Nobody does it quite like Candice Millard. She finds relatively obscure historical events – the assassination of President Garfield, the Amazon adventure of former President Teddy Roosevelt, and here the young exploits of Winston Churchill in South Africa – and turns them into absolutely top-notch popular history. Her narratives are compulsively readable. My only complaint is that she hasn’t written more.
Young Winston Churchill was, to put it mildly, a man on the make. “There is no ambition I cherish so keenly,” he told his younger brother, Jack, “as to gain a reputation for personal courage.” He was as good as his word. Before he was 24-years-old he had experienced close order combat in Cuba as a journalist observer, seen comrades hacked to pieces by Pashtun warriors in Malakand on the Afghan border, and became separated from his regiment in the desert sands of Sudan in the war against the Mahdi.
But it wasn’t enough. “[Churchill] wanted not simply to fight,” writes Millard, “but to be noticed while fighting.” He was, in short, a “medal hunter.” And none of his previous adventures had resulted in the public acclaim that he so hungered for. Churchill was, Millard stresses, quite literally willing to risk his life for fame and glory. After defeat in his first stand for election to the House of Commons in 1899, Churchill seized on the conflict in South Africa as the stage upon which he might finally achieve his seemingly unlimited ambitions.
Churchill would join the war not as a soldier but as a war correspondent for a respected British daily newspaper, the Morning Post. And he was not just any war correspondent, however, but the most highly paid one in England. Despite his youth and relative inexperience he had established a strong reputation as a fearless man with an unusual skill as a writer. In the glowing words of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the young Churchill was “the greatest living master of English prose.”
Churchill left for the front on the same boat that carried the recently appointed British general in chief, General Redvers Buller. The dashing young war correspondent was intent on beating the 30,000 British reinforcements to the front. Many in the British Army at first held a low opinion of their Boer adversary, but not Churchill, who wrote that they were “the finest mass of rifle-armed horsemen ever seen and the most capable mounted warriors since the Mongols.”
Through a mix of pluck and ingenuity, Churchill had placed himself about as far forward as was humanly possible for a young British war correspondent in South Africa in late 1899: the small outpost town of Estcourt some 50 miles south of the British forces besieged at Ladysmith in Natal Province. In hopes of getting an even closer look at the fighting – and hopefully finally setting his eyes on a real Boer fighter – he volunteered to accompany a dangerous (and relatively pointless) armored train expedition out of Estcourt in the direction of Ladysmith. The venture was an unmitigated disaster for the British as the Boers effectively ambushed the train on its way back to Estcourt, killing five and taking 60 prisoners, the intrepid journalist Winston Churchill among them.
The Boer ambush of the armored train and Churchill’s conspicuous gallantry in the ensuing melee were front-page news all across England. “He had become not only the talk of the city but the subject of widespread praise and admiration,” Millard writes, “something he had long felt deserving of, but had certainly never been before.” Unfortunately, Churchill was in no position to enjoy his newfound fame. He vehemently protested his imprisonment, arguing that he was a journalist and civilian non-combatant. The Boers, however, were not about to release so famous a captive as the son of a British Lord, especially one who had famously maligned the Boers in the past.
Millard writes that Churchill absolutely detested captivity and the slovenly guards assigned to prevent his escape from their makeshift POW camp in Pretoria. “[From] the moment he had raised his hands he had hated his captivity with an intensity that surprised even him … So much did Churchill loathe his imprisonment that the experience would stay with him for the rest of his life.” All he could think about was escape, no matter the dangers involved.
On December 12, 1899, after a month in captivity, Churchill dashed over the back wall of the prison. His two fellow accomplices were unable to join him. He would have to fight his way through 300 miles of hostile Transvaal territory on his own. “Failure being almost certain,” Churchill later wrote, “no odds against success affected me. All risks were less than the certainty.”
The situation for the British in South Africa was bleak in late 1899. Anticipation of a quick and easy victory were dashed by a series of shocking defeats during a short period known as Black Week, none bigger than General Buller’s decisive defeat against Luis Botha at the Battle of Colenso on December 15, 1899. General Buller, nicknamed “the Steamroller,” was unceremoniously sacked after just three months in South Africa. The British, Millard writes, were desperate for heroes. News of Churchill’s dramatic escape from captivity and his treacherous overland flight to safety were just what the British public needed.
Churchill’s saga was again front-page news. He was, Millard says, exactly what the British wanted in their heroes – “resilient, resourceful and, even in the face of extreme danger, utterly unruffled.” After stowing away on a train for some 70 miles east of Pretoria, he debarked to find himself, quite miraculously, in the midst of British men operating a coalmine in the Transvaal. At much personal risk, his countrymen kept Churchill hidden away in a rat-invested mineshaft for nearly a week before arranging for him to be spirited away on a train headed to Portuguese East Africa (modern day Mozambique) hidden in a giant spool of wool. It really is an almost unbelievable adventure tale. Churchill arrived in Durban, Natal’s largest city, on 23 December to a raucous hero’s welcome. After two full weeks on the run, he was finally safe and, indeed, the “Hero of the Empire.”
Churchill leveraged his newfound fame to the fullest, somehow finagling an Army commission as a lieutenant in the South African Light Horse while retaining his role as foreign war correspondent for the Morning Post. He was present at the Battle of Spion Kop outside of the Ladysmith on 23 January 1900, one of the bloodiest fights of the war that left 600 dead and 1,500 wounded. He was also present for the British capture of Pretoria and the liberation of his POW camp in June 1900. Churchill returned to England and was easily elected to Parliament in the same district where he was defeated in 1899. His remarkable career was on its way; his election no doubt owing to his South African exploits.
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