Hero of the Empire: The Boer War, a Daring Escape, and the Making of Winston Churchill (42 page)

CHAPTER 24

THE LIGHT OF HOPE

W
hen news of the Battle of Colenso reached Cape Town, its governor, Sir Alfred Milner, was in the middle of hosting a luncheon party at Government House. He was “
in tremendous form,” Leo Amery, who attended the luncheon, later wrote, “making light of our reverses and keeping up every body’s spirits.” In private, however, Milner, who had pushed hard for war with the Boers and had scoffed at the idea that there was any danger of defeat, was distraught. Pulling Amery aside at the first opportunity, he led him into the library and told him what had happened at Colenso. “The gay mask dropped from his face as he told me that Buller had just blundered into a trap,” Amery wrote, “and had not only lost heavily in men, but had abandoned his guns in the open and fallen back.”

What neither Amery nor even Milner knew, however, was that Buller had not only lost the battle, he had, it seemed, lost hope. His cable to London in the aftermath of the fighting was as somber as Botha’s had been triumphant. “
I regret to report serious reverse,” he wrote. Although the War Office was concerned by news of yet another loss, far more troubling than Buller’s defeat was his obvious dejection. Not only had he given up just a few hours into the
battle, but he had then urged General White, who was still trapped in Ladysmith with thirteen thousand men, to do the same.

“
I tried Colenso yesterday but failed. The enemy is too strong for my force,” Buller had cabled to White. “I suggest your firing away as much ammunition as you can, and making the best terms you can.” Although White was outraged by Buller’s suggestion that he surrender to the Boers and made it clear that he had no intention of doing so, Buller’s seemingly complete collapse sent waves of panic through the War Office.

Buller’s hopelessness was dangerously contagious. “
Overwhelmed by the successive tidings of disaster,” Amery wrote, “the War Office seemed almost inclined to acquiesce in Buller’s despair.” Instead, it decided to relieve him of his duties. A few days after the battle, Buller received a cipher telegram from London. He had been relegated to the British force in Natal and was being dismissed as commander in chief. The War Office had already selected his replacement: Lord Frederick Roberts.

Roberts could not have been more different from Buller. At sixty-seven years of age, he was still as fit as he had been more than thirty years earlier, when he won his Victoria Cross during the Indian Mutiny. While Buller gave the impression of a favorite uncle, Roberts had the steely manner that most Britons expected to see in their commander in chief. “
I have never seen a man before with such extraordinary eyes,” Ian Hamilton, acting adjutant general of the Natal Field Force, wrote of Roberts. “The face remains perfectly motionless, but the eyes convey the strongest emotions. Sometimes they blaze with anger, and you see hot yellow fire behind them. Then it is best to speak up straight and clear and make an end quickly.”

Even Roberts, however, was powerless to undo the damage that had already been done or to save the lives that had already been lost, including that of his own son. When Buller received the cable from London informing him of his dismissal, he had already sent his own telegram to Roberts, bearing the devastating news of Freddy’s death. “
Your gallant son died today,” it read simply. “Condolences, Buller.” The secretary of state for war, Henry Lansdowne, was with Roberts
when he was handed the telegram. “The blow was almost more than he could bear,” Lansdowne later wrote, “and for a moment I thought he would break down, but he pulled himself together. I shall never forget the courage which he showed.”

If there was anything Britons knew how to do, it was to show courage in the face of tragedy. Black Week required a particularly stiff upper lip. Not only were they stunned by the number of young men already killed in the war, but they could not believe that it was possible for the British Empire to lose to anyone, let alone a small, isolated republic on a faraway continent. “
It is impossible to describe the feeling of dismay with which the news of Sir Redvers Buller’s defeat was received,” one London correspondent wrote. “So much had been expected of him, and so much depended on his success, that it could scarcely be credited that he had failed disastrously.”

In a desperate attempt to rebound from the shock of Black Week and to reassure themselves that theirs was still the greatest empire in the world, Britons put on a feverish display of patriotic pride. “
Deep as was the gloom of that ‘Black Week,’ humiliating as was the sense of defeat and failure,” Amery wrote, “one may wonder whether the thrill of a common sympathy and a common purpose throughout the whole length and breadth of the Empire may not have been worth more than many easily won victories.” Shopwindows were plastered with posters depicting square-jawed generals and handsome young officers. Men and boys who were too old or too young to fight wore badges on their lapels with rallying cries of “
Only one order, forward!” and “England expects every man to do his duty,” or bracing assurances that “we hold a vaster Empire than has been.”
Parents bought their children books, comics, toy soldiers and even board games to teach them about the war. One game of skill, billed as “a new South African War game,” came in a red box with drawings of a burgher and a soldier on the front and was named Boer or Briton—the question that was on everyone’s mind.

Even Queen Victoria did her part.
She not only knit eight khaki-wool scarves for “the best all-round men taking part in the South African campaign” but sent all her men in the field a gift for the New Year, and the new century. It was a small, rectangular gold-and-red-painted tin with a portrait of the queen stamped on the front, “South Africa 1900” printed in large letters to one side and a message from the queen herself—“I wish you a happy new year”—in her royal script below. Inside the tin, beneath two layers of stiff paper and bright foil, were six bars of chocolate, most of which had already melted by the time they reached her subjects on the blazingly hot veld, a world away from wintry England.

There would be more mouths for the queen to feed in South Africa in 1900 than there had been in 1899. As soon as news of the Battle of Colenso reached England, the British army was overwhelmed with men wanting to sign up to fight the Boers. “
For this far-distant war, a war of the unseen foe and of the murderous ambuscade, there were so many volunteers that the authorities were embarrassed by their numbers and their pertinacity,” Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote. “It was a stimulating sight to see those long queues of top-hatted, frock-coated young men who waited their turn for the orderly room with as much desperate anxiety as if hard fare, a veld bed, and Boer bullets were all that life had that was worth the holding.”

As 1899 came to a dismal close, however, what England needed most was not patriotic posters, chocolate from the queen or even thousands of additional soldiers. What it needed was a hero. The Boers had theirs. After the Battle of Colenso, Botha had risen to fame seemingly overnight. Throughout the Transvaal, he had become a figure of national pride, the face of the war that the Boers wanted to present to the world. He was young, smart, handsome and brave, and he had done something dramatic, something that had galvanized his people and strengthened their will to keep fighting.

The British now realized to their dismay that they had no Botha. Buller, the great “steamroller” who was supposed to have effortlessly ended the war before Christmas, had been humiliated and dismissed from his duties after less than three months in South Africa. There
had been more than enough heroic and heartrending deaths, dashing young men sacrificing their lives for their empire as they had been taught to do since childhood. But there were no thrilling success stories, no stunning feats of heroism, of jaw-dropping risk, that, instead of ending in tragedy or defeat, had actually worked.

The only exception to the seemingly endless series of disasters that had befallen the British Empire since the beginning of the war was the escape of Winston Churchill. The story of his audacious flight from the Staats Model School had riveted both nations. He had reminded the world what it meant to be a Briton—resilient, resourceful and, even in the face of extreme danger, utterly unruffled. “
I have no doubt that he knows what he is about and will turn up with an extra chapter of his book finished in a few days time,” his editor, Oliver Borthwick, had assured Churchill’s mother after his escape.

As confident as Borthwick had tried to sound when writing to Jennie, few people, whether in London or Pretoria, actually believed that Churchill would make it to safety. “
Although Mr. Winston Churchill’s escape was cleverly executed,” a reporter for the
Manchester Courier
wrote, “there is but little chance of his being able to cross the border.” More than that, they feared that when Churchill was caught, he would pay for his audacity and the humiliation he had caused the Boers not just with his freedom but with his life. “
With reference to the escape from Pretoria of Mr. Winston Churchill,” a London newspaper reported, “fears are expressed that he may be captured again before long and if so may probably be shot.”

It was less than a week before Christmas, and it was difficult to imagine how the war could be going any worse. England had already suffered a series of defeats, a staggeringly long list of casualties, a disgraced and dispirited commander in chief and a hero who had disappeared into the veld. “
We are on the eve of the saddest Christmas within the memory of man,” one correspondent wrote. “The
Star of Bethlehem is the star of hope, the sign of redemption, and never more was the light of hope needed than in this dark day of our history.”

Thousands of miles away, ninety feet belowground in the mine shaft of the Transvaal and Delagoa Bay Colliery, Winston Churchill awoke in absolute darkness, darker than any night he had ever known.
When he reached out a hand to search blindly for the candle that Howard had given him, he found that it was gone. He had no idea how long he had been sleeping or what time it was, and he could not find out because it was too dangerous to venture into the mazelike tunnels alone and without light of any kind.

When Churchill had fallen asleep the night before, settling onto the mattress that McKenna and McHenry, the two Scottish miners, had left with him, he had felt not just relieved but triumphant. “
Life seemed bathed in rosy light,” he wrote. “I saw myself once more rejoining the Army with a real exploit to my credit, and in that full enjoyment of freedom and keen pursuit of adventure dear to the heart of youth.” Now, in the deep gloom of the mine, he realized that he was so dependent on the strangers he had met the night before that he could not even leave his bed. “
I did not know what pitfalls these mining-galleries might contain,” he wrote, “so I thought it better to lie quiet on my mattress and await developments.”

Churchill lay there for hours, listening to the heavy silence of the mine and staring into its impenetrable blackness. Finally, he saw a faint glimmer of light, traveling toward him in the dark like an errant star. When it came close enough, he could see that it illuminated the friendly face of John Howard, holding a lantern and asking him why he had not lit his candle. When Churchill told him he could not find it, Howard asked, “
Didn’t you put it under the mattress?” “No,” Churchill replied. “Then”—Howard shrugged—“the rats must have got it.”