by Celia Sandys
‘Prisoner of War! That is the least unfortunate kind of prisoner to be, but it is nevertheless a melancholy state.’
WINSTON CHURCHILL, My Early Life
THE STATES MODEL SCHOOL LOOKS, today, much the same as it did when Churchill was imprisoned there. Only the interior has been modified to accommodate the library it now contains. A large, single-storeyed brick building with a high, steep corrugated tin roof and a wide verandah, it housed two hundred pupils and sixteen staff when it opened in January 1897 as a boys’ school and college of higher education. In October 1899 it was requisitioned to provide quarters for officer prisoners of war. Declared a national monument in 1963, it now stands at the intersection of two busy dual carriageways. They were no more than broad, dusty thoroughfares for pedestrians, riders, carriages and carts when Churchill trudged along Skinner Street and turned left into Van der Walt Street before halting in front of the school’s arched entrance.
What was then a grass-covered playground to the rear is now tarmacked over and occupied by low, whitewashed administrative buildings. In Churchill’s time it contained scattered tents, a cookhouse and latrines, and was separated from the main building by a ten-foot-high wire fence. The whole area of the school and its grounds, some seventy yards square, was enclosed by nothing more than a chest-high ornamental iron fence at the front and sides, and six-foot iron railings to the rear. The bustling, built-up Pretoria of the present-day, now crowding in on all sides, was in 1899 a residential area of scattered houses, bungalows, spacious gardens and willow trees. The ten sentries patrolling the railings and fence were the only outward evidence that the building housed some sixty officer prisoners of war and their dozen soldier-servants.
Inside the building, the twelve classrooms on either side of a long corridor had been turned into dormitories, while four large rooms, two at each end of the school, were used for dining and recreation. Churchill shared a dormitory with Haldane and four other officers. Later Haldane and two companions would make a trapdoor in the floorboards and a tunnel in which to hide; they emerged to escape when the building was vacated and the prisoners were moved to other accommodation. The trapdoor is preserved to this day, thus identifying Churchill’s room at the front of the building, facing Van der Walt Street. When the weather became oppressively hot he often slept on the verandah, separated only by the iron railings from curious passers-by and freedom beyond.
The prisoners’ rations were adequate, but alcohol was forbidden until a week after Churchill’s arrival, when the authorities rescinded this prohibition and allowed the purchase of bottled beer. This, and food to alleviate the monotony of the rations, could be obtained from a local dealer, Mr Boshof. It soon became apparent that, for a price, he could provide almost anything short of weapons, and a postscript to Churchill’s first letter to his mother, written the day he arrived in Pretoria, showed he was already alert to the possibilities: ‘Cox’s [Cox & King’s, his bank] should be instructed to cash any cheques I may draw.’
One unusual concession was the issue of a civilian suit to each officer. As they were all of a similar cut, and were in a mustard colour, they would have instantly identified an escaped prisoner. No one seemed to suspect anything when Churchill bought a suit of dark tweed, but when he requested a slouch hat he was told he would have to make do with one of the many available pith helmets if he wanted protection from the sun while walking in the compound.
The prison regulations were decided by a four-man board of management chaired by the Transvaal Secretary of State for War, Louis de Souza, whom Churchill described as ‘a far seeing little man who had travelled to Europe, and had a very clear conception of the relative strengths of Britain and the Transvaal’. Churchill also took a liking to two of the other board members, Commandant Opperman, ‘an honest and patriotic Boer’, and Dr Gunning, ‘an amiable little Hollander’. The fourth, though, was ‘a foul and objectionable brute . . . better suited to insulting the prisoners in Pretoria than fighting the enemy at the front’. This was Field Cornet Malan, whose rank had been acquired because he was the grandson of President Kruger, and whose reputation was as low with many of the Boers as it was with the prisoners. ‘He is no man but a brute,’ is just one of the heartfelt entries about him in the diary written meticulously in English by de Souza’s wife Marie. Malan’s notoriety earned him exile to Ceylon when he was captured by the British in August 1901.
The prisoners of war were permitted unhindered communication with the outside world, and Churchill provided regular contributions to the Morning Post, and sent letters whenever he wished. Even Haldane’s official report to the British Army on the armoured train ambush was dispatched from the prison.
A glimpse of the living conditions within the States Model School has been provided by one of Churchill’s fellow prisoners, Adrian Hofmeyr. His book The Story of My Captivity contains a sketch of the prison space he had made his own. The caption describes it: ‘My little corner in the Staats Model School – eight feet by six feet – in a room occupied by eight officers. Kaffir blankets make a good tablecloth and carpet, and an umbrella stand upside down a bookcase. The table I bought, and flowers my sister sent me.’ Hofmeyr was a pastor of Dutch extraction, a colonial-born Afrikaner who had remained loyal to the Queen, and who had urged both sides to compromise rather than go to war. He was well liked by the British officers, his evening services being far more popular than those of the vicar of Pretoria’s St Alban’s Cathedral, the Reverend Godfray, whom Churchill thought ‘rather a poor creature’.
That the prison regime was not at all arduous is farther apparent from a journal kept by Lieutenant Frankland, but relaxed though it might seem, it did not suit Churchill. Years later, in My Early Life, he chose the heading ‘In Durance Vile’ for the chapter which dealt with his time in the States Model School. He did not intend to remain a prisoner of war for long. Initially he hoped that the Boers would soon let him go as a non-combatant, and his first letter to his mother emphasised his expectation of an early release: ‘I do not imagine they will keep me. They have always treated Press Correspondents well and after Majuba Hill the Morning Post correspondent was released after a few days detention.’ To Pamela Plowden he wrote: ‘I expect to be released as I was taken quite unarmed and with my full credentials as a correspondent.’ By writing in this vein he hoped, through the censor who would read his letters before dispatch, to downplay his role during the ambush and to invoke a precedent for the release of a correspondent.
If the Boers would not let him go, escape was the only acceptable alternative. On the same day that he wrote to Lady Randolph and Pamela, 18 November, he also began a disingenuous correspondence with Louis de Souza, in which, by concentrating the minds of the Boer authorities on the arguments for his release, he intended to divert them from any thought that he might attempt to escape.
Over the next three weeks he was to write a further three letters to de Souza, to one of which was appended a note from Haldane certifying that: ‘Mr Winston Churchill, Correspondent of the Morning Post accompanied the armoured train on the 15th November as a non-combatant, unarmed and took no part in the defence of the train.’ Unquestionably Churchill was a non-combatant His action in clearing the line was not concerned with the defence of the train, but with the rescue of wounded men. What he did was not incompatible with the status of a non-combatant, although the Boers could be excused for thinking otherwise in view of the number of men who escaped on the engine. Churchill was, however, carrying a pistol. But as, on the veldt, a pistol could be no more than a means of self-defence, and as Churchill had discarded it as an encumbrance, Haldane felt justified in saying he was unarmed. Once again, Churchill was fortunate that he had inadvertently left his pistol in the cab of the engine.
On his first afternoon in the States Model School Churchill attempted to send his first dispatch as a prisoner to the Morning Post. Written cryptically, in telegraphic style on pages torn from a child’s exercise book, his original words were amended in places to make them more acc
eptable to the Boer authorities. He described the armoured train action and his discussions with his Boer guards during the march into captivity. He wrote that he admired the ‘skilful pious soldiers’ – then deleted the word ‘soldiers’ and substituted ‘burghers’. He offered his readers his assessment of Boer attitudes, and urged that ‘Boer prisoners should be shown all consideration.’
Commandant Opperman, who acted as censor, at first declined to dispatch the telegram. His reasons, given in writing, were that it demonstrated Churchill’s ‘persistent jingoistic attitudes’ and might encourage Britain to send out more troops. However, within a few days he relented, and Churchill was given a free rein to write whatever he wished. Between 20 and 30 November he composed three dispatches, running to a total of ten thousand words and covering in great detail all the subjects which had caused his original telegram to be withheld.
Recalling the thoughts, provoked by his contact with the soldiers on his arrival in Pretoria, about how an uprising might be organised, Churchill urged Haldane to become involved in an audacious scheme to seize Pretoria. Its outline was formulated soon after their arrival, and for days the younger officers plotted the details. Of the guards, forty middle-aged Zarps, only ten were on duty at any one time. At night the remainder were in a marquee, most of them rolled up in their blankets. Those awaiting their turn as sentries relaxed, without their boots and belts. Rifles not in use were hung around the tent poles in improvised racks. The lighting of the entire compound depended upon wires which passed through the officers’ dormitories, and a simple disconnection would plunge everything into darkness. There seemed a good chance that sixty resolute officers could seize control of the States Model School.
Draft dispatch written by Churchill in the States Model School on 22 November 1899 and discovered in the Orange Free State by Miss Netta Levine, who sent it to Churchill in 1912. It appears to be an earlier draft of his dispatch of 30 November, and was presumably left in the States Model School when he escaped. (Brenthurst Library, Johannesburg)
The next step would be to overcome the guards at the enclosed camp on the racecourse, where two thousand British soldiers were guarded by 120 Zarps with two machine guns. Having freed the soldiers and seized the Zarps’ weapons it would be a simple matter to overcome the town guard, which consisted of fewer than five hundred burghers, all of them deemed unfit for the front. President Kruger would then be a prisoner in his own capital.
In Haldane’s own words, ‘blessed with less imagination than Churchill the idea savoured of the fantastic’, and he and the other senior officers summarily vetoed the plan. Years later, with no less imagination but with infinitely more experience, Churchill wrote: ‘One is reminded of the comic opera. The villain impressively announces, “Twelve thousand armed muleteers are ready to sack the town.” “Why don’t they do it?” he is asked. “The police won’t let them.” Yes, there was the rub. Ten men awake and armed may be a small obstacle to a great scheme, but in this case, as in so many others, they were decisive.’
For the moment, while Churchill developed other plans, he continued to press his claims for release as an unarmed correspondent. There had already been a flurry of communications between various Boer authorities. On 19 November General Joubert, the senior Boer commander, urged the Transvaal State Secretary, F.W. Reitz, that ‘the son of Lord Churchill . . . must be guarded and watched as dangerous for our war; otherwise he can still do us a lot of harm. In one word, he must not be released during the war. It is through his active part that one section of the armoured train got away.’ Captain Daniel Theron, the officer who identified Field Cornet Oosthuizen as Churchill’s captor, wrote to Reitz, ‘In my view Churchill is one of the most dangerous prisoners in our hands.’
In seeking his release Churchill went as far as offering ‘to give any parole the Transvaal Government may require viz either to continue to observe noncombatant character or to withdraw altogether from South Africa’. Within three days Joubert ordered that Churchill must ‘if necessary be even more strictly guarded’ than other prisoners, while Reitz had confirmed that ‘The Government does not intend to release Mr Churchill.’
File cover from Louis de Souza’s office at the States Model School. The heading refers to a telegram from General Joubert giving his opinion that ‘the son of Lord Churchill . . . must not be released during the war’. (National Archives Repository, Pretoria)
With time on his hands, Churchill marked his twenty-fifth birthday, 30 November, with two long letters. Over a thousand words went to Edward, Prince of Wales, and almost as many to Churchill’s American friend Senator Bourke Cockran. To the Prince of Wales he wrote that the main object of his letter was to recommend the armoured train driver, Charles Wagner, for a gallantry award. However, it was a skilfully written letter with several motives in mind, and in describing the ambush Churchill emphasised the non-combatant aspects of his actions. This was for the benefit of the Boer censor, who, it was intended, would also be struck by the writer’s regard for Boer ‘courtesy, courage and humanity’, and his praise for ‘a great concession which we owe to Dr Gunning’ of the prison board of management, who had allowed the officers to become members of the state library.
Churchill’s high opinion of the Natal colonists, in particular of the volunteers who had taken up arms on behalf of the Crown, had been reinforced by the actions of the civilian railway employees on the train. In the hope of influencing opinion in London, a few words were slipped in to commend the ‘splendid devotion’ of these loyal citizens and to hope that they would not be forgotten ‘when the time comes to heal the wounds of war and crown its heroes’.
Finally, the letter turned to Churchill’s recent book on the Sudan campaign. Sensitive to the Prince of Wales’s view that young officers should not engage in contentious discussion involving senior members of the army’s hierarchy and military strategy, he wrote: ‘I hope your Royal Highness was interested in my new book The River War and did not think any of my criticisms improper or unjust. When I wrote it I was not a soldier.’
The letter to Bourke Cockran was in a more philosophical vein. Churchill ranged across imperial power, freedom, economics and religion before touching on his unjust detention and ending with the despairing cry: ‘I am 25 today – it is terrible to think how little time remains.’
Walking around the States Model School, I began to wonder how such a restless character as my grandfather occupied his time during the twenty-five days the Boers managed to hold him. Other prisoners played games and exercised in the makeshift gymnasium. These were diversions in which Churchill, for whom exercise and sport involved being on horseback, was little interested. He wrote letters and continued his dispatches to the Morning Post, but, given his facility and speed with a pen, there would still have been many hours to fill. As I delved into his life as a prisoner of war I met and heard from a number of people who enabled me to form a better picture of the incarcerated Churchill.
I knew from his own account that the troublesome prisoner was often visited by the Transvaal Secretary of State for War, Louis de Souza, whom Churchill described as ‘a kind hearted Portuguese’. As I trawled through the de Souza papers, meticulously preserved by his grandson Jonathan de Souza, it became clear that an affinity developed between the two men. Marie de Souza’s detailed diary comments on Churchill’s dispatches and records her husband’s visits to see him. On 21 November she wrote: ‘I read some of the letters which Winston Churchill had written for the Morning Post. They are very good. I feel wild about his treatment.’ And on 3 December: ‘Louis took the officers some fruit!!!’ Jonathan de Souza explained to me that the exclamation marks indicated that concealed in the basket beneath the ripe South African fruit was a bottle of whisky. At other times the bottle was concealed in the tail pocket of de Souza’s coat.
Churchill passed some of the time reciting poetry with James Gage Hyde, a civilian prisoner who occupied the adjacent room. Interestingly, Hyde was the son of George Clarence Hyde, who durin
g the Zulu War had treated the wounded after the battle of Rorke’s Drift in 1879. This certainly would have appealed to the romantic nature of his fellow prisoner, who had heard about this episode in 1880, as a five-year-old. His nanny Mrs Everest’s brother-in-law, a warder at Parkhurst jail, remembered the young Churchill as an eager participant in discussions about the graphic newspaper accounts of the war, which had captured the boy’s imagination.
James Gage Hyde’s daughter, Mrs Molly Pringle, told me that her father had owned a farm at the foot of a hill called Tchrengula (translated: ‘hang out the clothes’), on which the Irish Fusiliers were entrenched to protect the flank of a larger British force. In the battle of Nicholson’s Nek on 30 October 1899, Hyde had joined in with the Fusiliers and, having been taken prisoner in the rout which followed, he was taken to the States Model School. Here he met Churchill, who, he told his daughter, was ‘a cocksure little devil’.
Churchill had demonstrated his prodigious memory at Harrow, where, as a new boy in the bottom form, he had beaten the entire school in a competition by reciting twelve hundred lines of Macaulay’s Lays of Ancient Rome without a single mistake. In James Gage Hyde he found a companion who also had a love of poetry and a good memory. ‘Together,’ Molly Pringle’s father had told her, ‘we recited Longfellow, Shakespeare and Macaulay. Churchill knew a lot of Macaulay. We recited poetry not only for its own sake, but also to confuse the guards. We took great pleasure in their bewilderment. They could not understand what we were saying, and called us the “daft English”.’
In talking of the prisoners’ life within the school, Hyde had described a lax regime: ‘Boer women came into the prison and exchanged fruit and vegetables for our tobacco rations.’ Nevertheless, with armed guards all around, he thought it would be dangerous to attempt an escape. But, he said, ‘As often as I warned Churchill of the dangers, he dismissed them. He had a sublime certainty that he would overcome whatever dangers he encountered. Although we were much of the same age, I felt, because of his impetuous nature, I should advise him in a fatherly manner, but my advice was always brushed off.’