My Early Life

by Winston Churchill

  But now here was a curious coincidence. While I had been busy in South Africa my mother had not been idle at home. She had raised a fund, captivated an American millionaire, obtained a ship, equipped it as a hospital with a full staff of nurses and every comfort. After a stormy voyage she had arrived at Durban and eagerly awaited a consignment of wounded. She received her younger son as the very first casualty treated on board the hospital ship Maine. I took a few days’ leave to go and see her, and lived on board as on a yacht. So here we were all happily reunited after six months of varied experiences. The greatest swell in Durban was Captain Percy Scott, commander of the armoured cruiser Terrible. He lavished his courtesies upon us and showed us all the wonders of his vessel; he named the 4.7-inch gun that he had mounted on a railway truck after my mother, and even eventually organised a visit for her to the front to see it fire. Altogether there was an air of grace and amenity about this war singularly lacking fifteen years later on the Western Front.

  Buller now began his fourth attempt to relieve Ladysmith. The garrison was in dire straits, and for all of us, relievers and besieged, it was kill or cure. The enemy’s main positions were upon the bluffs and heights along the Tugela.18 After flowing under the broken railway bridge at Colenso, the river takes a deep bend towards Ladysmith.

  The tongue of land encircled by the river included on our left (as we faced the enemy) Hlangwane Hill, assaulted by the South African Light Horse on December 15; in the centre, a long grassy plateau called the Green Hill, and on the far right, two densely wooded and mountainous ridges named respectively Cingolo and Monte Cristo. Thus the Boer right had the river in its front and their left and centre had the river in its rear. It was now decided to make a wide turning movement, and try to surprise and seize these commanding ridges which constituted the true left flank of the enemy. If we were successful two infantry divisions sustained by all the artillery would assault the central plateau, and thence by a continued right-handed attack capture Hlangwane Hill itself. The conquest of this hill would render the Boer positions around Colenso untenable, and would open the passage of the river. This was a sound and indeed fairly obvious plan, and there was no reason why it should not have been followed from the very beginning. Buller had not happened to think of it before. At Colenso, although assured that Hlangwane was on his side of the river, he had not believed it. He only gradually accepted the fact. That was all.

  On the 15th the whole army marched from its camps along the railway to Hussar Hill and deployed for attack. Everything, however, depended upon our being able to capture Cingolo and Monte Cristo. This task was entrusted to Colonel Byng and our regiment, supported by an infantry brigade. It proved surprisingly easy. We marched by devious paths through the night and at dawn on the 18th climbed the southern slopes of Cingolo. We surprised and drove in the handful of Boers who alone were watching these key positions. During that day and the next in conjunction with the infantry we chased them off Cingolo, across the nek or saddle which joined the two ridges, and became masters of the whole of Monte Cristo. From this commanding height we overlooked all the Boer positions beyond the Tugela, and saw Ladysmith lying at our feet only six miles away. Meanwhile the main infantry and artillery attack on the sandbag redoubts and entrenchments of the Green Hills had been entirely successful. The enemy, handled properly by envelopment and resolute attack, and disquieted by having a river in his rear, made but little resistance. By the night of the 29th the whole of the Boer positions south of the Tugela, including the rugged hill of Hlangwane, were in the British grip. The Boers evacuated Colenso and everywhere withdrew to their main line of defence across the river. So far so good.

  We had only to continue this right-handed movement to succeed, for Monte Cristo actually dominated the Boer trenches at Barton’s Hill beyond the river; and Barton’s Hill, if taken, exposed the neighbouring eminence, and so on. But now Buller, urged it was said by Warren, made a mistake difficult to pardon after all the schooling he had received at the expense of his troops. Throwing a pontoon bridge near Colenso, he drew in his right, abandoned the commanding position, and began to advance by his left, along the railway line. In the course of the next two days he got his army thoroughly clumped-up in the maze of hills and spurs beyond Colenso. In these unfavourable conditions, without any turning movement, he assaulted the long-prepared, deeply entrenched Boer position before Pieters. The purblind viciousness of these manoeuvres was apparent to many. When I talked on the night of the 22nd with a high officer on the Headquarters Staff, afterwards well known as Colonel Repington, he said bluntly, ‘I don’t like the situation. We have come down off our high ground. We have taken all the big guns off the big hills. We are getting ourselves cramped among these kopjes in the valley of the Tugela. It will be like being in the Coliseum and shot at by every row of seats!’ So indeed it proved. The Boers, who had despaired of resisting our wide turning movement, and many of whom had already begun to trek northwards, returned in large numbers when they saw the British army once again thrusting its head obstinately into a trap.

  Heavy confused fighting with many casualties among the low kopjes by the Tugela occupied the night of the 22nd/23rd. The assault of the Pieters position could not begin till the next evening. As the cavalry could play no part, I rode across the river and worked my way forward to a rocky spur where I found General Lyttelton19 crouching behind a stone watching the fight. He was quite alone and seemed glad to see me. The infantry, General Hart’s Irish Brigade leading, filed and wound along the railway line, losing a lot of men at exposed points and gradually completing their deployment for their left-handed assault. The Pieters position consisted of three rounded peaks easily attackable from right to left, and probably impregnable from left to right. It was four o’clock when the Irish Brigade began to toil up the steep sides of what is now called Inniskilling Hill, and sunset approached before the assault was delivered by the Inniskilling and Dublin Fusiliers. The spectacle was tragic. Through our glasses we could see the Boers’ heads and slouch hats in miniature silhouette, wreathed and obscured by shell-bursts, against the evening sky. Up the bare grassy slopes slowly climbed the brown figures and glinting bayonets of the Irishmen, and the rattle of intense musketry drummed in our ears. The climbing figures dwindled; they ceased to move; they vanished into the darkening hillside. Out of twelve hundred men who assaulted, both colonels, three majors, twenty officers and six hundred soldiers had fallen killed or wounded. The repulse was complete.

  Sir Redvers Buller now allowed himself to be persuaded to resume the right-handed movement, and to deploy again upon a widely extended front. It took three days to extricate the army from the tangle into which he had so needlessly plunged it. For two of these days hundreds of wounded lying on Inniskilling Hill suffered a cruel ordeal. The plight of these poor men between the firing-lines without aid or water, waving pitiful strips of linen in mute appeal, was hard to witness. On the 26th Buller sought an armistice. The Boers refused a formal truce, but invited doctors and stretcher-bearers to come without fear and collect the wounded and bury the dead. At nightfall, this task being completed, firing was resumed.

  February 27 was the anniversary of Majuba, and on this day the Natal army delivered its final attack. All the big guns were now back again on the big hills, and the brigades, having passed the river by the Boer bridge which was undamaged, attacked the Boer position from the right. First Barton’s Hill was stormed. This drew with it the capture of Railway Hill; and lastly the dreaded position of the Inniskilling Hill, already half turned and to some extent commanded, was carried by the bayonet. The last row of hills between us and Ladysmith had fallen. Mounting in haste we galloped to the river, hoping to pursue. The Commander-in-Chief met us at the bridge and sternly ordered us back. ‘Damn pursuit!’ were said to be the historic words he uttered on this occasion. As one might say ‘Damn reward for sacrifices! Damn the recovery of debts overdue! Damn the prize which eases future struggles!’

  The next morning, advancing in l
eisurely fashion, we crossed the river, wended up and across the battle-scarred heights, and debouched upon the open plain which led to Ladysmith six miles away. The Boers were in full retreat; the shears were up over their big gun on Bulwana Hill, and the dust of the wagon-trains trekking northward rose from many quarters of the horizon. The order ‘Damn pursuit!’ still held. It was freely said that the Commander-in-Chief had remarked, ‘Better leave them alone now they are going off.’ All day we chafed and fumed, and it was not until evening that two squadrons of the SALH were allowed to brush through the crumbling rearguards and ride into Ladysmith. I rode with these two squadrons, and galloped across the scrub-dotted plain, fired at only by a couple of Boer guns. Suddenly from the brushwood up rose gaunt figures waving hands of welcome. On we pressed, and at the head of a battered street of tin-roofed houses met Sir George White on horseback, faultlessly attired. Then we all rode together into the long beleaguered, almost starved-out, Ladysmith. It was a thrilling moment.

  I dined with the Headquarters Staff that night. Ian Hamilton, Rawlinson, Hedworth Lambton, were warm in their welcome. Jealously preserved bottles of champagne were uncorked. I looked for horseflesh, but the last trek-ox had been slain in honour of the occasion. Our pallid and emaciated hosts showed subdued contentment. But having travelled so far and by such rough and devious routes, I rejoiced to be in Ladysmith at last.

  18 See map on page 292.

  19 Afterwards Sir Neville Lyttelton.

  Chapter XXVI

  In the Orange Free State

  LORD ROBERTS had been a great friend of my father’s. Lord Randolph Churchill had insisted as Secretary of State for India in 1885 on placing him at the head of the Indian Army, thrusting on one side for this purpose the claims of Lord Wolseley himself. They had continued friends until my father’s death ten years later; and I as a child had often met the General and could pride myself on several fascinating conversations with him. He was always very kind to youth, tolerant of its precocity and exuberance, and gifted naturally with every art that could captivate its allegiance. I certainly felt as a young officer that here at any rate in the higher ranks of the Army was an august friend upon whose countenance I could rely.

  While we in Natal were rejoicing in a success all the sweeter for so many disappointments, the news had already arrived that Roberts advancing northwards from the Cape Colony into the Orange Free State, had relieved Kimberley and had surrounded and captured the Boer Army under Cronje in the considerable fighting of Paardeberg. It seemed as if by a wave of the wand the whole war situation had been transformed and the black week of December 1899 had been replaced by the universal successes of February 1900. All this dramatic change in the main aspect of the war redounded in the public mind to the credit of Lord Roberts. This wonderful little man, it was said, had suddenly appeared upon the scene; and as if by enchantment, the clouds had rolled away and the sun shone once again brightly on the British armies in every part of the immense subcontinent.

  In consequence of their reverses the Boers abandoned the invasion of Natal. They withdrew with their usual extraordinary celerity through the Drakensbergs back into their own territory. Dragging their heavy guns with them and all their stores, they melted away in the course of a fortnight and abandoned the whole of the colony of Natal to the Imperial troops. It was evident that a long delay would of necessity have to intervene before these ponderous forces – never more ponderous than under Buller – could be set in motion, repair the damaged railway, transport their immense quantities of supplies, and cover the 150 miles which separated Ladysmith from the Transvaal frontiers.

  I now became impatient to get into the decisive and main theatre of the war. On the free and easy footing which had been accorded me by the Natal Army authorities since my escape from Pretoria, it was not difficult for me to obtain indefinite leave of absence from the South African Light Horse, and without resigning my commission to transfer my activities as a correspondent to Lord Roberts’s army, at that time in occupation of Bloemfontein. I packed my kit-bag, descended the Natal Railway, sailed from Durban to Port Elizabeth, traversed the railways of the Cape Colony, and arrived in due course at the sumptuous Mount Nelson Hotel at Cape Town. Meanwhile the Morning Post, who regarded me as their principal correspondent, made the necessary application for me to be accredited to Lord Roberts’s army. I expected the formalities would take several days, and these I passed very pleasantly interviewing the leading South African and Dutch politicians in the South African capital.

  Hitherto I had been regarded as a Jingo bent upon the ruthless prosecution of the war, and was therefore vilified by the Pro-Boers. I was now to get into trouble with the Tories. The evacuation of Natal by the invaders exposed all those who had joined, aided or sympathised with them to retribution. A wave of indignation swept through the colony. The first thoughts of the British Government on the other hand now that they had won were to let bygones be bygones. An Under-Secretary, Lord Wolverton, was allowed to make a speech in this sense. All my instincts acclaimed this magnanimity. On March 24 I had telegraphed from Ladysmith:

  In spite of the feelings of the loyal colonists who have fought so gallantly for the Empire, I earnestly hope and urge that a generous and forgiving policy be followed. If the military operations are prosecuted furiously and tirelessly there will be neither necessity nor excuse for giving rebels who surrender a ‘lesson’. The wise and right course is to beat down all who resist, even to the last man, but not to withhold forgiveness and even friendship from any who wish to surrender. The Dutch farmers who have joined the enemy are only traitors in the legal sense. That they obeyed the natural instinct of their blood to join the men of their own race, though no justification, is an excuse. Certainly their conduct is morally less reprehensible than that of Englishmen who are regular burghers of the Republics, and who are fighting as fiercely as proper belligerents against their own countrymen.

  Yet even these Englishmen would deserve some tolerance were they not legally protected by their citizenship. The Dutch traitor is less black than the renegade British-born burgher, but both are the results of our own mistakes and crimes in Africa in former years. On purely practical grounds it is most important to differentiate between rebels who want to surrender and rebels who are caught fighting. Every influence should be brought to bear to weaken the enemy and make him submit. On the one hand are mighty armies advancing irresistibly, slaying and smiting with all the fearful engines of war; on the other, the quiet farm with wife and children safe under the protection of a government as merciful as it is strong. The policy which will hold these two pictures ever before the eyes of the Republican soldiers is truly ‘thorough’, and therein lies the shortest road to ‘peace with honour’.

  This message was very ill received in England. A vindictive spirit, unhelpful but not unnatural, ruled. The Government had rallied to the nation; the Under-Secretary had been suppressed; and I bore the brunt of Conservative anger. Even the Morning Post, while printing my messages, sorrowfully disagreed with my view. The Natal newspapers were loud-voiced in condemnation. I replied that it was not the first time that victorious gladiators had been surprised to see thumbs turned down in the Imperial box.

  Sir Alfred Milner was far more understanding, and spoke to me with kindliness and comprehension. His ADC, the Duke of Westminster, had organised a pack of hounds for his chief’s diversion and exercise. We hunted jackal beneath Table Mountain, and lunched after a jolly gallop sitting among the scrub.

  The High Commissioner said, ‘I thought they would be upset, especially in Natal, by your message when I saw it. Of course all these people have got to live together. They must forgive and forget, and make a common country. But now passions are running too high. People who have had their friends or relations killed, or whose homes have been invaded, will not hear of clemency till they calm down. I understand your feelings, but it does no good to express them now.’ I was impressed by hearing these calm, detached, broad-minded opinions from the lips
of one so widely portrayed as the embodiment of rigid uncompromising subjugation. In the event, for all the fierce words, the treatment accorded to rebels and traitors by the British Government was indulgent in the extreme.

  Here I must confess that all through my life I have found myself in disagreement alternately with both the historic English parties. I have always urged fighting wars and other contentions with might and main till overwhelming victory, and then offering the hand of friendship to the vanquished. Thus I have always been against the Pacifists during the quarrel, and against the Jingoes at its close. Many years after this South African incident, Lord Birkenhead mentioned to me a Latin quotation which seems to embody this idea extremely well, ‘Parcere subjectis et debellare superbos’, which he translated finely ‘Spare the conquered and war down the proud.’ I seem to have come very near achieving this thought by my own untutored reflections. The Romans have often forestalled many of my best ideas, and I must concede to them the patent rights in this maxim. Never indeed was it more apt than in South Africa. Wherever we departed from it, we suffered; wherever we followed it, we triumphed.

  And not only in South Africa. I thought we ought to have conquered the Irish and then given them Home Rule; that we ought to have starved out the Germans, and then revictualled their country; and that after smashing the General Strike, we should have met the grievances of the miners. I always get into trouble because so few people take this line. I was once asked to devise an inscription for a monument in France. I wrote: ‘In war, Resolution. In defeat, Defiance. In victory, Magnanimity. In peace, Goodwill.’ The inscription was not accepted. It is all the fault of the human brain being made in two lobes, only one of which does any thinking, so that we are all right-handed or left-handed; whereas if we were properly constructed we should use our right and left hands with equal force and skill according to circumstances. As it is, those who can win a war well can rarely make a good peace, and those who could make a good peace would never have won the war. It would perhaps be pressing the argument too far to suggest that I could do both.