were shot, and the retreat of the 2nd Division down the Bara valley was ragged in the extreme. Indeed at times, so we heard privately, it looked more like a rout than the victorious withdrawal of a punitive force. There was no doubt who had the punishment, nor who would have to pay the bill. Thirty-five thousand troops hunting, and being hunted by, Afridis around these gorges for a couple of months with 20,000 more guarding their communications make a nasty total when computed in rupees. Black were the brows of the wiseacres of Calcutta, and loud were the complaints of the Liberal Opposition at home.

  I did not cry myself to sleep about the misadventures of the Tirah expedition. After all, they had been very selfish in not letting me come with them. I thought they would have to go in again in the spring, and I redoubled my
efforts to join them. My mother co-operated energetically from her end. In my interest she left no wire unpulled, no stone unturned, no cutlet uncooked. Under my direction she had laid vigorous siege to both Lord Wolseley and Lord Roberts. These fortresses resisted obdurately. Lord Roberts wrote:

  I would, with the greatest pleasure, help your son, but it would be no use my communicating with General Lockhart as Sir George White is all powerful, and, as he refused to allow Winston to join General Blood’s staff, after his having previously served with that officer in the Malakand Field Force, I feel sure he would not consent to his being sent with the Tirah Field Force.

  I would telegraph to Sir George White, but I am certain that, under the circumstances, he would resent my doing so.

  Meanwhile, I was tethered in my garrison in Bangalore. At Christmas, however, it was easy to obtain ten days’ leave. Ten days is not long. It was, in fact, long enough to reach the frontier and return. But I knew better than to present myself at the base headquarters of the field force without having prepared the ground beforehand. The military pussy-cat is a delightful animal, as long as you know how to keep clear of her claws, but once excited or irritated, she is capable of making herself extremely unpleasant. Moreover, if she falls into this mood, it is very difficult to get her out of it. I decided therefore to go not to the frontier, but to Calcutta, and to endeavour from the seat of the Indian Government to negotiate for a situation at the front. It took at that time three and a half days’ continuous railway travelling to go from Bangalore to Calcutta, which, with an equal period for return, left about sixty hours to transact the all-important business. The Viceroy, Lord Elgin, under whom I was afterwards to serve as Under-Secretary of State in the Colonial Office, extended a large hospitality to young officers who had suitable introductions. I was royally entertained, and so well mounted that I won the fortnightly ‘point to point’ in which the garrison of Calcutta were wont at that time to engage. This was all very well, but my main business made no advance. I had, of course, used every resource at my disposal before I came on the spot, and I took the best advice of the highest authorities to whom I had access. They all agreed that the best chance was to beard the Adjutant-General, an extremely disagreeable person whose name I am glad to have forgotten. He could do it if he chose, and no one else could do it if he objected. Accordingly, I presented myself in his ante-room and applied for an interview. He declined point-blank to receive me, and I then began to realise that my quest was hopeless. There was an air of ironical amusement about the high military functionaries whom I met during these two days at lunch and dinner. They all knew what I had come about and what reception my suit would receive. From the Commander-in-Chief Sir George White downwards they were all extremely civil, but their friendliness seemed to carry with it a suggestion that there were some subjects better left unmentioned. And so at the end of my sixty hours I had again to clamber into the train and toil back discomfited to Bangalore.