Hero of the Empire: The Boer War, a Daring Escape, and the Making of Winston Churchill (32 page)

When he woke on the morning of December 12, Churchill was even more tightly wound than he had been the day before. “
Another day of fear,” he wrote, “but fear crystallizing more and more into desperation. Anything was better than further suspense.” That evening, instead of listlessly circling the building, Churchill strode agitatedly up and down the yard in a straight line in front of the fence. Haldane watched him nervously, all too aware that his excitement was fully apparent to everyone in the enclosure. “
We
must
go to-night,” Churchill snapped under his breath. “There are three of us to go,” Haldane calmly replied, “and we will certainly do so if the chance is favourable.”

As soon as the sun set, Churchill’s anxiety only heightened. He haunted Haldane and Brockie’s every step, determined to be ready at any moment to escape. “
W.C. never lost sight of self or Brockie,” Haldane wrote in his diary, “as if he feared we might go without him!”

At 7:00 that night, the men gathered on the back veranda, staring out at the fence and the guards. Churchill and Haldane, again accompanied by a few officers who would serve as lookouts, started
out for the lavatory, leaving Brockie behind to wait for his signal. As had happened the night before, however, the sentry posted across from the lavatory did not stir. After waiting as long as they safely could, they once again agreed to postpone the escape and crossed the yard to rejoin Brockie on the veranda.

When Haldane began to explain their decision to Brockie, his reaction was swift and withering. “
You’re afraid,” he sneered. “I could get away any night.” Haldane, by this time irritated with both of his partners, replied, “Very well; go and see for yourself.” Brockie immediately stalked off, headed in the direction of the lavatory. Haldane stood quietly watching him, but Churchill could not stand to be left behind. Turning suddenly to Haldane, he said, “I am going over again,” then added, “Don’t follow immediately.”

When he had first agreed to bring Churchill with them, Haldane had made at least one aspect of their plan perfectly clear. Although they could not all three climb over at the same time, he and Churchill were to go together, with Brockie following. There was no question, at least in Haldane’s mind, that whatever happened, Churchill would not go alone. Churchill, he believed, understood this as well as he did. Now, as he watched his young friend walk away, Haldane simply stared after him, nonplussed.

Churchill had not gotten very far when Brockie suddenly emerged from the lavatory. As Haldane watched, the two men walked up to each other, stopped for a moment, apparently in tense conversation, and then continued in opposite directions. When Brockie rejoined Haldane on the veranda, he was furious. “
That damned fool Churchill wanted to stop and talk within earshot of the sentry,” he spat. “I told him that it was useless to try to escape then.”

By that time, Churchill had already disappeared into the lavatory. Confident that he understood the plan and would not attempt anything while he was alone, Haldane turned away, deciding to take the opportunity to have a quick meal before trying again. As he and Brockie stepped inside the building and made their way toward the dining hall, they assumed that Churchill would be right behind them.

Some twenty years later, a prolific British author known only as Mrs. Stuart Menzies would write a book titled
As Others See Us
in which she would compare Churchill to the famous king of Scotland Robert the Bruce. According to legend, Bruce, who had ruled from 1306 to 1329, defeated the English in the Battle of Bannockburn only after hiding in a cave and watching a spider repeatedly try and fail to spin a web. In Sir Walter Scott’s version of the story,
Tales of a Grandfather
, Bruce decides that if the spider tries a seventh time and succeeds, he will “
venture a seventh time to try my fortune in Scotland.” If the spider fails, he will “never return to my native country again.”

Churchill, Menzies believed, was even more determined than either the king or the spider. There was no limit to how many times he would try. He would never give up. “
Unlike Robert the Bruce, Winston has nothing to learn from spiders in the way of perseverance,” she wrote. “The spider in that case tried seven times, but I say unto you that Churchill will try seventy times seven, so it saves trouble to give into him at once.”

As he stood alone in the prison lavatory, Churchill found himself again nervously watching the guards through a chink in the metal frame. It looked as if they would never move. Half an hour passed, and still they remained “stolid and obstructive.” Then, suddenly, one of the men turned, walked over to the other guard and began talking to him. For the moment at least, both of the men had their backs to Churchill.

In an instant, Haldane and Brockie’s plan and Churchill’s promise to his friend were completely forgotten. The only thought that rushed through Churchill’s head was “
Now or never.” Bolting out of the lavatory, he rushed to the fence, the sentries standing just fifteen yards away. As their voices drifted on the warm night air right behind him, Churchill, using every bit of strength he had, pulled himself to the top of the paling. “Twice I let myself down again in sickly hesitation,” he later wrote, “and then with a third resolve scrambled up.”

When he finally got to the top, Churchill glanced down at the guards one last time. Then, as quietly as he could, he lowered himself over the side. Behind the Staats Model School was a private house, which the men believed to be unoccupied, and Churchill now found himself in its garden, crouching in a low shrub that stretched along the fence. It was far from the perfect hiding place, but it would have to do until Haldane and Brockie got word that he had made it over and were able to join him.

As he hid among the short, sharp branches, the voices of the ZARPs still floating over the prison wall, Churchill had a startling thought. Although this sudden turn of events was thrilling, it was also irrevocable. As difficult as it had been to climb out of the prison without being seen, it would be all but impossible to climb back in.

Sitting in the dining hall with Brockie, Haldane began to wonder where Churchill was. After about ten minutes, he finally went to their room to see if he had gone there instead of following them into dinner. Not only did he not find Churchill in the dormitory, but, even more disturbing, he did not find Churchill’s hat.

To the prisoners of the Staats Model School, a hat was an object of immeasurable value—uniquely useful and almost impossible to acquire. If a man was fortunate enough to have one, Haldane wrote, he kept it “
carefully preserved.”
After trying unsuccessfully to convince the Boers to let him order a hat with his suit of clothes, Churchill had persuaded Adrian Hofmeyr, the clergyman who had been imprisoned for his English sympathies, to let him borrow his. It was exactly what he had hoped for—soft, drooping felt that covered his face and would make him indistinguishable from any Boer on the streets of Pretoria. It could also be easily hidden.

Haldane knew that as soon as he had acquired a hat, Churchill had begun keeping it under his pillow. Looking at the bed, Haldane first saw something on top of the pillow—a letter. Unable to leave without having the last word regarding his imprisonment, Churchill
had written a letter to Louis de Souza, the secretary of state for war, and left it where it would not be missed. It was an impudent, not to mention dangerous, thing to do, but Haldane ignored it for the time being. Quickly slipping his hand under the pillow, he searched for Hofmeyr’s hat. All he felt was the rough, cool sheet underneath.

As he stood next to Churchill’s bed, wondering where he could be and why he still had his hat with him, one of the other prisoners stepped inside the room. Churchill had escaped, he told Haldane. Then another man appeared, claiming to have spoken to Churchill through the fence. Before Haldane could absorb either of these reports, he got another one: The guard had moved from his place next to the lavatory. “
If Brockie and I were to escape,” he wrote, “we must at all costs do so without losing a moment.”

Haldane quickly slipped out the back door with three other officers and walked as fast as he could to the lavatory. Believing that the sentry was still gone, he reached up and began to pull himself to the top of the fence. At that moment, the rising moon shone fully on his face. A guard who had been hidden in shadow stepped forward and, raising his rifle to his shoulder, pointed it at Haldane’s head. “
Go back you…fool,” he barked.

Kneeling in the shrubs on the other side of the fence, Churchill waited impatiently for Haldane and Brockie. “
Where were the others?” he wondered. “Why did they not make the attempt?” The moonlight, which had revealed Haldane to the sentry on the other side, was a friend to Churchill, throwing his hiding place into deep shadow. Still, he was terrified that he would be found. The house was only twenty yards away and, he realized with a sickening jolt, it was occupied. More than that, it was filled with people.

Peering through the leaves, Churchill could see light pouring through the windows of the house, and against that bright background he saw dark figures moving around inside. Then, to his horror, a man opened the door, light spilling out of the house and into
the garden. Stepping into the moonlit night, he walked across the grass and stopped directly in front of Churchill. He was just ten yards away and, Churchill was certain, looking directly at him. “
I cannot describe the surge of panic which nearly overwhelmed me,” he wrote. “I must be discovered. I dared not stir an inch. My heart beat so violently that I felt sick.”

Terrified, Churchill realized that the only chance he had of remaining undiscovered was the invisibility that, he fervently hoped, the darkened shrubs provided. “
Amid a tumult of emotion,” he later wrote, “reason, seated firmly on her throne, whispered, ‘Trust to the dark background.’ ” He briefly considered speaking to the man, whispering to him that he was a detective and that he was waiting to catch a prisoner whom he believed would attempt to escape that night. Catching himself just in time, however, he realized that a Boer detective would certainly speak Dutch, a language he did not know.

Trying to remain as motionless as he possibly could, Churchill suddenly saw yet another man leave the house, and walk directly toward him. Lighting a cigar, he joined the man standing in front of Churchill and then, to Churchill’s immense relief, they both began to walk away. Just at that moment, a dog chased a cat into the bushes, and the cat, tearing blindly through the underbrush, crashed into Churchill’s silent, crouching figure. Shocked, the cat “
uttered a ‘miaul’ of alarm” and tore back out of the shrub, rattling the branches and making a tremendous racket as he went. The two men who had been walking away stopped short when they heard the commotion, but when the cat dashed past them, they continued on their way. As they stepped through the garden gate and into the town, Churchill watched them go, hoping that he would soon follow in their footsteps.

Now that disaster had, at least for the moment, been averted, Churchill glanced down at his watch and realized that an hour had passed since he had climbed over the fence. Where were Haldane and Brockie? Just then, he heard a voice, a British voice, on the other side. “All up,” it said tersely. Scrambling closer, Churchill could hear two men talking in a strange mixture of English, Latin and nonsense,
laughing as they paced back and forth just in front of him. Then he distinctly heard them say his name. Coughing to let them know he was there, Churchill listened intently as one man continued to jabber while the other spoke in a slow, clear voice. It was Haldane.