My Early Life

by Winston Churchill

  We were already at the end of June. The general advance of the army must take place early in August. It was not a matter of weeks but of days.

  But now at this moment a quite unexpected event occurred. Lord Salisbury, the Prime Minister, whose political relations with my father had not been without their tragic aspect, happened to read The Malakand Field Force. He appears to have been not only interested but attracted by it. Spontaneously and ‘out of the blue’, he formed a wish to make the acquaintance of its author. One morning at the beginning of July, I received a letter from his Private Secretary Sir Schomberg M’Donnell informing me that the Prime Minister had read my book with great pleasure and would very much like to discuss some parts of it with me. Could I make it convenient to pay him a visit one day at the Foreign Office? Four o’clock on the Tuesday following would be agreeable to him, if it fell in with my arrangements. I replied, as the reader will readily surmise, ‘Will a duck swim?’ or words to that effect.

  The Great Man, Master of the British world, the unchallenged leader of the Conservative Party, a third-time Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary at the height of his long career, received me at the appointed hour, and I entered for the first time that spacious room overlooking the Horse Guards Parade in which I was afterwards for many years from time to time to see much grave business done in Peace and War.

  There was a tremendous air about this wise old Statesman. Lord Salisbury, for all his resistance to modern ideas, and perhaps in some way because of it, played a greater part in gathering together the growing strength of the British Empire for a time of trial which few could foresee and none could measure, than any other historic figure that can be cited. I remember well the old-world courtesy with which he met me at the door and with a charming gesture of welcome and salute conducted me to a seat on a small sofa in the midst of his vast room.

  ‘I have been keenly interested in your book. I have read it with the greatest pleasure and, if I may say so, with admiration not only for its matter but for its style. The debates in both Houses of Parliament about the Indian frontier policy have been acrimonious, much misunderstanding has confused them. I myself have been able to form a truer picture of the kind of fighting that has been going on in these frontier valleys from your writings than from any other documents which it has been my duty to read.’

  I thought twenty minutes would be about the limit of my favour, which I had by no means the intention to outrun, and I accordingly made as if to depart after that period had expired. But he kept me for over half an hour, and when he finally conducted me again across the wide expanse of carpet to the door, he dismissed me in the following terms: ‘I hope you will allow me to say how much you remind me of your father, with whom such important days of my political life were lived. If there is anything at any time that I can do which would be of assistance to you, pray do not fail to let me know.’

  When I got back to my home I pondered long and anxiously over this parting invitation. I did not want to put the old Lord to trouble on my account. On the other hand, it seemed to me that the merest indication on his part would suffice to secure me what at that time I desired most of all in the world. A word from the Prime Minister, his great supporter, would surely induce Sir Herbert Kitchener to waive his quite disproportionate opposition to my modest desires. In after years when I myself disposed of these matters on an enormous scale, when young men begged to be allowed to take part in actual fighting and when the curmudgeons of red tape interposed their veto, I used to brush these objections aside saying, ‘After all they are only asking to stop a bullet. Let them have their way.’

  Accordingly, after several days’ consideration I had recourse to Sir Schomberg M’Donnell whom I had seen and met in social circles since I was a child. By then it was the third week in July. There seemed absolutely no other way of reaching the Atbara army before the advance to Khartoum began. I sought him out late one evening and found him dressing for dinner. Would the Prime Minister send a telegram to Sir Herbert Kitchener? The War Office had recommended me, my regiment had given me leave, the 21st Lancers were quite willing to accept me, there was no other obstacle of any sort or kind. Was it asking too much? Would he find out tentatively how Lord Salisbury felt about it?

  ‘I am sure he will do his best,’ he said. ‘He is very pleased with you, but he won’t go beyond a certain point. He may be willing to ask the question in such a way as to indicate what he would like the answer to be. You must not expect him to press it, if the answer is unfavourable.’ I said I would be quite content with this.

  ‘I’ll do it at once,’ said this gallant man, who was such an invaluable confidant and stand-by to Lord Salisbury during his long reign, and who in after years, at a very advanced age, insisted on proceeding to the trenches of the Great War, and was almost immediately killed by a shrapnel shell.

  Off he went, discarding his dinner party, in search of his Chief. Before darkness closed a telegram had gone to the Sirdar to the effect that while of course Lord Salisbury would not think of interfering with the Sirdar’s wishes or discretion in the matter of subordinate appointments, he would be greatly pleased on personal grounds if my wish to take part in the impending operations could without disadvantage to the public service be acceded to. Swiftly, by return wire, came the answer: Sir Herbert Kitchener had already all the officers he required, and if any vacancies occurred, there were others whom he would be bound to prefer before the young officer in question.

  This sour intimation was in due course conveyed to me. If I had been found wanting at this moment in perseverance, I should certainly never have shared in the stirring episodes of the Battle of Omdurman. But in the interval a piece of information had come into my possession which opened up the prospect of one last effort.

  Sir Francis Jeune, one of our most eminent Judges, had always been a friend of my family. His wife, now Lady St. Helier, moved much in military circles, and frequently met Sir Evelyn Wood, the Adjutant-General. Her subsequent work on the London County Council may be taken as the measure of the abilities which she employed and the influence which she exercised on men and affairs. She told me that Sir Evelyn Wood had expressed the opinion in her hearing at a dinner-table that Sir Herbert Kitchener was going too far in picking and choosing between particular officers recommended by the War Office, and that he, for his part, was not at all disposed to see the War Office completely set aside by the Commander in the Field of what was after all a very small part of the British Army. The Egyptian Army no doubt was a sphere within which the Sirdar’s wishes must be absolute, but the British contingent (of an Infantry Division, a Brigade of Artillery and a British Cavalry regiment, the 21st Lancers) was a part of the Expeditionary Force, the internal composition of which rested exclusively with the War Office. She told me indeed that Sir Evelyn Wood had evinced considerable feeling upon this subject. Then I said, ‘Have you told him that the Prime Minister has telegraphed personally on my behalf?’ She said she had not. ‘Do so,’ I said, ‘and let us see whether he will stand up for his prerogatives.’

  Two days later I received the following laconic intimation from the War Office:

  You have been attached as a supernumerary Lieutenant to the 21st Lancers for the Soudan Campaign. You are to report at once at the Abassiyeh Barracks, Cairo, to the Regimental Headquarters. It is understood that you will proceed at your own expense and that in the event of your being killed or wounded in the impending operations, or for any other reason, no charge of any kind will fall on British Army funds.

  Oliver Borthwick, son of the proprietor of the Morning Post and most influential in the conduct of the paper, was a contemporary and a great friend of mine. Feeling the force of Napoleon’s maxim that ‘war should support war’, I arranged that night with Oliver that I should write as opportunity served a series of letters to the Morning Post at £15 a column. The President of the Psychical Research Society extracted rather unseasonably a promise from me after dinner to ‘communicate’ with him, should anythin
g unfortunate occur. I caught the 11 o’clock train for Marseilles the next morning. My mother waved me off in gallant style. Six days later I was in Cairo.

  * * * * * * *

  All was excitement and hustle at Abassiyeh Barracks. Two squadrons of the 21st Lancers had already started up the Nile. The other two were to leave the next morning. Altogether seven additional officers from other cavalry regiments had been attached to the 21st to bring them up to full war-strength. These officers were distributed in command of troops about the various squadrons. A troop had been reserved for me in one of the leading squadrons. But the delay and uncertainty about my coming had given this to another. Second-Lieutenant Robert Grenfell had succeeded in obtaining this vacancy. He had gone off in the highest spirits. At the base everyone believed that we should be too late for the battle. Perhaps the first two squadrons might get up in time, but no one could tell. ‘Fancy how lucky I am,’ wrote Grenfell to his family. ‘Here I have got the troop that would have been Winston’s, and we are to be the first to start.’ Chance is unceasingly at work in our lives, but we cannot always see its workings sharply and clearly defined. As it turned out, this troop was practically cut to pieces in the charge which the regiment made in the battle of September 2, and its brave young leader was killed. He was the first of that noble line of Grenfells to give his life in the wars of the Empire. Two of his younger brothers were killed in the Great War, one after gaining the Victoria Cross; and his own ardent spirit was the equal of theirs.

  The movement of the regiment 1,400 miles into the heart of Africa was effected with the swiftness, smoothness and punctuality which in those days characterised all Kitchener’s arrangements. We were transported by train to Assiout; thence by stern-wheeled steamers to Assouan. We led our horses round the cataract at Philae; re-embarked on other steamers at Shellal; voyaged four days to Wady Halfa; and from there proceeded 400 miles across the desert by the marvellous military railway whose completion had sealed the fate of the Dervish power. In exactly a fortnight from leaving Cairo we arrived in the camp and railway base of the army, where the waters of the Atbara flow into the mighty Nile.

  The journey was delightful. The excellent arrangements made for our comfort and convenience, the cheery company, the novel and vivid scenery which streamed past, the excitement and thoughtless gaiety with which everyone looked forward to the certainly approaching battle and to the part that would be played in it by the only British cavalry regiment with the army – all combined to make the experience pleasant. But I was pursued and haunted by a profound, unrelenting fear. I had not heard a word in Cairo of how Sir Herbert Kitchener had received the overriding by the War Office of his wishes upon my appointment. I imagined telegrams of protest on his part to the War Office which would indeed put their resolution to the proof. Exaggerating, as one’s anxious mind is prone to do, I pictured the Adjutant-General seriously perturbed in Whitehall by the stern remonstrance, or perhaps even obstinate resistance, of the almost all-powerful Commander-in-Chief. I expected every moment an order of recall. Besides, I was now under the Sirdar’s command. Nothing would be easier than for him to utter the words, ‘Send him back to the base; let him come on with the remounts after the battle’; or a score of equally detestable combinations. Every time the train drew up at a station, every time the stern-wheeled steamers paddled their way to a landing-stage, I scanned the crowd with hunted eyes; and whenever the insignia of a Staff Officer were visible, I concluded at once that the worst had overtaken me. I suppose a criminal flying from justice goes through the same emotions at every stopping-point. Thank God, there was no wireless in those days or I should never have had a moment’s peace. One could not, of course, escape the ordinary telegraph. Its long coils wrapped one round even then. But at least there were interludes of four or five days when we plashed our way peacefully forward up the great river out of all connection with the uncharitable world.

  However, as the stages of the journey succeeded one another without any catastrophe, Hope began to grow stronger in my breast. By the time we reached Wady Halfa I had begun to reason with myself in a more confident mood. Surely on the eve of his most critical and decisive battle, laden with all the immensely complicated business of a concentration and advance the smallest details of which, as is well known, he personally supervised, the Sirdar might find something else to occupy his mind and forget to put a spoke in the wheel of an unfortunate subaltern. Perhaps he might not have time or patience to wrangle with the War Office in cipher telegrams. He might forget. Best of all, he might not even have been told! And when on the evening of August 14 we ferried ourselves across from the Atbara camp to the left bank of the Nile, preparatory to beginning our 200-mile march to the Dervish capital, I felt entitled like Agag to believe that ‘the bitterness of death was past’.

  My efforts were not after all to miscarry. Sir Herbert Kitchener, as I afterwards learned, confronted with my appointment by the War Office, had simply shrugged his shoulders and passed on to what were after all matters of greater concern.

  Chapter XIV

  The Eve of Omdurman

  NOTHING like the Battle of Omdurman will ever be seen again. It was the last link in the long chain of those spectacular conflicts whose vivid and majestic splendour has done so much to invest war with glamour. Everything was visible to the naked eye. The armies marched and manoeuvred on the crisp surface of the desert plain through which the Nile wandered in broad reaches, now steel, now brass. Cavalry charged at full gallop in close order, and infantry or spearmen stood upright ranged in lines or masses to resist them. From the rocky hills which here and there flanked the great river the whole scene lay revealed in minute detail, curiously twisted, blurred and interspersed with phantom waters by the mirage. The finite and concrete presented itself in the most keenly chiselled forms, and then dissolved in a shimmer of unreality and illusion. Long streaks of gleaming water, where we knew there was only desert, cut across the knees or the waists of marching troops. Batteries of artillery or long columns of cavalry emerged from a filmy world of uneven crystal on to the hard yellow-ochre sand, and took up their positions amid jagged red-black rocks with violet shadows. Over all the immense dome of the sky, dun to turquoise, turquoise to deepest blue, pierced by the flaming sun, weighed hard and heavy on marching necks and shoulders.

  The 21st Lancers, having crossed to the left bank of the Nile at its confluence with the Atbara in the evening of August 15, journeyed forward by nine days’ march to the advanced concentration camp just north of the Shabluka Cataract. This feature is peculiar. Across the 4,000-mile course of the Nile to the Mediterranean, Nature has here flung a high wall of rock. The river, instead of making a ten-mile detour round its western extremity, has preferred a frontal attack, and has pierced or discovered a way through the very centre of the obstructing mass. The Shabluka position was considered to be formidable. It was impossible to ascend the cataract in boats and steamers in any force that would be effective, unless the whole range of hills had first been turned from the desert flank. Such an operation would have presented a fine tactical opportunity to a Dervish army crouched behind the Shabluka hills ready to strike at the flank of any army making the indispensable turning movement. It was therefore no doubt with great relief that Sir Herbert Kitchener received from his cavalry, his scouts and his spies, the assurance that this strong position was left undefended by the enemy.

  Nevertheless, all the precautions of war were observed in making the critical march through the desert round the end of the hills. All the mounted forces made a wide circling movement. For us, although we were only on the inner flank, the distance was perhaps 25 miles from our morning watering-place on the Nile bank north of the Shabluka to where we reached the river again at the evening bivouac on the southern and Omdurman side of the barrier. Those of us who, like my troop, composed the advance patrols, expected as we filtered through the thorn scrub to find enemies behind every bush, and we strained our ears and eyes and awaited at every instant the first
clatter of musketry. But except for a few fleeting horsemen, no hostile sight or sound disturbed or even diversified our march, and when the vast plain reddened in the sunset, we followed our lengthening shadows peacefully but thirstily again to the sweet waters of the river. Meanwhile the flat-bottomed gunboats and stern-wheel steamers, drawing endless tows of sailing boats carrying our supplies, had safely negotiated the cataract, and by the 27th all our forces, desert and river, were concentrated south of the Shabluka hills with only five clear marches over open plain to the city of our quest.

  On the 28th the army set forth on its final advance. We moved in full order of battle and by stages of only eight or ten miles a day so as to save all our strength for the collision at any moment. We carried nothing with us but what we and our horses stood up in. We drew our water and food each night from the Nile and its armada. The heat in this part of Africa and at this time of the year was intense. In spite of thick clothes, spine-pads, broad-brimmed pith helmets, one felt the sun leaning down upon one and piercing our bodies with his burning rays. The canvas water-bags which hung from our saddles, agreeably cool from their own evaporation, were drained long before the afternoons had worn away. How delicious it was in the evenings when, the infantry having reached and ordered their bivouac, the cavalry screen was withdrawn, and we filed down in gold and purple twilight to drink and drink and drink again from the swift abundant Nile.