This is Winston Churchill in 1899.

In 1899 Winston Spencer Churchill was 24 years old; he only turned 25 on 30^th November. During most of the year he was in England, working on his book on the campaign in the Sudan in 1898, The River War. The book was published in November 1899 and sold well – a two-volume opus of 1,000 pages – in spite of such criticism as “only this astonishing young man could have written these two ponderous and pretentious volumes”. An abridged version appeared in 1902, has been reprinted many times, and continues to sell well to this day.

In addition to writing a book Churchill was interested in a political career. As a small boy playing with toy soldiers he had said that he would be a soldier first and go into Parliament later. He made his maiden political speech at a fete near Bath. He was delighted when the audience “cheered a lot at all the right places when I paused on purpose. At the end they clapped loudly and for quite a long time.” Some of his friends persuaded him to stand for election in Oldham, a working class constituency in Lancashire. After a bruising campaign he lost and returned to London “with those feelings of deflation which a bottle of champagne represents when it has been half-emptied and left uncorked for a night”.

Churchill planned to publish his magnum opus in October 1899, “but when the middle of October came, we all had other things to think about”. He said “the Boer ultimatum had not ticked out on the tape machines for an hour” when Oliver Borthwick of the Morning Post, and the publisher of The River War, offered Churchill an appointment as principal War Correspondent of the Morning Post. He was to be paid £250 per month, all expenses paid and he retained the copyright on his articles. These were very generous terms and enabled him to engage a valet, Thomas Walden, who had travelled to Mashonaland with Winston’s father, Lord Randolph, in 1891. Churchill sailed on 14^th October on the Dunottar Castle – General Sir Redvers Buller was a fellow-passenger and it was an exceedingly rough passage. In those days before radio, they were completely cut off from the world while at sea. Approaching the Cape a passing ship held up a blackboard on which was written: BOERS DEFEATED   THREE BATTLES   PENN SYMONS KILLED. A staff officer ventured to address Buller. “It looks as if it will all be over, sir.” Buller only said “I dare say there will be enough left to give us a fight outside Pretoria.”

Churchill knew Joseph Chamberlain, the Colonial Secretary, quite well having met him first at Lady Jeune’s house party along the Thames in July. Before sailing for South Africa he went to Whitehall to talk with him. Churchill wrote that “Mr Chamberlain was most optimistic about the probable course of the war. ‘Buller’ said Chamberlain ‘may well be too late. He would have been wiser to have gone out earlier. Now, if the Boers invade Natal, Sir George White with his 16,000 men may easily settle the whole thing’”. Churchill added his opinion: “Always remember, however sure you are that you can easily win, that there would not be a war if the other man did not think he also had a chance”. This contact came in useful when he requested a letter of introduction to Sir Alfred Milner, the British High Commissioner at the Cape. While Chamberlain would not give a letter of introduction to a newspaper correspondent, he would be “most happy to give one as a private friend”.

First thing in the morning Churchill called at Government House in Cape Town to see Sir Alfred Milner, the High Commissioner for South Africa and the Governor of the Cape. Milner told him that the Boers had come out in much larger numbers than expected and that the Cape Colony was ‘trembling on the verge of rebellion’.

Knowing that there was action in Natal around Ladysmith Churchill sought the quickest way to get there. Advice was that he should travel by train to East London and take a ship on to Durban. Word was that the Boers had crossed into Cape Colony and were advancing on Burghersdorp only 40 kms from Stormberg Junction. Nevertheless the authorities thought there would be a good chance of getting through. In company with J.B. Atkins of the Manchester Guardian, one of his companions on the voyage from England, they set out via De Aar, arriving at Stormberg as the staff and garrison were packing up to leave. Churchill, never a good sailor, “suffered the most appalling paroxysms of sea-sickness which it has ever been my lot to survive” in the small steamer which took them from East London to Durban. Unable to get into Ladysmith as the Boers had occupied Colenso, Churchill and Atkins were shown to an empty bell tent in the shunting area of Estcourt station for trains were not going further than this. For the moment they were stuck in the little town with its garrison of 2,000 British troops. Churchill desperately wanted to see what Ladysmith looked like from the inside. He made it known that he would pay £200 (an enormous sum!) to anyone who would guide him through the Boer lines into Ladysmith. Trooper William Park Gray of the Estcourt Squadron of the Natal Carbineers was keen to acquire this princely sum and went to see Churchill in his tent. Gray was surprised at his youthful looks and “although four years older than I, looked to be about 17 or 18”. Trooper Gray needed to obtain permission for three days leave but his commanding officer, Major Duncan Mackenzie, told him that “he could not spare a single man, let alone me, to lead a bloody war correspondent into Ladysmith. I think Churchill was more disappointed than I when I told him the news”. Churchill found another volunteer to lead him through the Boer lines. This was Richard Norgate who lived in Estcourt and it was said that he agreed to undertake this perilous task for a mere £5. His wife tried unavailingly to dissuade him and a rendezvous was agreed for the morning of 15^th November but Churchill had something else to do that morning.

A number of the people stuck in Estcourt were old friends and acquaintances. Leo Amery, chief of The Times war correspondent service was there, waiting, like Churchill, to advance further with the army. “That evening,” said Churchill, “walking in the single street of the town, who should I meet but Captain Aylmer Haldane”. Churchill had known him from his days in the army in India. The commander in Estcourt was Colonel Charles Long, an acquaintance from the campaign in the Sudan. Atkins wrote: “We found a very good cook and we had some good wine. We entertained friends every evening, to our pleasure and professional advantage and, we believed, to our satisfaction.” Churchill’s valet, Thomas Walden, was no stranger to maintaining high standards in difficult circumstances after his journeys with Lord Randolph to Africa and India.

The garrison in Estcourt was 2,000 men – a battalion each of the Dublin Fusiliers (sent hurriedly down the line from Ladysmith) and the Border Regiment, a squadron of the Imperial Light Horse and some Natal Volunteers. There was also an armoured train, a sort of moving fortress. The engine was one of the Natal Government Railways’ latest, equipped as it was with a tender carrying coal and water to greatly enhance its range. Two trucks were pushed and three were pulled – the front truck having a muzzle-loading naval gun mounted. Then followed a truck reinforced with steel plates through which loopholes had been cut. Two more armoured trucks and a wagon containing materials to repair the line were behind the engine.

The mounted troops and some cyclists patrolled daily towards Colenso and the north and the armoured train ran up the line as far as Colenso most days. Captain Hemsley, whose turn it was to take command of the train, invited Churchill to accompany them on 8^th November. They drove up to the outskirts of Colenso and went by foot into the village. It was deserted and the railway bridge was intact, although a section of the railway line had been damaged. On the way back to Estcourt Churchill spoke with a volunteer and “thought him a true and valiant man who had come forward in time of trouble quietly and soberly to bear his part in warfare, and who was ready.” He also rode out to have lunch with a farmer who for fifteen years had sunk his entire efforts and assets into his property. “Now everything might be wrecked in an hour by a wandering Boer patrol. Now I felt the bitter need for soldiers – thousands of soldiers – so that such a man might be assured”.

On the night of 14^th November Haldane told Churchill that he was to take the train the next day and that he was to start at dawn. “’Would I come with him?’ He would like it if I did! Out of comradeship and because I thought it was my duty to gather as much information as I could for the Morning Post, I accepted the invitation without demur” said Churchill. Atkins on the other hand said, “I simply would not go. My instructions were to follow the war on the British side and that, if after having put my paper to great expense, I got myself on the wrong side, I should be held very much to blame”.

Churchill met Haldane at the station and they climbed into the wagon in front of the engine. 120 troops of the Dublin Fusiliers and the Durban Light Infantry occupied the three armoured wagons. Four sailors and a petty officer manned the 7-pounder gun on the front truck and a gang of civilian platelayers brought up the rear. Haldane did not like the idea of transporting military personnel in the clumsy behemoth which could be seen billowing smoke from kilometres away. But orders must be obeyed. At half past five on a rainy morning the signal to depart was given and the train arrived at Frere station an hour later. There they met a patrol of Natal Mounted Police who confirmed that there was no enemy within the next few miles. Haldane sent a report to Colonel Long but Churchill was keen to press on so that they did not wait for Long’s reply. In any case, Haldane was an experienced soldier with a Distinguished Service Order already to his name. On they went to Chieveley where Churchill, standing on a box to get a better view, saw “about a hundred horsemen cantering southwards about a mile from the railway”. Their telegraphist reported this to Long who ordered the train to return to Frere.

It was too late. Churchill saw “on a hill between us and home which overlooked the line at about 600 yards distance, a number of small figures moving about and hurrying forward. Certainly they were Boers. Certainly they were behind us. What would they be doing with the railway line? There was not an instant to lose. We started immediately on our return journey. As we approached the hill, I was standing on a box with my head and shoulders above the steel plating of the rear armoured truck. I saw a cluster of Boers on the crest. Suddenly three wheeled things appeared among them. A huge white ball of smoke sprang into being. It seemed only a few feet above my head. It was shrapnel. The steel sides of the truck tanged with a patter of bullets.” The driver put on steam and the train ran down an incline towards a curve at the foot of the hill. There was suddenly a tremendous shock and a sudden full stop.

Everyone in Churchill’s truck were pitched head over heels onto the floor but no one was seriously hurt. The three trucks in the front had been derailed (there were now three trucks ahead of the locomotive since the train was now reversing). The first, which contained the materials and tools of the breakdown gang and the guard who was watching the line, had overturned and was upside down on the embankment. The second, an armoured truck with the men of the Durban Light Infantry was on its side. The third was half on and half off the rails and across the track.

Churchill and Haldane quickly debated what to do next. Haldane and his Dublin Fusiliers and the naval gun would engage the Boers to keep down their firing. Churchill was to see to the damage to the line and clear away the wreckage. Some of the platelayers had been killed as the truck overturned but the Durban Light Infantry men were sheltering in the truck that was on its side. “As I passed the engine another shrapnel burst immediately overhead. The driver, Charles Wagner, at once sprang out of the cab and took shelter in the overturned truck. His face was cut open by a splinter and streamed with blood. He was a civilian. What did they think he was paid for? To be killed by a bombshell – not he! He would not stay another minute. It looked as if his excitement and misery would prevent him from working the engine further, and as only he understood the machinery, the hope of escape would be thus cut off. So I told him that a wounded man who continued to do his duty was always rewarded for distinguished gallantry. On this he pulled himself together, wiped the blood off his face and climbed back into the cab of his engine.” Boer riflemen, two field guns and a pom-pom machine gun opened a heavy fire on the wrecked train.

What had happened was that the Boers had jammed rocks into the small space between the running rail and the keep rail. When a train takes a curve the slope of the flange allows the inside wheel to slide inwards and the outside wheel to slide outwards. This alters the running radius and helps the wheels to negotiate the curve. The outside wheel flange keeps the wheel from sliding too far but the inside wheel needs a second rail to prevent it sliding right off the running rail. Rocks from the ballast of the roadbed, jammed into the space between the two rails caused the light trucks ahead of the engine to derail as the wheel flanges were lifted clear of the rails. Centrifugal force as the train took the curve at some speed moved the trucks sideways and off the rails. The engine itself was not derailed, its much greater weight crushed the rocks between the rails but the lighter trucks rode up the obstacle. The train was not derailed, as a number of accounts of this incident record, by “large rocks that the Boers had placed on the track”. A large rock on the line would be seen by the guard on the front truck who would have warned the driver to stop. In any case the engine was fitted with a cow catcher which would have cleared the obstruction.

The first thing to do was to detach the truck which was half off the rails. Churchill called for volunteers. He needed twenty but only nine stepped forward and, with the engine giving it a shove at the right moment, they managed to push the truck off the line. The derailed truck was fouling the footplate of the engine and pushing it with the engine only jammed it up against the truck off the line. Churchill says that “I was very lucky in the hour that followed not to be hit. It was necessary for me to be almost continuously moving up and down the train or standing in the open, telling the engine driver what to do. We struggled for seventy minutes amid the repeated explosions of shells and the ceaseless hammering of bullets. Above all things we had to be careful not to throw the engine off the line. But at last I decided to run a great risk. The engine was backed up to its fullest extent and driven full tilt at the obstruction. The engine reeled on the rails, and as the obstructing truck reared upwards, gained the homeward side.”

 

Churchill had hoped that the engine would now be able to tow the rear trucks to safety but shellfire had smashed the coupling. All they could do now was to load as many wounded as possible onto the engine and tender and use it as a shield behind which the remainder could escape on foot. “The engine was soon crowded and began to steam homewards – a mournful, sorely battered locomotive – with the woodwork of the firebox in flames and water spouting from its pierced tanks. The infantrymen straggled along beside it at the double.” Churchill told Wagner to cross the river and wait in the relative safety on the other side while he ran back up the line to find Captain Haldane and bring him and his Dublin Fusiliers along.

This is where it happened, just a short distance off the N3.

The line has been rebuilt a number of times but remnants of the original Natal Government Railway construction are still evident.

 

Four of those killed were buried here on the eastern side of the line. Remarkably only six British were killed, four during the action and two later of wounds. Sixteen badly wounded and about fifty others escaped on the engine. Ten wounded were delivered to the Ladysmith garrison and three were kept prisoner.

Only the foundations of the original N.G.R. bridge remain.

Churchill said, “I had not retraced my steps 200 yards when, instead of Haldane and his company two figures in plain clothes appeared upon the line. Boers! My mind retains its impression of these tall figures with slouch hats, poising on their levelled rifles hardly a hundred yards away.” He was in a small cutting with banks about six feet high on either side. Escape was impossible when a horseman appeared holding a rifle. Churchill realised suddenly that he had taken off his Mauser pistol and placed it on the engine tender. (His valet Walden recovered it and it was eventually returned to him). “The Boer continued to look along his sights. I thought there was absolutely no chance of escape, if he fired he would surely hit me, so I held up my hands and surrendered myself a prisoner of war.” Trooper W. Park Gray and three other Carbineers, on patrol near Weenen, were eating breakfast when they heard field guns firing from the direction of Chieveley. “The Boers have got that silly armoured train at last” they said. They met the train at the Little Bushmans bridge. There were wounded men on every part of the engine, even the cow-catcher.

 

Churchill demanded to be released, claiming to be a newspaper correspondent. His father, Lord Randolph Churchill had travelled through the Transvaal and into Mashonaland in 1891 and had been highly critical of the Transvaal government. Winston Churchill, while known in British military circles and society, was not a household name and the Boers were delighted to have captured the son of a lord. (Lord Randolph, although he had been Chancellor of the Exchequer, bore only an honorary title – as the third son of the Duke of Marlborough he was not nobility). A Boer threw him a Dublin Fusiliers forage cap, seeing him hatless in the pouring rain. This photograph was taken in Pretoria – Churchill still wearing the forage cap.

Churchill had promised the engine driver, Charles Wagner, a medal. This was in the heat of battle but afterwards the authorities failed to recognise the engine driver’s courage under fire. Ten years later, on becoming Home Secretary, and in a position to advise the King on awards of the Albert Medal, he was able to make good on his promise. Charles Wagner was decorated with the Albert Medal in Gold and the train’s Second Engineer Alexander Stewart received the Albert Medal.

 

One of Churchill’s guards for the train trip to Pretoria was H.J. Spaarwater. “…under the obligation to serve without pay in wartime, providing horse, forage and provisions, he was a polite, meek-mannered little man and I took a great liking to him.” Spaarwater never had a chance to use his captive’s note for he was killed in action a year later. His granddaughter still has the faded scrap of paper. Another guard was 19-year old Daniel Swanepoel of the Krugersdorp Commando who bought Churchill a cup of coffee at Germiston station.

“It was, as nearly as I can remember it, midday when the trainload of prisoners reached Pretoria. The day was fine and the sun shone brightly. There was a considerable crowd to receive us; ugly women with bright parasols, loafers and ragamuffins, fat burghers too heavy to ride at the front, and a long line of untidy, white-helmeted policemen – Zarps they were called. About a dozen cameras were clicking busily, establishing an imperishable record of our shame. At last, when the crowd had thoroughly satisfied their patriotic curiosity, we were marched off to the State Model Schools prison.”

 

Officers were imprisoned in the Staats Model School in Van der Walt Street, Pretoria. Churchill said “I certainly hated every minute of my captivity more than I have ever hated any other period in my whole life. We thought of nothing else but freedom, and from morn till night we racked our brains to discover a way of escape.”

Classrooms had been turned into dormitories. Four large rooms at each end of the building were used for dining and recreation. Churchill shared a dormitory with Haldane and four other officers. Later Haldane and two companions made a trapdoor in the floorboards and a tunnel in which to hide – the trapdoor is preserved to this day.

 

The prison regime was not at all arduous. The prisoners were permitted unhindered communication with the outside world and Churchill sent regular communications to the Morning Post. Adrian Hofmeyr, a pastor of Dutch extraction but colonial-born, imprisoned with the officers for his pro-British political views, described his prison space. A sketch was captioned: “My little corner in the Staats Model School – eight feet by six feet – in a room occupied by eight officers. Native blankets make a good tablecloth and carpet, and an umbrella stand upside down a bookcase. The table I bought and the flowers my sister sent me.”

Relaxed though it might seem, it did not suit Churchill. Louis de Souza was the Transvaal Secretary of State for War and chairman of the prison board of management. Churchill wrote him several letters, one of which included a note from Haldane certifying that “Unquestionably Mr Winston Churchill, Correspondent of the Morning Post, accompanied the armoured train on 15^th November as a non-combatant, unarmed and took no part in the defence of the train.” Churchill was not to know that de Souza was in possession of a letter from Commandant General Piet Joubert to State Secretary, Francis Reitz, saying that young Churchill “must not be released during the war.” Clearly these letters were somewhat disingenuous and intended to concentrate the minds of the Boer authorities on the arguments for his release and divert them from any thought that he might try to escape.

In the first week of December he resolved to escape. “The State Model Schools stood in the midst  of a quadrangle,” he wrote. “Surrounded on two sides by an iron grille and on two by a corrugated-iron fence about ten feet high, these boundaries offered little obstacle to anyone who possessed the activity of youth, but the fact that they were guarded on the inside by sentries, fifty yards apart, armed with rifle and revolver, made them a well-nigh insuperable barrier.” The original plan of escape was Haldane’s idea. Included in the plan was Sergeant Major Brockie of the Imperial Light Horse who had been taken prisoner while on patrol and passed himself off as a lieutenant in order to get better quarters.

Haldane thought Brockie essential to any escape plan as he spoke Afrikaans and a Bantu language. Churchill heard about the plan and wanted to join it. Haldane and Brockie thought that Churchill, by far the most prominent prisoner, would be missed within a few hours while Haldane’s and Brockie’s absence might go unnoticed for much longer. Nevertheless, Haldane relented but gave Churchill no details of the route they would follow to Portuguese East Africa – Haldane would give the orders.

On 11^th December they decided to make their escape but a sentry refused to budge from the very spot where Churchill and Haldane intended to climb over the iron fence. The following night, 12^th December, when the sentry looked the other way, Churchill scrambled over the fence catching his waistcoat in the ornamental metalwork. He freed his clothes and hid in among a few shrubs in the garden as he awaited the other two. Haldane eventually came to the fence and said that Churchill should go on alone. He put on the slouch hat that Adrian Hofmeyr had given him and, passing within five yards of a sentry, turned left into Skinner Street.

On his pillow Churchill had left a rather cheeky letter addressed to de Souza. It read in part: “… I wish in leaving you thus hastily and unceremoniously to once more place on record my appreciation of the kindness which has been shown me and the other prisoners by you, the Commandant and Dr Gunning and my admiration of the chivalrous and humane character of the Republican forces.”

Pandemonium ensued the next morning when Churchill was missed. Hofmeyr described “a great to-do; it stopped the whole machinery of state. It seemed to me that even the war was forgotten.” Churchill’s statement in his letter to de Souza “…the arrangements I have succeeded in making with my friends outside…” threw his pursuers off the scent. They were convinced that he was hiding in Pretoria and dozens of houses were searched to no avail. On 18^th December this poster appeared together with a description of the fugitive. The poster was issued by Lodewijk de Haas who was secretary in the Commission for Peace and Order, responsible for security in Pretoria. De Haas sent Churchill his good wishes in 1908 on the occasion of his marriage. Churchill, in thanking him, added: ‘I think you might have gone as high as £50 without an overestimate of the value of the prize – if living.’

Churchill made his way out of Pretoria. He had £75 and four slabs of chocolate in his pocket. The compass and map had been left behind with his comrades. He struck a railway line and after walking for two hours saw the lights of a station. A train stopped at the station and as it picked up speed on leaving he jumped aboard. It took him some distance but he resolved to leave the train before it got light and only catch another at nightfall. “I set out for the hills, among which I hoped to find some hiding place, and as it became broad daylight I entered a small grove of trees. Here I resolved to wait till dusk. No one in the world knew where I was – I did not know myself. My sole companion was a gigantic vulture, who manifested an extravagant interest in my condition.”

After three nights Churchill was exhausted, hungry and thirsty and incapable of going much further. He decided to make for a house whose lights he could see in the distance. Not knowing whether the house was occupied by a Briton or a Boer; a friend or foe, he knocked on the door to be greeted by John Howard, the manager of the Transvaal and Delagoa Bay Colliery. This by sheer good fortune was the only friendly house in the neighbourhood. Howard hid Churchill down the mine until arrangements could be made to smuggle him over the border even though he would be guilty of treason for harbouring him.

How the area looks today.

Churchill slept underground but went for walks above ground most evenings. A wool merchant by the name of Burnham was sending a consignment of wool to Lourenco Marques (Maputo) and space was left between the bales for Churchill to hide. Burnham rode in the guard’s van and they made it safely over the border and to the British Consulate. Churchill and Burnham went shopping and Churchill bought a rigout and a cowboy hat.

A special correspondent of the Natal Mercury had already reported that Churchill had arrived in Lourenco Marques and confessed that “I am not able to say how he managed to elude his guards and get out of Pretoria, but the story of his journey afterwards is sufficiently exciting to win general admiration.” The S.S Induna arrived in Durban on 23^rd December where the harbour was decorated with flags and bunting. Churchill was carried shoulder high by a group of men who placed him on a box and demanded a speech. He had a few words to say but the crowd sat him in a rickshaw and conveyed to the City Hall.

 

The crowd at the City Hall was even larger. He stood on a small cart and waited for them to settle while “Rule Britannia” was sung again. He expressed his gratitude for the reception given him, concluding his address with: “I am sure I feel within myself a personal measure of that gratitude which every Englishman who loves his country must feel towards the loyal and devoted colonists of Natal.” His exploit had made Winston Churchill into a celebrity.

 

He returned to the army and was commissioned a Lieutenant in the South African Light Horse in order for him to remain attached as a war correspondent. He had his photograph taken with the upturned truck at Frere. He stayed in South Africa for almost another year but went off back to England as a general election loomed.

Encouraged by Lord Roberts’s speeches proclaiming that the war was “practically over”. Churchill returned to England on the same ship that he arrived and so did John Atkins.

Churchill wrote of his return: “I received the warmest of welcomes on returning home. Oldham almost without distinction of party accorded me a triumph. I described my escape to a tremendous meeting in the Theatre Royal. As our forces now occupied Witbank colliery district, and those who aided me were safe under British protection, I was free for the first time to tell the whole story. When I mentioned the name of Mr. Dewsnap, the Oldham engineer who had wound me down the mine, the audience shouted: ‘His wife’s in the gallery.’ There was general jubilation.” Churchill was duly elected to parliament as the Member for Oldham. Still not 26 years of age, he had arrived!

In January 1901 he asked his mother to “select some watches for the men who had helped me escape from the Boers.” John Howard and Daniel Dewsnap were two of the recipients and Charles Burnham was also included. What subsequently happened to the eight watches is a story in itself.

Regimental Sergeant Major Brockie died shortly after the war and Mrs Brockie asked Churchill for financial assistance. He could only send her a cheque for £10 but “I regret that it is not in my power to do more.”

 

 

Churchill never returned to the country that afforded him fame and was instrumental in launching his illustrious political career. When Pretoria celebrated its centenary in 1955, Churchill was invited as a guest of honour by the city fathers. He declined the invitation – at the age of 80 he had only just left office as British Prime Minister – saying: “It is my privilege, as one not unacquainted with Pretoria’s hospitality, to offer the city my heartiest congratulations.”