Churchill Warrior: How a Military Life Guided Winston's Finest Hours

By Brian Lavery

A “truly exceptional” account of how Churchill’s experiences in the armed forces helped him lead Britain to victory in World War II (Booklist).
 
No defense minister in modern times has faced the challenges that Winston Churchill did during the Second World War. Fortunately, he had a unique and intimate inside knowledge of all three services, which allowed him to assess their real needs—a crucial task when money, material resources, and, especially, manpower were reaching their limits.
 
Churchill Warrior looks at how Churchill gained his unique insight into war strategy and administration through his experiences after joining the army in 1896, and the effect this had on his thinking and leadership. Each period—before, during, and after the First World War, and in the Second World War—is divided into four parts: land, sea, and air warfare and combined operations. The conclusion deals with the effect of these experiences on his wartime leadership.
 
From a Sunday Times–bestselling author, this is a grand narrative that begins with the Marlborough toy soldiers and the army class at Eton, then leads us through those early military and journalistic experiences, the fascinating trials and lessons of the First World War, and the criticism and tenacity culminating in the ultimate triumph of the Second. It explores how some of Churchill’s earliest innovations were to bear fruit decades later and how his uncompromising, uniquely informed hands-on approach, and his absolute belief in combined forces in Normandy, led to a systemic victory against the odds.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Casemate Publishers
• Release date: Oct 19, 2017
• ISBN: 9781612005676

Brian Lavery

Brian Lavery is one of Britain's leading naval historians and a prolific author. A Curator Emeritus at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, and a renowned expert on the sailing navy and the Royal Navy, in 2007 he won the prestigious Desmond Wettern Maritime Media Award. His naval writing was further honoured in 2008 with the Society of Nautical Research's Anderson Medal. His recent titles include Ship (2006), Royal Tars (2010), Conquest of the Ocean (2013), In Which They Served (2008), Churchill's Navy (2006), and the Sunday Times bestseller Empire of the Seas (2010).

Book preview

PART I

Preparing for War

CHAPTER 1

Becoming a Soldier

Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill was born on 30 November 1874, in a room just off the Great Hall of Blenheim Palace, his grandfather’s home. The Palace was hung with tapestries of the military victories of their great common ancestor, John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough (1650–1722), but they probably did not make more than a subliminal impression on the infant. His first recorded military experience, and his oldest memory, was of a parade of riflemen in Dublin where his father Lord Randolph was secretary to the Viceroy. He even claims to have remembered and understood the phrase ‘and with a withering volley he shattered the enemy’s line’ – a considerable feat for a five-year-old.¹ He wrote later, ‘From very early youth I had brooded about soldiers and war …’.² He was back among the Marlborough tapestries at Blenheim in 1882 at the age of seven when his mother sent him a present of soldiers and a castle,³ and they must have seemed appropriate in a huge and magnificent house built as a reward for military victory. By 1882 Winston had ‘such wonderful toys; a real steam engine, a magic lantern, and a collection of soldiers already nearly a thousand strong’.⁴ In 1885 his brother Jack was sent a box of soldiers representing the Nile expedition which led to the death of General Gordon at Khartoum that year, and the two were building their miniature armies. Most model soldiers were made in Germany at that time, particularly by Georg Heyde of Dresden who cast ‘semi-solid’ and ‘solid’ figures in lead in a great variety of periods and nationalities – it was just before William Britain of London entered the field in 1893 with much lighter and cheaper ‘hollow cast’ soldiers, bringing in a golden age for the collector.⁵ But so far military affairs had played only a small part in Winston’s life and he was far more concerned with his difficulties at school, where he failed dismally to understand the key subject of Latin.

Around the time of Winston’s entrance to Harrow School in 1888, his father made a ‘formal visit of inspection’ to his model soldiers. He now had nearly 1,500, all to the same scale and organised with precocious military understanding into an infantry division and a cavalry brigade supported by 18 field guns plus fortress pieces. It was lacking in ‘what every army is always short of – transport’ until a family friend provided funds to make up the deficiency. Winston knew how to rig the battles against his brother Jack, who was only allowed ‘coloured’ troops without artillery. Lord Randolph spent 20 minutes studying the ‘impressive scene’ – a comparatively long time for him to be with his children – and then asked Winston if he would like to go into the army. The boy naively thought that it would be ‘splendid to command an army’ and that his father has discerned some military genius in him, so he gave an enthusiastic ‘yes’ – but Lord Randolph had merely decided that he was not clever enough to go to the bar.⁶ Nevertheless, as Churchill wrote later, ‘the toy soldiers turned the current of my life. Henceforward all my education was directed to passing into Sandhurst and afterwards to the technical details of the profession of arms. Anything else I had to pick up for myself.’⁷

That meant training with Harrow School’s rifle corps in his spare time, and eventually joining the army class there. In June 1888 he wrote to his father: ‘I am getting on very successfully in the corps especially in the shooting. We use the full sized Martini-Henry rifle and cartridges, the same as the Army. The rifles kick a good deal …’.⁸ Late in October, ‘The Rifle Corps had a grand sham fight yesterday which Mamma saw. Harrow versus Haileybury and Cambridge. Harrow won – we defended the town successfully for two hours.’⁹ There was an even grander affair in March 1889 when the corps went to Aldershot to join 1,300 other public schoolboys and 11,000 regulars. The mock battle ‘was great fun. The noise was tremendous. There were four batteries of guns on the field and a Maxim, and several Nordenfelts. We were defeated because we were inferior in numbers and not from any want of courage.’¹⁰

But these were merely pleasant interludes in the daily grind of study. In September 1889 J. E. C. Welldon, the headmaster, told Lord Randolph that Winston’s mathematics were not good enough for the engineers and artillery in the Royal Military College at Woolwich, so he would be trained to pass into the other college at Sandhurst with a view to joining the cavalry or infantry.¹¹ At the end of the month Winston reported: ‘I have joined the Army class. It is rather a bore as it spoils your half holiday: however we do French and geometrical drawing which are the two things most necessary for the army’ – or at least for passing the entrance examinations.¹² He did well in English composition, which boded well for his career as a writer and orator. For the dreaded subject of Latin, he formed an alliance with an older boy to do each other’s homework until he was almost caught out in an oral examination.¹³

As to the army class,

It consisted of boys of the middle and higher forms of the school and of very different ages, all of whom were being prepared either for the Sandhurst or the Woolwich examination. We were withdrawn from the ordinary movement of the school from form to form. In consequence I got no promotion, or very little, and remained quite low down upon the School List, though working alongside boys nearly all in the Fifth Form. Officially I never got out of the Lower School, so I never had the privilege of having a fag of my own.¹⁴

For the entrance examination to Sandhurst, he chose French and chemistry alongside the compulsory subjects of mathematics, English and Latin. He was strong in English and chemistry but needed at least one other subject to gain entry, and mathematics seemed the most likely. At his first attempt he had gained only 500 marks out of 2,500 for the subject. Special coaching by one of the Harrow masters brought him up to nearly 2,000 at the second try, but nevertheless he failed overall. Like many other potential officers he was then sent to a ‘crammer’ to be prepared specifically for the third attempt. It was run by Captain James in the Cromwell Road in London. ‘It was said that no one who was not a congenital idiot could avoid passing thence into the Army. … They knew with almost Papal Infallibility the sort of questions which that sort of person would be bound on the average to ask on any of the selected subjects.’ It was a ‘renowned system of intensive poultry-farming’.¹⁵ However his natural bravery turned to foolhardiness when he failed to leap across a chine or ravine near Bournemouth, and he spent several months recovering from his injuries. Eventually he qualified for a cavalry cadetship at Sandhurst, though his marks were not high enough for the infantry, much to the disgust of his father.

Gentleman-Cadet Churchill arrived in the mock-Georgian splendour of the Royal Military College Sandhurst at the beginning of September 1893, to spend the first three days ‘being measured for the uniform and finding one’s way about – the latter no easy task in so huge a building’. He found a discipline which was far stricter than at Harrow: ‘No excuse is ever taken – not even the plea of didn’t know after the first few hours: and of course no such thing as unpunctuality or untidiness is tolerated’, and his first conduct report stated ‘Good, but unpunctual.’¹⁶ In general he liked the life but had to get away at weekends – in April 1894 he wrote that he could not endure two Sundays running in the place.¹⁷ He had the greatest pleasure in riding, claiming that ‘no-one ever came to grief – except honourable grief – through riding horses. No hour of life is lost that is spent in the saddle.’¹⁸ With the help of private lessons he became one of the best riders in the college, in December 1894 he took part in a gruelling college competition in which he jumped with and without stirrups and with his hands behind his back. He came second with 199 marks out of 200.¹⁹

On to the more academic side, he ordered several books, including the works of Prince Kraft zu Hohenlohe-Ingelfingen, lauding the Germany army and its performance in the war of 1866 against Austria and in 1870–71 against France. Kraft still assumed troops would fight in line, and only made a brief mention of the ‘mitrailleuse’, the primitive machine-gun used by the French. Though he was a gunner himself, Kraft asserted that ‘Cavalry, like artillery, can only expect to obtain the best results, if it remains always convinced that it is only an auxiliary to the infantry. The infantry is the army, and makes use of cavalry and artillery. The cavalry must work for the infantry, and can learn only by close union with the infantry what services the latter will require from it …’.²⁰ Its main service was reconnaissance ahead of the infantry, for the days of the great cavalry charge were over. But Kraft was only thinking about European armies, not the less sophisticated forces in the overseas empires. Another source was Colonel Edward Hamley’s Operations of War, first published in 1866 and again in 1878 and 1900. As well as the Napoleonic Wars it drew heavily on the more recent experiences of the American Civil War when rifles became standard for the first time. It began by claiming that the ‘very numerous’ readers of military history saw it as a romance, whereas he applied an encyclopaedic knowledge of battles past to study war scientifically. As well as citing the work nearly half a century later,²¹ Churchill perhaps learned something about how to present the subject on paper, and Hamley’s use of maps, ‘containing all that is wanted and no more’, was almost as well-contrived and extensive as Churchill’s own in his later writings.

According to the syllabus approved by Major-General Edward Clive in 1888, the course at Sandhurst consisted of seven subjects. Gymnastics was to be done ‘As laid down in the regulations’ while Drill was not described at all. Churchill wrote later: ‘From nine to ten there is drill, and the broad square in front of the College resounds with the cautions of the manual firing and bayonet exercises, and those more violent forms of exertion which come under the heading of Physical Drill.’ He remained very weak in both these subjects, but was happier when they were ‘varied by a combined attack, with long lines of skirmishers, supports and reserves, upon the fir-woods beyond the cricket pavilion, terminating in a wild bayonet charge and frantic cheers’.²² Fortification was a major subject and was one of Churchill’s best, surprising for one who always looked to the offensive. The standard textbook was written by Colonel G. Phillips and first published in 1877. It was by no means confined to the formal and permanent stoneworks such as those that had been built around the Royal Dockyards in the 1860s, and it was far more prescient than Kraft about the role of machine-guns, even the relatively primitive models of the time. ‘The Gatling … is capable of delivering a continuous stream of bullets at the rate of 400 per minute. Its fire is equal to that of about 22 rifles, and nearly equal to that of two 9-pdr guns up to 1,200 yards. The Gatling gun as a weapon for defensive positions is of great value.’²³ It was a warning of things to come.

‘Military topography’ began with map-reading but went on to drawing and sketching, which was essential in the days before photography became common. It may have contributed to Churchill’s later skill as an artist, but for the moment he did not enjoy it: ‘We have been doing a lot of sketching – maps etc. out of doors and it is very hot and uncomfortable work.’²⁴ It was not his best subject, in the final examination he had 471 marks out of 600. ‘Elements of Tactics’ was probably closer to his heart. Lectures were still based on those delivered by Francis Clery in 1872–75, and his textbook Minor Tactics was recommended for the course. Unlike Kraft, Clery used many examples from the Napoleonic Wars as well as from Germany’s more recent conflicts, though he showed little interest in the American Civil War and touched only briefly on campaigns on the North-West Frontier of India. He was ambivalent about the role of cavalry. On the one hand, ‘The power of cavalry lies in the impetus derived from motion. Accordingly, its action should under all circumstances be offensive. It should therefore never await an attack, should if possible forestall one, but in all cases should advance to meet it.’ This must have seemed very attractive to Churchill, but Clery also wrote, ‘Modern Warfare has reduced the role of cavalry on a battle field to very insignificant proportions. It has ceased to be used in great masses, or rather the attempts to use it in this manner have had as yet scarcely satisfactory results.’²⁵ Churchill did well in tactics, gaining 263 marks out of 300 in his final examinations. ‘Military law’ consisted largely of court martial procedure, while ‘Military administration’ dealt mainly with enlistment and payment of the men, with a conclusion on the logistics of supporting an army in the field. Churchill did quite well in these subjects, which perhaps befits a future government minister. In January 1895 he passed out of Sandhurst as 20th out of 130 in his class.

He was now qualified for an infantry regiment. His father had railed constantly against his extravagance and wanted to put him into the 60th Rifles, one of the most prestigious regiments apart from the Guards and under the colonelcy of the Duke of Cambridge, commander-in-chief of the army and a cousin of the Queen. In such a unit Lord Randolph would not have to bear the great expense of horses and uniforms – an infantry subaltern could be equipped for about £200, a cavalry officer might need £600–£1,000 for two chargers and elaborate uniforms.²⁶ A pattern book of 1894 describes the Hussar tunic: ‘On each side of the breast six loops of gold chain gimp, forming three eyes at the top, passing under a netted cap at the waist, and ending with an Austrian knot reaching the bottom of the skirt; with a tracing of gold braid all round the gimp.’ In addition an officer needed blue trousers, pantaloons for mounted duties and for evening levees, ‘undress’ or less formal frock and trousers, a blue and a serge patrol jacket, a stable jacket, a mess waistcoat, a cloak and a cape.²⁷

With his love of riding it is not surprising that Winston was determined to join the cavalry, and he cultivated the friendship of Lieutenant-Colonel John Brabazon of the 4th Hussars stationed at Aldershot nearby. He visited them at the end of April 1894:

In those days the mess of a regiment presented an impressive spectacle to a youthful eye. Twenty or thirty officers all magnificently attired in blue and gold, assembled round a table upon which shone the plate and trophies gathered by the regiment in two hundred years of sport and campaigning. It was like a state banquet. In an all-pervading air of glitter, affluence, ceremony, and veiled discipline, an excellent and lengthy dinner was served to the strains of the regimental string band.²⁸

In May 1894 he wrote to his mother: ‘How I wish I was going into the 4th instead of those old Rifles.’²⁹ He had already produced arguments in favour of the cavalry, which might have made his father question his belief that he would never make a good lawyer – promotion was quicker in the cavalry than the infantry, especially the 60th Rifles which was slowest of all; a commission would be obtained much sooner in the cavalry; the Hussars were going to India soon and if he joined quickly he would perhaps have six or seven others junior to him when the regiment was augmented before going overseas; cavalry regiments were generally taken good care of in India, whereas the infantry ‘have to take what they can get’; and horses could be kept cheaper in the cavalry as the government would provide stabling and forage. He added some ‘sentimental advantages’ which perhaps appealed more to his mother than his stern father. These included the uniform, the interest of a life among horses, the ‘advantages of riding over walking and of joining a regiment where he knew some of the officers’.³⁰ Lord Randolph Churchill died in January 1895. It is not clear if he approved of Winston’s transfer to the cavalry before he died, or Winston relied on the acceptance of his more pliable mother. In any case, she wrote to the Duke of Cambridge to arrange his change of regiment.

The army consisted of four main elements, infantry, cavalry, artillery and engineers. Churchill was not eligible to serve in the last two because he had trained at Sandhurst rather than Woolwich. The infantry was dominated by the Cardwell System, set up in the 1870s. Each regiment had a local base and would recruit its men largely from that area, inspiring great loyalty among the troops and pride in the local population. Churchill always approved of this, writing in 1897 that the soldier’s bravery came out of loyalty to ‘something smaller and more intimate’ than the nation, to ‘the regiment, whatever it is called – The Gordons, The Buffs, The Queen’s.’³¹ A regiment had two regular battalions, one serving overseas in the empire and the other at the depot for training and home defence, so they were not expected to serve together. In addition there was a part-time militia battalion and later several battalions of territorials, and these could be augmented in a major war, when up to 60 battalions might be raised. The system was less strong in the cavalry, where a regiment had only one regular battalion and its local associations were wider and vaguer; but the identity was just as strong. The colonel of the regiment was an honorary post, usually given to members of the royal family, local aristocrats or distinguished officers who had served in the regiment – Churchill would hold several such colonelcies in his later life. The battalion was led by a lieutenant-colonel, the commanding officer who set much of its tone.

Churchill’s whole career depended on the development of the rifled gun for use on land, at sea and to a certain extent in the air. The infantryman’s standard weapon now had an accurate range of up to 2,000 yards instead of 100 yards for a smooth-bore musket. Moreover with repeating rifles the volume of fire was greatly increased even before the machine-gun was taken into account. After using the Martini Henry with a .45 inch round which had strained Winston’s shoulder in 1888, the British army reduced the calibre to .303 inches with the Lee-Metford, introduced just as Churchill entered the army class at Harrow. A shortened and improved version, the Short Magazine Lee-Enfield or SMLE, entered service in 1902 as Churchill began his political career, and in various marks it would remain the standard infantry weapon for more than half a century – when the Churchill government decided to replace it with the Belgian FN in 1954, he had to defend the rejection of a British weapon in an acrimonious debate.³² Like nearly all rifles of the age it was ‘repeating’ rather than ‘automatic’ like a machine-gun. This meant that the bolt had to be opened and closed with every round, but the Lee-Enfield had a ten-round magazine, twice the size of its German rival. the Mauser. As to machine-guns, the navy had first used the Gatling and Nordenfelt in 1880 as a means to fight off torpedo boats, but the great breakthrough came when Hiram Maxim’s gun reached the army in 1891 – it used the waste gases from the explosions to reload, eliminating the need to turn a handle. Despite the predictions in ‘Phillips on Fortification’, the full value of the machine-gun was not appreciated until 1914. After adopting the British name of Vickers, it became the standard heavy machine-gun for the army through two world wars and the main forward-firing gun of the air services.

As to artillery, rifled breech-loading guns came in from the 1880s, and in 1904, after failures during the Boer War, the British Army adopted the 18-pounder quick-firing field gun which could fire up to 20 explosive rounds per minute over more than four miles. Land forces could use much larger guns for fortress, siege and coastal artillery, but there were problems with moving and supplying them before motor vehicles became common. This was not a problem at sea where improved shells vied with new types of steel armour plate for several decades late in the century. Ships could already carry 12-inch guns firing 710 lb shells by 1900. But meanwhile Churchill’s own arm, the cavalry, saw no improvements apart from better rifles, and it would soon find itself squeezed out to the fringes of the battle. From being the heroes of the massed battlefield charge of old, they were turning into a reconnaissance force or, worse still, mounted infantry, which most of the officers feared as it would devalue their long training and greatly reduce their status.

Churchill joined the 4th Hussars at Hounslow on 18 February 1895, and by April he was fitting all too well into the enclosed world of the officers’ mess. He was implicated in the characteristic bullying of the day – in this case it was serious enough to attract attention in press and parliament. Already a young officer named Hodge had been dumped in a horse trough and forced out of the regiment. His successor, Allan Bruce, had been a colleague and rival of Churchill at Sandhurst. He was invited to a dinner at the Nimrod Club in London by a group of subalterns. Churchill, acting as their spokesman, ‘informed Mr Bruce … that he was not wanted in the regiment’. He was told that his allowance of £500 per year was not enough to support him, which was disingenuous as Churchill’s was only £300 – but he had aristocratic connections. Bruce refused at first but was eventually forced out. His father campaigned on his behalf, but went too far in accusing Churchill of ‘acts of gross immorality of the Oscar Wilde type’ and had to pay £400 damages. There was another scandal when Churchill took part in a horse race, the 4th Hussars Challenge Cup, under the name of Mr Spencer. It was eventually found that one of the horses was a ‘ringer’; the race was declared null and void by the National Hunt Committee, and all the horses which took part were perpetually disqualified. No action was taken against the participants, but the anti-military elements in the press made full use of the scandal, and Churchill’s role was dubious to say the least.³³

Reading Kraft had perhaps warned Churchill about the rigorous training needed in modern cavalry.

Formerly it was sufficient to have a strong arm, a good sword, and the courage of a good rider on a good horse in order to be an excellent cavalry soldier. These are now only elementary matters of course; the improvement in firearms has so much increased the difficulties with which the cavalry have to struggle, with reference to their training and leading, that they daily require more energy and spirit, if these are to be overcome and the duties of the cavalry of the future are to be discharged.³⁴

Churchill was never lacking in energy and spirit, but nevertheless the regimental training programme was formidable. He wrote:

75 per cent of the cavalry soldier’s time was taken up with drill in preparation for shock tactics. … It is quite true that he had a carbine, but that was only intended for bye-days. In every drill season, and at every inspection, regular, machine-like drill was what was required. … And there is no doubt that they did it very excellently. Anyone who has led the directing troop of, let us say, the third squadron from the squadron of direction, in a long brigade advance, knows what an art troop-leading is, and what ceaseless practice and unremitting effort is required to obtain that accuracy of distance and alignment which is the proof of well-drilled, well-disciplined men. How beautiful it is too!³⁵

Regimental training tended to assume that the new officer knew little or nothing:

… the principle was that the newly-joined officer was given a recruit’s training for the first six months. He rode and drilled afoot with the troopers and received exactly the same instruction and training. … At the head of the file in the riding-school, or on the right of the squad on the Square, he had to try to set an example to the men. This was not a task always possible to discharge with conspicuous success. … Many a time did I pick myself up shaken and sore from the riding-school tan and don again my little gold braided pork-pie cap … with what appearance of dignity I could command, while twenty recruits grinned furtively but delightedly to see their officer suffering the same misfortunes which it was their lot so frequently to undergo.³⁶

Despite this apparent equality on the training ground, the social gap between officers and men was immense. The pretext for the dismissal of the unfortunate Lieutenant Hodge was that he had visited the sergeants’ mess to meet a veteran of the Crimean War. Churchill hardly mentions the rank and file in his autobiography – only that in the early days in India he often had ‘a long day occupied mainly in scolding the troopers for forgetting to wear their pith helmets and thus risking their lives’ and that there was a long-standing feud between the men of the 4th and 19th Hussars which did not extend to the officers.³⁷ As to the ‘rankers’ themselves, Sergeant S. Hallaway recalled his arrival: ‘… as Captain Kincaid and Mr Churchill walked over the squadron parade ground towards my stable I thought how odd he looked, his hair and gold lace forage cap the same colour’. He did not find the young officer easy to deal with.

After a field day Mr Churchill would arrive at stables with rolls of foolscap and lots of lead pencils of all colours, and tackle me on the movements we had done at the exercise. We were nearly always short of stable men, and there were lots of spare horses to be attended to, so it was quite a hindrance to me. … I was a busy man, and I had no time for tactics.³⁸

But Churchill had plenty of time for tactics and other aspects of military science. At Sandhurst he had attended a course in the subject which was ‘very interesting’, and now he delivered an excellent lecture on musketry.³⁹

CHAPTER 2

Wars and Words

As he awaited his regiment’s move to India, Churchill decided to use his rather generous leave allowance to his mental and financial advantage. He was aware that in those days of peace, ‘scarcely a captain, hardly ever a subaltern, could be found throughout Her Majesty’s forces who had seen even the smallest kind of war. … It seemed to my youthful mind that it must be a thrilling and immense experience to hear the whistle of bullets all round and to play at hazard from moment to moment with death and wounds.’¹ With his fellow subaltern Reginald Barnes he used contacts with the British Ambassador in Madrid to arrange a visit to Cuba where the natives were fighting the Spanish for their independence. The editor of the Daily Graphic commissioned him to write a series of letters from the conflict at a rate of five guineas each. He travelled by sea to New York and visited the American Sandhurst at West Point, but was shocked by the repressive treatment of the cadets: ‘… they have far less liberty than any private school boys in our country. I think such a state of things is positively disgraceful and young men of 24 or 25 who would resign their personal liberty to such an extent can never make good citizens or fine soldiers.’² He went by train to Florida and ship to Havana, which he thought was magnificent, then joined the army of Marshal Martinez Campos on a march to Sancti Spiritus, ‘a very second-rate place and in the most unhealthy state’.³ He soon saw that the great majority of the population supported the rebels and despaired of the country’s future.

He heard plenty of ‘the whistle of bullets all round’, but it is doubtful if he did ‘play at hazard from moment to moment with death and wounds’ for the rebels’ marksmanship was very poor.⁴ Nevertheless a few shots did come close, and he now considered himself as having been under fire. Churchill saw the tactics of a guerrilla campaign – the word had been coined by the Spanish themselves during their 1808–14 insurrection against Napoleon:

… Maximo Gomez is encamped with 4,000 men a couple of leagues to the east, and early tomorrow we start after him. Whether he will accept battle is not certain, but if he does not want to fight the Spaniards have no means of making him do so, as the insurgents, mounted on their handy little country-bred ponies, knowing every inch of the ground, possessed of the most accurate information, and, unimpeded by any luggage, can easily defeat all attempts to force a battle.⁵

In general Churchill’s comments on tactics were restrained, though the American journalist who claimed that he knew ‘only the amount of strategy necessary for the duties of a second lieutenant’ was perhaps being unfair.⁶ He recognised that ‘To describe ground shortly is always difficult, and to describe it at length is futile, as no-one ever takes the trouble to read the descriptions carefully’, but his unhappy lessons in military topography had perhaps borne fruit, as can be seen in his descriptions. ‘The road – if one may use such a term – lies sometimes along the bed of a watercourse and at others broadens out into a wide grass area. Frequently it is so traversed by morasses as to be quite impassable, and long detours have to be made across country. The intricate nature of the ground prevents anything like a thorough reconnaissance, and much has to be left to chance.’⁷ His articles were a great success and launched his journalistic career. He remained fond of Cuba, smoking its cigars for the rest of his life and describing it as ‘this large, rich beautiful island’ in 1944.⁸

On arrival in India after a voyage on the SS Britannia, Churchill soon fell into the pattern of regimental life.

Just before dawn, every morning, one was awakened by a dusky figure with a clammy hand adroitly lifting one’s chin and applying a gleaming razor to a lathered and defenceless throat. By six o’clock the regiment was on parade, and we rode to a wide plain and there drilled and manoeuvred for an hour and a half. We then returned to baths at the bungalow before the sun attained its fiercest ray. … the noonday asserted his tyrannical authority and long before eleven o’clock all the white men were in shelter. We nipped across to luncheon at half-past one in the blistering heat and then returned to sleep till five o’clock. Now the station begins to live again. It is the hour of Polo … for which we have been living all day long.⁹

After a game they ‘returned to hot baths, rest, and at 8.30 dinner, to the strains of the regimental band and the clinking of ice in well-filled glasses’ before going to bed at 10.30 or 11.¹⁰ He soon became aware that the chances of action in his present post were small, and he was beginning to regret his lack of a university education. He wrote early in 1897: ‘I find my literary tastes growing day by day – and if only I knew Latin and Greek I think I would leave the army and try to take my degree in history, philosophy and economics. But I cannot face parsing and Latin prose again.’¹¹ He read history and studied style, especially the classic historians Gibbon and Macaulay whose combination of historical narrative and beautifully balanced sentences made a deep impression on him.¹²

Churchill was on leave in England when he heard of an opportunity for active service, this time with the soldiers of his own country, and in a cause of which he had no doubts.¹³ A revolt by Afghan tribes on the North-West Frontier of India was to be opposed by a large force of British and Indian troops. Civilisation, he wrote, ‘is face to face with militant Mohammedanism’.¹⁴ The expedition was to be commanded by another charismatic leader to match Colonel Brabazon, a man who was close to Churchill’s ideal of a military hero:

Thirty-seven years of soldiering, of war in many lands, of sport of every kind, have steeled alike muscle and nerve. Sir Bindon Blood, himself … a keen polo player, is one of the few officers of high rank in the army, who recognise the advantages to soldiers of that splendid game. He has pursued all kinds of wild animals in varied jungles, has killed many pig with the spear and shot every species of Indian game, including thirty tigers to his own rifle.¹⁵

He was of a type ‘which has not been, perhaps, possessed by any nation except the British, since the days when the Senate and the Roman people sent their proconsuls to all parts of the world’.¹⁶ Churchill wrote to Blood asking for an appointment and interrupted his leave to sail back to India. With the help of his mother he arranged to have his reports published in the Daily Telegraph and the Allahabad Pioneer.

On the voyage out he was disappointed that no news awaited him at Port Said or Aden. On 17 August at Bangalore he was disappointed again, but soon he received a letter from Blood dated the 22nd. The general had already made up his staff and had no ‘billet’ for the moment, but he advised Churchill to come along as a press correspondent and he would find a military post for him at the first opportunity. ‘Fincastle was arranged for in this way, and is now attached to the Guides vice an officer killed in action.’¹⁷ Churchill therefore took the train north, a journey of five days, ‘Nearly as far that is as across the Atlantic’, and ‘not a very pleasant experience’; but he was determined to take ‘a good chance of seeing active service and securing a medal’.¹⁸

On arrival he wrote to Barnes: ‘No fighting at present except firing into camp – à la Cuba – only on a smaller scale and no-one wounded since I have joined force.’¹⁹ He saw similarities with Cuba in that it was difficult country with no obvious strategic points and a highly mobile guerrilla army with nothing to lose. It was very difficult for the regular forces to catch up with them, in which case they melted away.²⁰ Though the campaign would be almost forgotten today without Churchill’s reports, he had no doubts about its importance. It was the most successful attempt so far to mobilise the frontier tribes.²¹ A Jihad had been proclaimed, and to the tribesmen ‘The combined allurements of plunder and paradise proved irresistible.’²²

Soon he found himself in action, picked up a rifle from a wounded man and fired 40 shots, believing he killed four men. He produced the memorable comment: ‘Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.’²³ He was referring to the return of a patrol in which he had not taken part, but it is not misleading to suggest that it represented his own feelings for the rest of his life. When he published his account of the campaign he tried to make it impersonal, but to his mother, of all people, he wrote almost obsessively about being under fire and in danger. On 30 September there was ‘another severe action … I was under fire for five hours – but I did not get into the hottest corners. Our loss was 60 killed and five wounded – out of the poor 1,200 we can muster.’²⁴

After an attack on 16 September he wrote frankly to his uncle Lord William Beresford, ‘I daresay you have understood that their retirement was a rout; in this I was involved. The tribesmen got to within stone throwing distance. I fired nine shots from my revolver. The men were completely out of hand. The wounded were left to be cut up. We could do nothing.’²⁵ It was an extremely brutal war in which no quarter was given, the wounded were tortured and the dead mutilated, while medical facilities were special targets. As for the British, they destroyed the tanks which the tribesmen depended on for water in the summer. They used dum-dum bullets, and Churchill was strangely contradictory about the morality of this. In private he wrote that such bullets’ ‘shattering effects’ were ‘simply appalling’; he believed that ‘no such bullet has ever been used on human beings before, but only on game …’,²⁶ but in his public writings he was prepared to justify and even praise it. The bullet was ‘a wonderful and from the technical point of view a beautiful machine. On striking a bone this causes the bullet to set up or spread out, and then it tears and splinters everything before it, causing wounds which in the body must be generally mortal and in any limb necessitate amputation. … I would observe that bullets are primarily intended to kill, and that these bullets do their duty most effectively, without causing any more pain to those struck by them.’²⁷ But to his mother he made the most startling claim, and we will never know how much it was tongue in cheek: ‘Bullets – to a philosopher my dear Mamma – are not worth considering. Besides I am so conceited I do not believe the Gods would create so potent a being as myself for so prosaic an ending.’²⁸

Already Churchill was beginning to find the essence of his tactics, to avoid the frontal assault if at all possible, whether in a skirmish in the mountains of India, or in a gigantic struggle to master Europe and the world. ‘To capture the position by frontal assault would involve heavy loss. The enemy were strongly posted, and the troops would be exposed to heavy fire in advancing. On the other hand, if the ridge could once be captured, the destruction of the tribesmen was assured. … Sir Bindon Blood … determined to strike at the enemy’s left, not only turning their flank, but cutting off their proper line of retreat.’²⁹ Despite the Sandhurst textbooks, he found some value in cavalry after a charge by the 13th Bengal Lancers at Shabkadar and by the Guides Cavalry and 11th Bengal Lancers during the relief of Chakara. But he complained that this was only for Indian regiments; British cavalry was too expensive to risk in action.³⁰ He entered the age-old debate about whether the sword or the lance was the best cavalry weapon and came down in favour of the latter, provided it was not allowed to sink too deep into its victim – otherwise the lance ‘either gets broken or allows the enemy to wriggle up and strike the lancer’.³¹

Churchill saw the importance of transport, perhaps reflecting on his collection of model soldiers. ‘I can well recall my amazement, when watching a camel convoy more than a mile and a half long, escorted by half a battalion of infantry. I was informed that it contained only two days’ supplies for one brigade.’³² The leather equipment worn by soldiers was excessively heavy and he suggested it should be replaced by web, or canvas. He saw the value of good signalling, by heliograph in this case. He deplored the short-service system now used by the army creating a prevalence of 21- or 22-year-old soldiers who could not compete with the long-serving Indian troops of perhaps 30.³³ But he did not let his own lack of years deter him from criticising his seniors.

He lauded the virtues of active service: ‘From a military point of view, the perpetual frontier wars in one corner or other of the Empire are of the greatest value. This fact may one day be proved, should our soldiers ever be brought into contact with some peace-trained, conscript army, in anything like equal numbers.’³⁴ For officers, ‘The ambition that a young officer entering the army ought to set before him, is to lead his own men in action. This ought to inspire his life, and animate his effort.’³⁵ Yet he never did command his own troops in action, and his whole life might be seen as a substitute for that. In this campaign, he admitted, ‘I had no military command and only rode about trying to attract attention.’³⁶

He was pleased with his articles in the Telegraph which clearly showed the influence of Gibbon and Macaulay. Two of the letters were ‘the best things I have ever written … There is not a single sentence out of balance or a word which is unnecessary.’³⁷ His old headmaster Welldon wrote that he possessed ‘in a high degree the special correspondent’s art of seizing the picturesque and interesting features of a campaign’.³⁸ The biggest disappointment was that they were published under the by-line ‘By a young officer’ – Churchill did not fear any retribution for openly commenting on military affairs well above his station, and he had hoped to use them to get his name known with a view to finding a parliamentary seat. Soon he had the idea of turning them into a book, realising that Captain Younghusband had made a large sum of money by publishing his letters on the Chitral campaign of 1895. He worked on it for five hours a day for two months and told his mother: ‘I have broken up the D.T. letters completely – you will only recognise parts of them. Most is entirely rewritten.’³⁹ He worked the material into a book called The History of the Malakand Field Force, but unfortunately his mother made a poor choice of proof-reader and Winston was shocked to ‘spend a miserable afternoon in reading the gross and fearful blunders which I suppose have got into the finished copies’.⁴⁰ The editor of the United Service Magazine wrote that he had ‘seldom obtained so much pleasure, as well as useful information, from a military work’.⁴¹ The Athenaeum’s reviewer wrote of Churchill as a literary phenomenon and said that the book needed ‘only a little correction of each page to make its second edition a literary classic. As it stands, it suggests in style a volume by Disraeli revised by a mad printer’s reader.’⁴²

Blood honoured Churchill by mentioning him in dispatches. Ordered back to his regiment, he found himself involved in polo and soldiering and missed the excitement of the last two months, the best of his life so far.⁴³ He was ready to join another expedition, to Tirah, but the campaign ended before he could get there. He sailed home on leave again.

Churchill already had his eye on the campaign which was being prepared in British-occupied Egypt. The Conservative government under the Marquis of Salisbury was determined to rectify the loss of Khartoum and the death of General Gordon, events which they attributed to the weakness of Gladstone’s Liberal government in 1885. General Herbert Kitchener, the Sirdar or General of the Egyptian army, was to command a force of nearly 26,000 British and Egyptian troops to proceed up the River Nile by foot, rail and boat. Churchill was determined to become part of this, but his activities were attracting unfavourable notice. There were ‘ill-informed and ill-disposed people’ who ‘began to develop an adverse and even a hostile attitude. They began to say things like this: Who the devil is this fellow? How has he managed to get to these different campaigns? Why should he write for the papers and serve as an officer at the same time? Why should a subaltern praise or criticize his senior officers?’⁴⁴ Kitchener shared these views; he believed that Churchill was merely making a convenience of the army to further his political prospects, and that the posts should go to those whose army career depended on them. Despite Lady Churchill’s lobbying he flatly refused to have the young officer, who was campaigning for the Conservative Party at Bradford at the time. There was hope when the Prime Minster summoned Churchill and professed himself ‘keenly interested’ in The Malakand Field Force, which had given him a vivid picture of the fighting on the frontier.⁴⁵ Salisbury offered to have a word with Kitchener, who replied by return telegram that he already had all the officers he required. Sir Francis Jeune, a judge and family friend, pointed out that the composition of the British regiments was a matter for the War Office and not the Sirdar, and as a result Churchill was appointed supernumerary lieutenant in the 21st Lancers. He was to proceed at his own expense and there would be no compensation for death or wounds. He sailed in ‘a filthy tramp – manned by these detestable French sailors’.⁴⁶ The Morning Post was to pay him £15 per letter, although Lady Jeune had promised Kitchener that he would not write.

By 2 August Churchill was in Abbasiya Barracks in Cairo where the officers ‘paraded in the panoply of modern war – khaki uniforms, sun helmets, Sam Browne belts, revolvers, field glasses, and Stohwasser gaiters’. The soldiers were in ‘Christmas tree order with water-bottles, haversacks, canteen-straps, cloaks, swords, and carbines …’. They boarded a train with a great deal of ‘kicking and squealing’ from the Arab stallions, and then went by river to Luxor, where Churchill began to feel ‘a very strange transformation scene … When I think of the London streets – dinners, balls, etc. and the look on the Khaki soldiers – the great lumbering barges full of horses – the muddy river, and behind and beyond the palm trees and the sails of the Dahabiahs.’⁴⁷ As they proceeded south Churchill began his criticism of Kitchener for causing his troops to make long marches of up to 30 miles per day, killing horses and exhausting men. He found it difficult to fulfil his correspondent duties due to lack of time and exhaustion.⁴⁸

At first he was not impressed with his regiment and wrote to his mother: ‘The 21st Lancers are not on the whole a good business and I would much rather been [attached] to Egyptian cavalry staff – they hate all the number of [attached] officers and some of them take little pains to conceal their dislike.’⁴⁹ There was possible embarrassment as he was sent with a report to the Sirdar, whom he approached circuitously on his horse. Churchill saluted and Kitchener nodded but apparently did not recognise the young officer. Churchill described the situation and Kitchener asked how long he had before meeting the enemy. Churchill guessed at least an hour or an hour and a half, but after he parted he had to do rapid calculations to make sure that he was right. Battle was expected on 1 September, and a representative of the German General Staff joked rather heavily about it being the anniversary of their great victory over France: ‘Our great day and now your great day: Sedan and Soudan,’ though some of the British officers suspected him of irony. Churchill watched as naval gunboats assaulted forts:

Throughout the day the loud reports of their guns could be heard, and, looking from our position on the ridge, we could see the white vessels steaming slowly forward against the current. … the forts, which mounted nearly fifty guns, replied vigorously; but the British aim was accurate and their fire crushing. The embrasures were smashed to bits and many of the Dervish guns dismounted. The rifle trenches which flanked the forts were swept by the Maxim guns.⁵⁰

But the Battle of Omdurman on the banks of the Nile opposite Khartoum did not begin until the second of the month when his regiment lined up to charge the Dervishes. As Churchill described it, ‘The trumpet sounded Right wheel into line, and all the sixteen troops swung round towards the blue-black riflemen. Almost immediately the regiment broke into a gallop, and the 21st Lancers were committed to their first charge in war!’⁵¹ They approached the enemy line diagonally and Churchill looked over his left shoulder to see what effect their fire was producing. Suddenly the task seemed much greater. ‘Instead of the 150 riflemen who were still blazing I saw a line of nearly … 12 deep and a little less on our front of closely jammed spearmen.’ He was undaunted and thought ‘capital – the more the merrier’. After that, ‘Opposite me they were about 4 deep. But they all fell (arse over tip) and we passed through without any sort of shock. One man in my troop fell. He was cut to pieces. … Then we emerged into a region of scattered men and personal combats.’⁵² He wrote, ‘I had been trained as a cavalry soldier to believe that if ever cavalry broke into a mass of infantry, the latter would be at their mercy.’ But in this case a man on the ground was swinging his sword to hamstring Churchill’s horse and he had to turn it rapidly, or he would have been in even greater danger. ‘So long as you are all right, firmly in your saddle, your horse in hand, and well armed, lots of enemies will give you a wide berth. But as soon as you have lost a stirrup, have a rein cut, have dropped your weapon, are wounded, or your horse is wounded, this is the moment when from all quarters enemies rush upon you.’⁵³ He emptied all ten rounds of his Mauser pistol and claimed to have killed at least three men, though that figure does not stand examination. The Dervishes began to reform and after a few seconds two men aimed rifles at him so he galloped away to re-join the squadron which was reforming 150 yards away. He was relieved that he had survived ‘without a hair of my horse or a stitch of my clothing being touched. Very few can say the same.’ He recognised that this was perhaps ‘the most dangerous two minutes I shall live to see’. He wanted his men to charge again but that was not ordered, instead ‘the dismounted fire was more useful’. The battle was won and the Dervishes retreated. Churchill wrote: ‘I was glad to have added the experience of a cavalry charge to my repertoire.’⁵⁴ It was the last the British army ever carried out, so it offered no lessons for the future. Indeed the historian of the British cavalry compared it with the Charge of the Light Brigade in that ‘the most futile and inefficient part of the battle was the most extravagantly praised’.⁵⁵ The regiment had sacrificed 21 officers and men killed and 50 wounded out of just over 300, with the loss of 119 horses, and had inflicted 23 casualties on the enemy – though the Dervishes, with far greater numbers, could bear the loss more easily.

After the battle Churchill revised his opinion of the regiment, or at least the rank and file who had enlisted under the short service scheme. ‘I never saw better men than the 21st Lancers. I don’t mean to say I admired their discipline or their general training – both I thought inferior. But they were the 6 year British soldier type – and every man was an intelligent human being who knew his own mind. My faith in our race and blood was much strengthened.’⁵⁶ He was disgusted with Kitchener’s conduct as the army entered Khartoum, defacing the Mahdi’s tomb, allegedly using his skull as a trophy and killing the wounded.⁵⁷ But in the meantime, as he reported with some irony, ‘the defeat and destruction of the Dervish army was so complete that the frugal Kitchener was able to dispense with the costly services of a British cavalry regiment’,⁵⁸ and he started the journey home. Though his letters to the Morning Post had been very difficult to write on active service, he was pleased that they had been widely read.

He was in disfavour with the authorities after the battle and resigned his commission in 1899, after Kitchener made difficulties with his research for his book, The River War. ‘I can live cheaper & earn more as a writer, special correspondent or journalist: and this work is moreover more congenial and more likely to assist me in pursuing the larger ends of life.’⁵⁹ Even in the privileged conditions enjoyed by late Victorian officers with aristocratic backgrounds, his position caused comment in the press. ‘Can it be for the good of the service that young subalterns, however influentially connected and able they may be, should be allowed as Lieut Churchill is to go careering over the world, elbowing out men frequently much abler and more experienced … than themselves?’⁶⁰

Churchill returned to India and finished his time with the regiment with a polo match which he remembered more than 40 years later as his outstanding achievement. ‘I served in this regiment before many of you were born. I once played in the polo team, the only time they won the Cavalry Cup, by the way.’⁶¹ A report by Robert Baden Powell, later the hero of Mafeking and founder of the Boy Scout Movement, suggests that the boisterousness of the young officers had not diminished. After his speech, ‘… one in authority arose and gave voice to the feelings of all when he said Well, that is enough of Winston for this evening, and the orator was taken in hand by some lusty subalterns and placed underneath a sofa upon which two of the heaviest were then seated. It was not enough to silence him, he crawled out claiming It is no use sitting upon me, I am India rubber.’⁶²

CHAPTER 3

South African Springboard

South Africa had been settled by the Dutch East India Company from 1652 onwards, but the Cape of Good Hope was captured by the British for the second time in 1806, and retained. In 1835–37 large numbers of Boers or Dutch farmers went on their ‘Great Trek’ to the north after the British abolished slavery. They founded the republics of Transvaal and Orange Free State and fought successfully for their independence in 1880–81. Gold was discovered in the Transvaal in 1886 and this led to an influx of ‘uitlanders’ whose rights were severely restricted. In 1895 Dr Jameson, an associate of the colonial visionary Cecil Rhodes, launched a rash and unsuccessful raid into the Transvaal, which inflamed the Boers and caused European opinion to react against Britain. Relations got worse, and on 11 October 1899 a Boer ultimatum expired and the South African War, also known as the Second Boer War, began.

As usual Churchill was keen to get to the scene of the action and booked a passage in the liner Dunnottar Castle as a correspondent for the Morning Post. The ship left Southampton carrying the commander-in-chief General Sir Redvers Buller, to cries of ‘Give it to the Boers!’ and ‘Bring back a piece of Kruger’s whiskers!’ while the crowd sang ‘God Save the Queen’ as the taciturn Buller waved from the bridge. Perhaps no war ever engaged the British public so much as this one. It was against people rather like them, it was reported daily by telegraph in the newly established popular press, and it had a major effect on Britain’s relations with Europe. The next major war would be fought much closer to home and would deploy far more people, but in that case the reality was almost too horrible to report and grasp. In this one, Churchill and his contemporaries wrote extensively on the conflict, citizen armies were raised, and the public demonstrated their support vigorously in music halls and in the streets. There were some who questioned Britain’s onslaught on two independent nations of European stock, including Churchill’s future friend David Lloyd George, who had to be smuggled out of a hall in Birmingham disguised as a policeman after his speech caused a riot.

The voyage south was ‘a nasty rough passage’ and the roll of the ship prevented Churchill from writing very much, but he found that ‘Sir R. Buller is very amiable and I do not doubt that he is well disposed towards me’.¹ Buller ‘looked stolid’ but ‘said little, and what he said was obscure’.² The ship travelled at the Union Castle line’s normal economic speed for a 14-day voyage, and there was no radio so there was no news of the progress of the war after they left Madeira. Eventually they met a tramp steamer whose crew held up a blackboard announcing that the Boers had been defeated, three battles had been fought and General Penn Symons had been killed. Apart from lamenting the loss of a popular officer, the officers and correspondents worried that it might all be over by the time they arrived.³ They reached Cape Town on 31 October to find that the situation was far worse than they had expected. The Boers had launched offensives to the east and west, and the British had been defeated at Nicholson’s Nek and were besieged in Ladysmith.

Yet again Churchill was in a different kind of war. Instead of the mountains of Cuba or the North-West Frontier, he was in the undulating hills of the Transvaal, intersected by mountain ranges; instead of the narrow Nile Valley he was in the wide veldt. The enemy too was very different. Churchill had learned very little about the Cuban rebels except that they had popular support and were poor shots. In contrast he came to know the Boers more intimately than he had hoped, which paradoxically led to friendships which would affect the course of British strategy in the future. Though their ancestors had often been in the country for a quarter of a millennium, and though they tended to be isolated from world events, the Boers were still Europeans in appearance, culture and attitudes. In contrast to the savage cruelty of the Pathans, they treated prisoners very well, much better than they treated the ‘Kaffirs’ or Africans. The Boer warrior was brave and resourceful, but not a fanatic like the Dervishes. He was an excellent marksman, knew the country intimately, had ‘a beautiful seat’ on his pony and rode ‘recklessly and boldly over the most rocky ground’.⁴ He was not organised in a regular army in European style, but in less formal units known as ‘commandos’. Promotion was by merit rather than class and seniority, and Louis Botha, whom Churchill would come to know well, moved easily from political to military leader. And unlike the earlier opponents, the Boers had very efficient German-made artillery whereas the British army was short of heavy weapons and relied on naval guns landed from ships.

Soon Churchill was involved in a foray using an armoured railway train, which at the time he considered it to be ‘a very useful means of reconnaissance’ even if it was ‘puny’ compared with trains he had seen elsewhere.⁵ In fact it was a most unsuitable vehicle, especially if not backed up by cavalry and on an operation which General Buller dismissed as ‘inconceivable stupidity’. Later Churchill saw the essential absurdity: ‘Nothing looks more formidable and impressive than an armoured train; but nothing is in fact more vulnerable and helpless. It was only necessary to blow up a bridge or culvert to leave the monster stranded, far from home and help.’ Nevertheless he set out in the force under Captain Haldane, including two companies of infantry backed by a naval 6-pounder gun. Soon they were under fire from Boer artillery. It did not need the blowing up of a bridge or culvert, or even lifting the rails, to derail the train – the Boers did it by placing an obstruction on the line: ‘… suddenly there was a tremendous shock, and [Haldane] and I and all the soldiers in the truck were pitched head over heels on to its floor’.⁶ Though he was now a civilian, Churchill cajoled the driver into moving the engine back and forward in an attempt to clear the track. He rallied the troops in defence until he was confronted by a Boer