by Celia Sandys
Churchill was not, nor would ever become, a religious man in the conventional sense, but he ‘prayed long and earnestly for guidance’. Then, on the principle that the ‘High Power’ helps those who help themselves, he watched the railway line and planned his onward journey.
As there appeared to be no shortage of rail traffic by day, he saw no reason to suppose that there would not also be trains by night. After all, he had arrived in his present position by night train. He planned to scramble aboard at a point where a gradient would slow the train to a walking pace, and where a curve in the line meant he would be unseen by the occupants of both the engine and the guard’s van. It was with increasing impatience that he awaited nightfall.
The long day reached its close at last. The western clouds flushed into fire; the shadows of the hills stretched across the valley; a ponderous Boer wagon with its long team crawled slowly along the track towards the township, the Kaffirs collected their herds and drew them round their kraal; the daylight died, and soon it was quite dark. Then, and not until then, I set forth.
He made haste for the railway line. Scrambling among boulders and through high grass, pausing only to drink from a stream, he found a point on the track which would suit his plan, and settled down behind a small bush to await the next train. The hours passed in silence. When it seemed that the railway must have shut down for the night he set off on foot, determined to cover at least ten more miles of his journey before daybreak.
In this part of the Transvaal, which was far from the fighting, there would have seemed to be no reason why every bridge should be guarded by armed men. But they were, probably as a result of the authorities’ determination to apprehend the escaped prisoner. At intervals there were stations, with the usual tin-roofed houses round about. The bright moon, which otherwise would have eased his path, now became a hindrance, and Churchill was forced to make wide detours around these potential traps. His twenty-five-day enforced idleness in prison had left him unfit for the arduous process of wading the many streams, and he was drenched and tired when he came upon Brugspruit station, no more than a platform on the open veldt between Balmoral and Witbank, with three long goods trains laid up in the sidings. If one of these trains was destined to depart eastwards the following morning, it might help the weary fugitive on his way.
First, it was essential to determine their destinations, and so avoid the ignominy of being unloaded with the contents at some station short of the frontier. Churchill had crept between the trains to examine the wagon labels when he was disturbed by the shouts of native labourers and what seemed to be a European voice giving orders. He quickly turned tail, slipped into the long grass and doggedly tramped on.
Eventually, as he came over the crest of a hill, Churchill saw the bright lights of Witbank station far ahead. Closer, to his left, at what he thought was no more than a couple of miles away, gleamed several fires, which he imagined were from a kraal. Having heard that the Bantu people hated the Boers, and were better disposed towards the British, he considered approaching them. He spoke not one word of their language, but he recalled that sign language had seen him through when he had been lost in the Sudan the year before. Some of his British banknotes might also induce them to help him. Leaving the railway, he walked towards the fires, then, exhausted and suddenly beset by indecision, partially retraced his steps.
After a while he stopped and sat down, quite unable to decide what he should do. Then, as suddenly as they had appeared and for no logical reason, his doubts were dispelled: ‘I just felt quite clear I would go to the Kaffir kraal. I had sometimes in former years held a “Planchette” pencil and written while others had touched my wrist or hand. I acted in exactly the same unconscious or subconscious manner now.’ Psychics have sometimes claimed Churchill for one of their own, and in later life he would say that he would die on the anniversary of his father’s death. As though determined to fulfil this prophesy, he lingered for ten days between life and death, finally giving up the unequal struggle early in the morning of 24 January 1965, seventy years to the day after Lord Randolph’s death. Psychic or not, it is certain that he had a strong sense of destiny.
After an hour spent trudging towards the fires they seemed as far away as ever, and Churchill concluded he had considerably underestimated the distance. However, his extreme exhaustion and the broken ground, rather than distance, were responsible for his slow progress: a look at the scene today confirms his first estimate of about two miles. Eventually, after he had waded one more stream and climbed a slope, he saw the outline of buildings silhouetted against the light of fires. A tower and a large winding wheel told him he had arrived at a coalmine. What he had taken to be the fires of a kraal were in fact the furnaces of the engines.
Churchill had been on the run for thirty hours. Haldane and Le Mesurier, who would escape with Brockie the following March, and who would follow the same general route, took six days to cover the same distance, losing Brockie on the way and being reunited with him only when they reached Lourenço Marques. The comparison makes nonsense of Haldane’s claim that had Churchill carried out the arrangements carefully thought out by Haldane and Brockie, he would have been able to foresee and surmount most of the difficulties he experienced.
Churchill now approached what he later described as a small two-storey house. In fact it was a bungalow which, having a verandah and being built on a slope, may well have appeared to have an extra floor as he approached it from below. He had no idea of the reception he would receive. It was common knowledge that a number of Englishmen had been allowed to remain in the country to keep the mines working, but there were also other nationalities in the region who were unsympathetic to the British cause, although with these a bargain might be possible. If he revealed his identity, Churchill thought he could assure £1,000 to anyone who could smuggle him across the border. Meanwhile, his £75 in English notes might ease his immediate future. ‘Still the odds were heavy against me, and it was with faltering and reluctant steps that I walked out of the shimmering gloom of the veldt into the light of the furnace fires, advanced towards the silent house, and struck with my fist upon the door.’ It was 1.30 in the morning of 14 December.
A light came on, a window opened and a voice called out, ‘Wie is daar?’ The enquiry in Dutch caused Churchill’s heart to sink, but he replied in English that he had had an accident, and needed help. After a short interval the door was unbolted and abruptly opened. In the dark passageway stood a tall man with a pale face and a drooping dark moustache. His clothes had been pulled on hastily. In his right hand was a revolver. ‘What do you want?’ he asked in English.
Churchill now had to improvise rapidly. He was, he said, a burgher, Dr Bentick by name, and had been on his way to join his commando at Komatipoort when he had fallen off the train while skylarking and dislocated his shoulder. This unlikely story must have sounded even more unbelievable when related in English rather than Dutch.
The tall man hesitated, then invited Churchill to enter, ushering him into a dining room cum office. He struck a match, lit an oil lamp and looked his bedraggled guest up and down before saying, ‘I think I’d like to know more about this railway accident of yours.’
Churchill, who had sunk into a chair at the head of the table, said he had better tell the truth.
‘I think you had,’ replied the tall man.
When all had been told, Churchill’s host locked the door and introduced himself as John Howard, manager of the Transvaal and Delagoa Bay Colliery at Witbank. As the two men shook hands, Churchill felt ‘like a drowning man pulled out of the water and informed he had won the Derby’. Howard had locked the door not, as Churchill had momentarily feared, to prevent his escape, but to safeguard them from prying eyes. Now Howard explained that great care was needed, as there were spies everywhere. Only the day before, a field cornet had arrived at the mine with a description of Churchill, and instructions that Howard should arrest him on sight. This was the only house for miles around at which Ch
urchill would not have been immediately handed over to the Boers. Howard, an Englishman, had become a naturalised burgher some years previously, but had been allowed to remain in charge of the mine rather than being called out to fight. There were several other British men working at the mine, and although they were under parole to observe strict neutrality, they would help to hide Churchill while a plan was concocted to get him to safety in Lourenço Marques, Portuguese East Africa.
Churchill realised that, as a naturalised burgher, his host was committing treason, and would be liable to be shot if he was found out He therefore felt duty-bound to say he would move on, and asked only for provisions, a pistol and a pony. Howard would not hear of it. ‘We will fix up something,’ he said. Then, turning to a more immediate problem, he added suddenly, ‘But you are famishing.’ He bustled off to the kitchen, first telling his guest to help himself to the whisky and soda on the sideboard.
By the time Churchill had done full justice to the meal provided, Howard had conferred with his secretary, John Adams, and enlisted the help of his British colleagues and the mine doctor, Dr Gillespie. The fugitive would be hidden down the mine until some means could be arranged to get him across the border. ‘One difficulty,’ said Howard, ‘is the skoff. The cook will want to know what happened to the leg of mutton you’ve just eaten, and the Dutch girl sees every mouthful I eat. We’ll work it out. Now you must get down the pit at once.’
Dawn was breaking as Churchill stealthily followed Howard across a yard to the winding wheel of the number one shaft. Beside the lift cage he was introduced to the engineer, Daniel Dewsnap, a native of Oldham, the constituency in which Churchill had been defeated in a Parliamentary by-election only five months previously. Dewsnap grasped Churchill’s hand and whispered, ‘They’ll all vote for you next time.’ With that the cage door was closed, and the three shot down into the mine.
Two men with lanterns were waiting at the bottom of the shaft: Joe McKenna and Joe McHenry, respectively the mine captain and a miner. The party set off through the labyrinth of workings until they reached a well-ventilated chamber, in which a new and so far unused stable had been built. McKenna and McHenry had brought a mattress and blankets, with which they sought to make Churchill as comfortable as possible. Howard explained that even if the Boers searched the mine, they would not find him. There was a place in one of the tunnels where water touched the roof for a foot or two. McHenry would dive through it with Churchill into the workings cut off by the water, where no one would ever think of looking. Howard handed over candles, a bottle of whisky and some cigars. ‘Don’t move from here,’ was his parting instruction. ‘There will be Kaffirs about after daylight, but we’ll make sure none of them wanders this way.’
‘My four friends trooped off with their lanterns, and I was left alone. Viewed from the velvety darkness of the pit, life seemed bathed in a rosy glow.’ Churchill had again lifted his eyes to the future. His long-term ambitions were back in clear focus. ‘I saw myself once more rejoining the Army with a real exploit to my credit. In this comfortable mood, and speeded by intense fatigue, I soon slept the sleep of the weary – but of the triumphant.’
When he awoke many hours later he reached for a candle. Unable to find one, he remained in the darkness, relaxing on his mattress. Presently the glimmer of a lantern signalled someone approaching. It was Howard, carrying a cooked chicken, books and more candles. ‘The rats have made off with your candle,’ he said in explanation of its disappearance. These rats, white with pink eyes, were Churchill’s constant companions during his time underground: ‘The patter of little feet and a perceptible sense of stir and scurry were continuous.’
At Vereeniging, thirty miles south of Johannesburg, I met Daniel Dewsnap’s grandson Errol Dewsnap and, in Cape Town, his granddaughter Mary Bromley. They both remember their grandfather telling them the story of Churchill and the mine. What had clearly made the most impression on them as children was Churchill’s description of his companions underground. ‘Your grandfather,’ they told me, ‘said the rats were as big as cats.’
In spite of his bedraggled condition, Churchill made a great impression on Daniel Dewsnap. ‘I never saw such a fellow. He was exhausted, but a drop of whisky revived him. Nothing frightened him. He wanted to get back into the war,’ he told his grandson. He wrote in the same vein to Tom Harrop, his brother-in-law in Oldham, adding, ‘The people of Oldham don’t know what a jewel they lost when they threw him out.’ He ended his letter: ‘Vote for Churchill.’
My pilgrimage to Witbank was a disappointment. Of the mine there is now no trace. Gum trees and long grass wave in the breeze where the winding wheel last turned forty-five years ago. The buildings, including Howard’s house, and the railway sidings have recently been demolished. All that remains of this historic site is a concrete slab over the mine shaft down which my grandfather had ‘shot into the bowels of the earth’.
I visited the former mine owner Julius Burline’s grandson, Anthony Burline, in his lodge on the edge of the Kruger National Park. Over breakfast it was brought home to me just how lucky Churchill had been to turn up at the Transvaal and Delagoa Bay Colliery. Not only did he find himself among friends, but Julius Burline, although a German, was staunchly pro-British. Had he been pro-Boer, like most other Continental Europeans, the welcome Churchill received at his mine might have been less than effusive.
There are strict rules in mines to prevent explosions caused by the ignition of gas. In the days before electric torches, Davy lamps shielded the naked flame with gauze. But, with typical insouciance, Churchill continued lighting cigars underground. Their smell, drifting through the workings, aroused the curiosity of a Coloured mineworker who traced it to the stable, where he came face to face with its temporary occupant .The man fled, shouting that he had seen a tokolshe – a small, hairy dwarf in black folklore. It was convenient for Howard to foster the story of the spook in the stable, which deterred further investigation by inquisitive workers. The inconvenience came later when, for a long time after the ‘ghost’ had gone, none of the men would work in that part of the mine.
Confinement underground did not suit Churchill. Feeling unwell on 15 December, he was brought to the surface for a stroll by night on the veldt, attended by Dr Gillespie, and was subsequently accommodated behind some packing cases in a spare room at the mine office. Food was now being provided by two young women, Ada Blunden and Ellen David, the housekeeper and cook who ran the workers’ hostel at the mine. Once again Churchill was almost compromised when, thinking a knock at the door was one of the prearranged secret signals, he opened it to the office boy, who was merely banging about with his broom. On this occasion the boy was sworn to secrecy with the promise of a new suit of clothes.
Howard now brought a new player into the game: Charles Burnham, a local English storekeeper and shipping agent. At a meeting with Howard, Adams and Dewsnap, Burnham suggested smuggling Churchill across the border and all the way to Lourenco Marques in a consignment of wool which was due to go by rail on 19 December. He had six truckloads ready, and by spreading the consignment over seven he could make a hiding place for the fugitive among the bales. His mother would provide food for the journey.
The afternoon before he was due to leave, Churchill was reading Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped. He could readily identify with the emotions and fears of David Balfour and Alan Breck, who had escaped into the glens, although he believed his situation was worse than theirs: ‘The hazards of the bullet or the shell are one thing. Having the police after you is another . . . I dreaded in every fibre the ordeal which awaited me at Komatipoort and which I must impotently and passively endure if I was to make good my escape from the enemy.’
In this unhappy mood Churchill was startled by the noise of rifle shots close by. He remained in his hiding place behind the packing cases, anxiously awaiting the outcome of what could only be a gun battle between Howard and the Boers. Voices and laughter dispelled his anxiety, and when these had died away Howard c
ame in to explain. There had indeed been a gun battle. The Boer Field Cornet had arrived with the news that Churchill had been captured at Waterval Boven, and to keep him from prying, Howard had challenged him to a shooting match, with a row of bottles as targets. Having won £2, the Boer went away delighted.
At two o’clock in the morning Howard led Churchill to the colliery siding, where the trucks stood waiting. Howard pointed to the end of one truck, and Churchill clambered in, finding a narrow tunnel between the bales of wool that led to a space with sufficient room for him to lie down or sit up. Looking around, he saw he had been provided with a revolver, two roast chickens, some slices of meat, bread, a melon and three bottles of cold tea.
Dewsnap and other British miners were loitering in the neighbourhood, ready to distract anyone who might discover what was afoot. Their presence, rather than diverting attention, raised the suspicions of a Boer detective, Ghert Trichardt, who was well known to the miners. ‘Now, Dan, I know what your game is,’ he said to Dewsnap, approaching the truck. ‘You might as well give him up.’
‘Now, Ghert,’ replied Dewsnap, ‘we have been friends for a long time, but you are not going to stop this business.’ With that the detective was ushered away, not knowing quite what was going on. Months later, Dewsnap would tell him the full story.
After several hours, well after daylight had filtered into his hiding place, Churchill felt the bumping and heard the clanging of the wagons as they were coupled to the colliery engine which would pull them to the main line at Witbank station. There was a final jolt, ‘And again, after a further pause, we started rumbling off on our journey into the unknown.’
Having seen Churchill on his way, Howard set out for Pretoria, finding himself on the same train as the prisoner whose capture had been announced by the visiting Field Cornet the day before. He was a young British soldier who bore some resemblance to the description of Churchill issued with the ‘Wanted Dead or Alive’ posters. The Boers had yet to discover their error, and the guard, much to Howard’s amusement, proudly announced that his prisoner was Mr Churchill. Years later Howard wrote: ‘I well remember the look of the official’s face who met the train at Pretoria Station expecting to receive his illustrious prisoner. I would have given much to have had a hearty laugh.’