Thus, from within the converted-schoolhouse jail, Churchill began to protest his captivity. He first wrote directly to Transvaal Secretary of State for War Louis de Souza, hoping to gain his release. Perhaps the South African officials would recognize him as a non-combatant and let him go.
On the other hand, if they ignored his requests – as they probably would – his correspondence would at the very least occupy their minds and divert them from considering him a flight risk. It was an ingenious strategy, but it sadly had the reverse effect. General Piet Joubert, the senior Boer commander, wrote to F. W. Reitz, the Transvaal State Secretary, advising against Churchill’s release – and, in fact, suggesting that he be more closely guarded. ‘Otherwise he can still do us a lot of harm.’24
HIGH-RANKING VISITORS
Though Churchill was something of a prize possession to the Boers, they allowed him to receive many high-ranking visitors at the prison. He entertained them with conversations about the progress of the war, and they provided him with their own views.
By now, he was determined to lull the enemy into a false hope that he had given up on the possibility of release and had resigned himself to incarceration for the duration of the war. However, quite the contrary was true. Along with Haldane and a South African colonist named Brockie, who had passed himself off as a sergeant-major in order to be sent to the officers’ prison rather than the camp for regular soldiers, Churchill was hatching a plan to escape.
On 7 December, days before the planned escape, two other prisoners jumped the fence of the State Model Schools and were captured on the outskirts of Pretoria. Though this incident raised Haldane’s confidence in their escape plan, it also added urgency, as the threat of tighter prison security or restrictions on movement would surely scupper any future attempts. It was quickly decided that they would proceed as soon as possible.
On the evening of 11 December, Churchill and Haldane strolled separately to the latrine building, which was to be their ‘leg up’ for climbing over the fence to escape. Brockie had agreed to meet them once they were in place, and he would bring the maps and a compass.
The plan failed to get off the ground that night because the sentry refused to budge from his assigned position. Disappointed, the three men decided to postpone for twenty-four hours and returned to their dormitories. Churchill was very fortunate not to have been discovered. Unwisely, he had left on his pillow a note for Louis de Souza, which he now urgently retrieved. The note read, in part:
I do not consider that your government was justified in holding me … and I have consequently resolved to escape. The arrangements I have succeeded in making in conjunction with my friends outside are such as give me every confidence… . Regretting that circumstances have not permitted me to bid you a personal farewell …
Yours vy sincerely,
Winston S. Churchill25
Though laced with foolhardy arrogance, the note’s purpose was not only to be humorous but also to lead de Souza to believe that Churchill had received help from the outside, which he hoped would keep the Boers busy looking for phantom accomplices and investigating anyone who had come remotely near the school. Strategically, it was a masterstroke.
Irony has its moments. Unbeknownst to Churchill, on 12 December, the day planned for the second escape attempt, General Joubert telegraphed Reitz, withdrawing his objections to Churchill’s release. The telegraph had yet to be delivered to the authorities in Pretoria when Churchill and Haldane once again made their way towards the latrine.
With the sentry once again standing firm, the prospects once again looked bleak. If they made a run for it and were seen, they knew that a shot at such close range would most definitely hit them.
Churchill and Haldane returned and informed Brockie. Not satisfied with their report, Brockie went over to observe for himself. Churchill and Haldane waited for some time, and then Churchill made his way back to see what Brockie was doing. Moments later, Brockie returned to Haldane, while Churchill remained in position, waiting for the guard to move, determined that yet another night not be wasted.
When the sentry at last turned from his position, Churchill took the opportunity to scale the fence. On the way over, his waistcoat snagged on the wire, and the ripping noise almost gave him away. But when he looked back towards the sentry, he saw the man cup his hands and light a cigarette. Relieved, Churchill lowered himself into the garden below, where he hid among the shrubs and waited for Haldane and Brockie to follow him over the fence so they could escape together.
After an hour had passed with no sign of his companions, Churchill finally saw the two men through the fence. He risked signalling with a cough, and they noticed him; but it soon became apparent that they would not be able to escape that night. Because Churchill was already over the fence and unable to return easily, he decided to proceed alone.
Churchill describes what happened next:
The gate which led into the road was only a few yards from another sentry. I said to myself, ‘Toujours de l’audace,’ put my hat on my head, strode into the middle of the garden, walked past the windows of the house without any attempt at concealment, and so went through the gate and turned to the left. I passed the sentry at less than five yards. Most of them knew me by sight. Whether he looked at me or not I do not know, for I never turned my head. I restrained with the utmost difficulty an impulse to run. But after walking a hundred yards and hearing no challenge, I knew that the second obstacle had been surmounted. I was at large in Pretoria.26
LONG JOURNEY TO FREEDOM
Churchill now faced a three-hundred-mile trek to Delagoa Bay and freedom. Unable to speak Dutch or Kaffir, not knowing anyone to whom he could turn for help, and without either a map or a compass, he had little money, no water, and only four slabs of chocolate – nothing that would sustain him for very long.
Sentries were stationed throughout the towns, and the countryside was routinely patrolled. Knowing that all trains were searched and the lines guarded, Churchill could proceed only on foot. Urgently aware that by morning his absence would be noticed, he proceeded with determination, avoiding the beams of streetlights by walking in the middle of the road.
He began to form a plan for his uncharted journey. His challenge in getting to Delagoa Bay Railway with no map or compass would be solved by following the tracks from a safe distance. Knowing he would be unable to walk the full three hundred miles, he determined to board a moving train and hide himself somewhere out of the way.
After two hours of walking, he saw the signal lights of a station and hid in a ditch about two hundred yards beyond it. He reasoned that any train stopping at the station would still be moving slowly enough for him to board when it passed his position.
After another hour, a train pulled into the depot and stopped. Churchill readied himself. When the train resumed its journey, he waited for the engine to pass his hiding place and then began running alongside the rails, looking for a way to clamber aboard. He quickly realized that he had underestimated the acceleration of the locomotive, and it took him several tries to board the train successfully. When he climbed into one of the wagons, he discovered it was filled with sacks of empty coal bags, which proved a warm and comfortable bed. Uncertain of the train’s destination or whether he was even going in the right direction, he decided that anything was better than being trapped in the enemy’s capital. At peace with his decision, he soon fell asleep.
‘I woke suddenly with all feelings of exhilaration gone, and only the consciousness of oppressive difficulties heavy on me.’27 He knew he had to leave the train before dawn or risk detection. Quickly scrambling over the top of the wagon, he took hold of the iron handle at the back and jumped clear at the first opportunity.
‘The train was running at a fair speed,’ he later said, ‘but I felt it was time to leave it… . My feet struck the ground in two gigantic strides, and the next instant I was sprawling in the ditch, considerably shaken but unhurt. The train, my faithful ally of the night, hurrie
d on its journey.’28
By now he was desperately thirsty, and he immediately began to search for water. Finding a clear pool in the waning moonlight, he gulped down as much as he could hold and then made his way up into the surrounding hills to hide in a grove of trees. As he watched the sun rise over the railway, he was relieved to see that he had chosen the right track to follow.
The day was soon sweltering, and Churchill was hungry. He ate one of his chocolate bars, which took the edge off his hunger but greatly increased his thirst. He waited for an opportunity to run back to the pool for another drink but watched with dismay as several Boers appeared throughout the day. He finally resigned himself to wait until dark before hazarding his next move. As he later recalled, ‘My sole companion was a gigantic vulture, who manifested an extravagant interest in my condition, and made hideous and ominous gurglings from time to time.’29
But as at Omdurman, the voracious bird would not make a meal of Winston Churchill that day.
CHURCHILL’S PRAYER
When night fell on Churchill’s second day at large, he quickly made his way to the pool and drank. Knowing he would be unable to board a train moving at the speed it had been travelling when he jumped off the night before, he made his way to where the line sloped upward, and he waited. Six hours passed, and no train appeared. As another hour lapsed, Churchill began to lose hope. He decided to proceed on foot, determined to walk at least ten miles before dawn. Because of the heavily guarded bridges and huts placed in frequent intervals along the tracks, he made little progress. Still, ‘there was nothing for it but to plod on – but in an increasingly purposeless and hopeless manner. I felt very miserable.’30
Meanwhile, the Boers were determined to recapture Churchill as quickly as possible. A notice was copied, delivered and posted, offering a £25 reward for his recapture, dead or alive. Though he didn’t know it at the time, Churchill now had not only a price on his head but a death sentence as well.
Churchill now saw a row of lights on the horizon, which he assumed came from another station along the railway. Off to the left, he saw the gleam of fires, and he was encouraged by the possibility that they came from a kraal, a cluster of huts inhabited by tribal Africans. Though he didn’t speak a word of the local language, he hoped that, by offering the British bank notes he had in his pocket, he might be given food, water and shelter for the night and would not be turned over to his enemies.
As Churchill walked towards the lights in the distance, he began to lose confidence. He stopped, looked back, and began to retrace his steps. He made it halfway back to the tracks before he again halted, this time slumping to the ground in desperate depression. He was, he said, ‘completely baffled, destitute of any idea what to do or where to turn’.31
Churchill’s thoughts and actions at that moment provide a clear view of his personal spirituality:
I found no comfort in any of the philosophical ideas which some men parade in their hours of ease and strength and safety. They seemed only fair-weather friends. I realised with awful force that no exercise of my own feeble wit and strength could save me from my enemies, and that without the assistance of that High Power which interferes in the eternal sequence of causes and effects more often than we are always prone to admit, I could never succeed. I prayed long and earnestly for help and guidance. My prayer, as it seems to me, was swiftly and wonderfully answered.32
‘Suddenly,’ Churchill recalled, ‘without the slightest reason all my doubts disappeared. It was certainly by no process of logic that they were dispelled. I just felt quite clear that I would go to the Kaffir kraal.’33
TOWARDS THE FLAMES
The fires he had thought were only a few miles away were in fact much farther. Still, with determination and his never-surrender attitude, Churchill continued towards the flames that had become a beacon of hope.
After walking for more than an hour, he drew close enough to realize that the fires were not from a kraal. ‘I saw that I was approaching a group of houses around the mouth of a coal-mine … and I could see that the fires which had led me so far were from the furnaces of the engines.’34
Churchill now had to make a decision: if he turned back, he would wander in the wilderness until ‘hunger, fever, discovery, or surrender’ ended his journey. Before his escape, he had heard that ‘in the mining district of Witbank and Middleburg there were a certain number of English residents who had been suffered to remain in the country in order to keep the mines working. Had I been led to one of these?’35
With some hesitation, Churchill knocked on one of the doors. When there was no answer, he tapped again. This time, a light went on and a man’s voice came from a window.
‘Wer ist da?’
Churchill replied in English, telling the man he needed help. Within moments, the door opened and a tall man peered out, pale-faced and sporting a black moustache.
‘What do you want?’ the man said, this time in English.36
Knowing that he needed to be invited inside in order to negotiate, Churchill made up a tale, claiming to have fallen off a train in an accident. He claimed he had been unconscious for hours and had dislocated his shoulder. The story, he said, ‘leapt out as if I had learnt it by heart. Yet I had not the slightest idea what I was going to say or what the next sentence would be.’37
The stranger invited him into a dark room. When the lamps were lit, Churchill noticed a revolver lying on the table. He wondered if this room would now become his prison.
‘I think I’d like to know a little more about this railway accident of yours’, the man said.
‘I think I had better tell you the truth’, Churchill replied.
‘I think you had.’38
When Churchill identified himself as a British war correspondent and told of his escape from Pretoria, the man stepped forward and offered his hand.
‘Thank God you have come here!’ he said. ‘It is the only house for twenty miles where you would not have been handed over. But we are all British here, and we will see you through.’
As it turned out, John Howard, Churchill’s ‘good Samaritan’, was a British subject who had been forced to remain in South Africa during the conflict. He ran the coal mine and was happy to hide Churchill in the mine until he could be safely loaded onto a freight train and taken across the border to safety.
After three ‘anxious and uncomfortable’ days on the train, Churchill crossed into Portuguese territory (present-day Mozambique) and made his way to the British Consulate in Louranço Marques (today called Maputo). From there, he caught a steamboat down the coast to Durban.
Churchill arrived in Durban to much acclaim, finding himself ‘a popular hero … as if I had won a great victory’.39 Flags festooned the harbour, bands played, crowds cheered. Churchill said he was ‘nearly torn to pieces by enthusiastic kindness’ as he was swept up onto the shoulders of the crowd and carried to the town hall steps, ‘where nothing would content them but a speech, which after a becoming reluctance I was induced to deliver’.40
A ‘SOLITARY TREE’ IN PARLIAMENT
For the first time in his life, Churchill was an international hero. Upon his return to England in 1900 after a second stint in South Africa with a cavalry regiment, he stood for election to the House of Commons from Oldham, where he had lost a bid prior to his experience in the Boer War. This time, however, he ‘received the warmest of welcomes’ as Oldham ‘almost without distinction of party accorded me a triumph’.41
The catalytic voice that would one day move a nation – and much of the world – was heard for the first time in Parliament on 18 February 1901. Churchill quickly found his own voice and purpose, securing his father’s legacy in his maiden speech to a packed House.
Like his father before him, the youthful politician fearlessly rose to challenge his own political party and government on policies that he believed were not in Britain’s best interests. ‘I was brought up in my father’s house to believe in democracy. “Trust the people” – that was his
message.’42
Winston Churchill was a moderate who firmly disagreed with Joseph Chamberlain, the Secretary of State for the Colonies and father of the same Neville Chamberlain whom Churchill would one day succeed as prime minister.
Joseph Chamberlain’s ‘Party before Country’ belief was evident in 1902, when he asked Churchill: ‘What is the use of supporting your own Government only when it is right? It is just when it is in this sort of pickle that you ought to come to our aid.’43
Churchill paid the price for his moral stands several times: losing Parliamentary seats, being overlooked for appointments and finding himself cooling his heels on the glum backbenches of the House of Commons, staring at the heads of younger, less experienced members who advanced because they made no waves in the party.
Within a few years of entering Parliament, Churchill, in conflict with the Conservative government over free trade, crossed the floor of the House of Commons, leaving the Conservatives and taking a seat on the Liberal benches. He would return to the Tory side twenty years later, but his decision to switch sides branded him for many as traitorous and untrustworthy. This characterization was further exacerbated by his stance against Indian independence and, later, by his alarm over Germany’s rearmament programme and Adolf Hitler’s rise.
On the latter issues, Churchill correctly predicted bloodshed. Tragedy might well have been avoided had the government listened to his early warnings.
During these barren years, Churchill studied the life of Moses and reflected on what went into building such a strong leader.
Every prophet has to come from civilization, but every prophet has to go into the wilderness. He must have a strong impression of a complex society and all that it has to give, and then he must serve periods of isolation and meditation. This is the process by which psychic dynamite is made.44
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