Churchill Wanted Dead or Alive

9. Controversy

N I N E Controversy 'My conscience is perfectly clear on the whole episode; I acted with perfect comradeship and honour the whole way through.' WINSTON CHURCHILL, quoted in Randolph S. Churchill, Winston S. Churchill, VOLUME I T H E DAILY ENTRIES IN Adrian Hofmeyr's diary describe the boring nature of life for the prisoners in the States Model School. But in the entry for 13 December 1899, the tenor changes abruptly: 'Great excitement. Churchill escaped last night.' Hofmeyr's The Story of My Captivity describes the consternation caused by Churchill 's disappearance: 'Yes it was a great to-do: it stopped the whole machinery of state. It paralysed the officials. It seemed to me that even the war was forgotten.' Marie de Souza's diary also reflected the mood in Pretoria: 'Wednesday 13th. An exciting day! Mr Churchill escaped last night & it was only discovered at 10.30am! He must have bribed the guards who are policemen! There are 18 around the building . . . I am afraid of the consequences which may fall on the other prisoners.' After Churchill had gone, Haldane and others had made up his bed so that it appeared to be occupied. So effective was the deception that early on the morning of the thirteenth a soldier-servant, failing with a discreet cough to wake the sleeper, left the usual early-morning cup of coffee on a chair beside the bed. * * * 99 Churchill Wanted Dead or Alive I discussed Churchill's escape with Herman van Cittert, the son of Johannes van Cittert, who had been a seventeen-year-old guard at the States Model School. The young Boer had thought Churchill 'a cheeky man who was very upset at finding himself a prisoner. He was a stroppy sort of fellow who was always causing a fuss.' Of the actual escape, Johannes van Cittert had said, 'As I recall it, he went to the lavatory and didn't come back.' He went on to describe the confusion that ensued the following morning: 'The discovery that Churchill was missing might have been long delayed had Henri Adelaar, the barber, not called. He was to shave Churchill and collect fifteen cents owed for a shave and haircut the previous day. Escorted by a policeman, he received no answer to his knock on Churchill's door. He then dashed about the building, asking if anyone had seen his customer. The other prisoners were not very helpful, directing the barber to the most unlikely places. Eventually the policeman realised the prisoner was missing.' The barber had lost his money, and the gaolers had lost their most important prisoner. Consternation now turned to panic. The odious Field Cornet Malan stormed about the building telling the trembling guards that General Joubert would hang them if they could not produce Churchill. A thorough search of the school and its grounds produced nothing more than the missing prisoner's letter to de Souza. At 9.30 Commandant Opperman ordered a roll-call, which finally confirmed that Churchill had indeed flown. For the moment the Boers could only guess at the manner of his escape. Among the rumours was one that he had been disguised as a woman, and at first the authorities, like Marie de Souza, suspected either complicity or slackness among the sentries. Opperman 's handwritten report to de Souza concluded: 'In my view the only way he could have escaped was by bribing one or more of the guards, because the guards were so placed that it would have been impossible for him to escape without their knowledge.' One sentry, Stephan Schotel, who had been on duty at the time of the escape, was to harbour a resentment of Churchill all his life. His only consolation, he later told his wife, was the humiliating 100 Controversy way in which he believed Churchill had got away - by horse cart, hidden in one of the containers used for emptying the latrines. Was Schotel, I wonder, the guard who, turning away to light his cigarette , gave Churchill the few seconds he needed to scramble over the fence? Standing so close to the latrine, he would not have believed that a prisoner could have eluded him. His version of events persists in his family to this day. In fact, Opperman's report was passing the buck: in a properly run prison, the escape by Privates Cahill and Bridge five days before Churchill's would have...