Part 11

The charge was instantly made, the barricades were torn down, and the terrified management ordered that drink be served to its victorious patrons.

Shortly after striking this blow for the liberty of others, Churchill organized a dinner which illustrated the direction in which at that age his mind was working, and showed that his ambition was already abnormal. The dinner was given to those of his friends and acquaintances who “were under twenty-one years of age, and who in twenty years would control the destinies of the British Empire.”

As one over the age limit, or because he did not consider me an empire-controlling force, on this great occasion, I was permitted to be present. But except that the number of incipient empire-builders was very great, that they were very happy, and that save the host himself none of them took his idea seriously, I would not call it an evening of historical interest. But the fact is interesting that of all the boys present, as yet, the host seems to be the only one who to any conspicuous extent is disturbing the destinies of Great Britain. However, the others can reply that ten of the twenty years have not yet passed.

When he was twenty-three Churchill obtained leave of absence from his regiment, and as there was no other way open to him to see fighting, as a correspondent he joined the Malakand Field Force in India.

It may be truthfully said that by his presence in that frontier war he made it and himself famous. His book on that campaign is his best piece of war reporting. To the civilian reader it has all the delight of one of Kipling’s Indian stories, and to writers on military subjects it is a model. But it is a model very few can follow, and which Churchill himself was unable to follow, for the reason that only once is it given a man to be twenty-three years of age.

The picturesque hand-to-hand fighting, the night attacks, the charges up precipitous hills, the retreats made carrying the wounded under constant fire, which he witnessed and in which he bore his part, he never again can see with the same fresh and enthusiastic eyes. Then it was absolutely new, and the charm of the book and the value of the book are that with the intolerance of youth he attacks in the service evils that older men prefer to let lie, and that with the ingenuousness of youth he tells of things which to the veteran have become unimportant, or which through usage he is no longer even able to see.

In his three later war books, the wonder of it, the horror of it, the quick admiration for brave deeds and daring men, give place, in “The River War,” to the critical point of view of the military expert, and in his two books on the Boer war to the rapid impressions of the journalist. In these latter books he tells you of battles he has seen, in the first one he made you see them.

For his services with the Malakand Field Force he received the campaign medal with clasp, and, “in despatches,” Brigadier-General Jeffreys praises “the courage and resolution of Lieutenant W. L. S. Churchill, Fourth Hussars, with the force as correspondent of the Pioneer.”

From the operations around Malakand, he at once joined Sir William Lockhart as orderly officer, and with the Tirah Expedition went through that campaign.

For this his Indian medal gained a second clasp.

This was in the early part of 1898. In spite of the time taken up as an officer and as a correspondent, he finished his book on the Malakand Expedition and then, as it was evident Kitchener would soon attack Khartum, he jumped across to Egypt and again as a correspondent took part in the advance upon that city.

Thus, in one year, he had seen service in three campaigns.

On the day of the battle his luck followed him. Kitchener had attached him to the Twenty-first Lancers, and it will be remembered the event of the battle was the charge made by that squadron. It was no canter, no easy “pig-sticking”; it was a fight to get in and a fight to get out, with frenzied followers of the Khalifa hanging to the bridle reins, hacking at the horses’ hamstrings, and slashing and firing point-blank at the troopers. Churchill was in that charge. He received the medal with clasp.

Then he returned home and wrote “The River War.” This book is the last word on the campaigns up the Nile. From the death of Gordon in Khartum to the capture of the city by Kitchener, it tells the story of the many gallant fights, the wearying failures, the many expeditions into the hot, boundless desert, the long, slow progress toward the final winning of the Sudan.

The book made a distinct sensation. It was a work that one would expect from a lieutenant-general, when, after years of service in Egypt, he laid down his sword to pen the story of his life’s work. From a Second Lieutenant, who had been on the Nile hardly long enough to gain the desert tan, it was a revelation. As a contribution to military history it was so valuable that for the author it made many admirers, but on account of his criticisms of his superior officers it gained him even more enemies.

This is a specimen of the kind of thing that caused the retired army officer to sit up and choke with apoplexy:

“General Kitchener, who never spares himself, cares little for others. He treated all men like machines, from the private soldiers, whose salutes he disdained, to the superior officers, whom he rigidly controlled. The comrade who had served with him and under him for many years, in peace and peril, was flung aside as soon as he ceased to be of use. The wounded Egyptian and even the wounded British soldier did not excite his interest.”

When in the service clubs they read that, the veterans asked each other their favorite question of what is the army coming to, and to their own satisfaction answered it by pointing out that when a lieutenant of twenty-four can reprimand the commanding general the army is going to the dogs.

To the newspapers, hundreds of them, over their own signatures, on the service club stationery, wrote violent, furious letters, and the newspapers themselves, besides the ordinary reviews, gave to the book editorial praise and editorial condemnation.

Equally disgusted were the younger officers of the service. They nicknamed his book “A Subaltern’s Advice to Generals,” and called Churchill himself a “Medal Snatcher.” A medal snatcher is an officer who, whenever there is a rumor of war, leaves his men to the care of any one, and through influence in high places and for the sake of the campaign medal has himself attached to the expeditionary force. But Churchill never was a medal hunter. The routine of barrack life irked him, and in foreign parts he served his country far better than by remaining at home and inspecting awkward squads and attending guard mount. Indeed, the War Office could cover with medals the man who wrote “The Story of the Malakand Field Force” and “The River War” and still be in his debt.

In October, 1898, a month after the battle of Omdurman, Churchill made his debut as a political speaker at minor meetings in Dover and Rotherhithe. History does not record that these first speeches set fire to the Channel. During the winter he finished and published his “River War,” and in the August of the following summer, 1899, at a by-election, offered himself as Member of Parliament for Oldham.

In the Daily Telegraph his letters from the three campaigns in India and Egypt had made his name known, and there was a general desire to hear him and to see him. In one who had attacked Kitchener of Khartum, the men of Oldham expected to find a stalwart veteran, bearded, and with a voice of command. When they were introduced to a small red-haired boy with a lisp, they refused to take him seriously. In England youth is an unpardonable thing. Lately, Curzon, Churchill, Edward Grey, Hugh Cecil, and others have made it less reprehensible. But, in spite of a vigorous campaign, in which Lady Randolph took an active part, Oldham decided it was not ready to accept young Churchill for a member. Later he was Oldham’s only claim to fame.

A week after he was defeated he sailed for South Africa, where war with the Boers was imminent. He had resigned from his regiment and went south as war correspondent for the Morning Post.

Later in the war he held a commission as Lieutenant in the South African Light Horse, a regiment of irregular cavalry, and on the staffs of different generals acted as galloper and aide-de-camp. To this combination of duties, which was in direct violation of a rule of the War Office, his brother officers and his fellow correspondents objected; but, as in each of his other campaigns he had played this dual role, the press censors considered it a traditional privilege, and winked at it. As a matter of record, Churchill’s soldiering never seemed to interfere with his writing, nor, in a fight, did his duty to his paper ever prevent him from mixing in as a belligerent.

War was declared October 9th, and only a month later, while scouting in the armored train along the railroad line between Pietermaritzburg and Colenso, the cars were derailed and Churchill was taken prisoner.

The train was made up of three flat cars, two armored cars, and between them the engine, with three cars coupled to the cow-catcher and two to the tender.

On the outward trip the Boers did not show themselves, but as soon as the English passed Frere station they rolled a rock on the track at a point where it was hidden by a curve. On the return trip, as the English approached this curve the Boers opened fire with artillery and pompoms. The engineer, in his eagerness to escape, rounded the curve at full speed, and, as the Boers had expected, hit the rock. The three forward cars were derailed, and one of them was thrown across the track, thus preventing the escape of the engine and the two rear cars. From these Captain Haldane, who was in command, with a detachment of the Dublins, kept up a steady fire on the enemy, while Churchill worked to clear the track. To assist him he had a company of Natal volunteers, and those who had not run away of the train hands and break-down crew.

“We were not long left in the comparative safety of a railroad accident,” Churchill writes to his paper. “The Boers’ guns, swiftly changing their position, reopened fire from a distance of thirteen hundred yards before any one had got out of the stage of exclamations. The tapping rifle-fire spread along the hills, until it encircled the wreckage on three sides, and from some high ground on the opposite side of the line a third field-gun came into action.”