Churchill Wanted Dead or Alive

4. The Station Yard

FOUR The Station Yard 'A long and bloody war is before us - and the end is by no means as certain as most people imagine.' WINSTON CHURCHILL, letter to Sir Evelyn Wood, 10 November 1899 C H U R C H I L L ' S BASE WAS ONLY A small-town station yard, but although it was not the centre of attention, it was certainly the hub of military activity. While Ladysmith grabbed the headlines, its relief depended upon the reinforcements and supplies which came in through the railhead at Estcourt. Churchill had occupied the centre ground. From here he set out daily, on foot through the town or on horseback through the green, undulating countryside, to collect information on which to base his almost daily dispatches. Scribbled out in a single draft with only occasional alterations, their quality made them required reading in London. Running to at least fifteen hundred words, and often much longer, composing them would have occupied the entire waking time of most correspondents. Only a master of the English language, blessed with keen political and strategic antennae and a military background, could have carried them off with such aplomb. Yet to Churchill, his dispatches were simply the end-products of days spent constantly on the move. Evoking atmosphere, conveying information and laced with wisdom, they were intended to convince the reader of the rightness of an Imperial strategy in which the 32 The Station Yard British flag was synonymous with protection and good government. Yet they were never jingoistic, and always showed respect for a decently behaved enemy. Nor in his writing was there any trace of the bumptiousness which the young Churchill undoubtedly displayed in ample measure. His dispatches took a humane and charitable view of men doing their best against the odds. However, he never hesitated to pour scorn on hypocrisy of all sorts, and he was unrelenting in his criticism of official ineptitude. His first dispatch was dated 6 November, the day of his arrival in Estcourt. Among much else, it eloquently pleaded the cause of the British colonists in Natal: They have never for one moment lost sight of their obligations as a British colony . . . The townsfolk are calm and orderly . . . Boys of sixteen march with men of fifty to war . . . The Imperial Light Horse can find no more vacancies, not even for those who will serve without pay . . . This colony of Natal will impress the historian. The devotion of its people to their Sovereign . . . should win them general respect and sympathy; and fall indemnity to all individual colonists who have suffered loss must stand as an Imperial debt of honour. The Boer War brought together a number of rising stars, with many of whom Churchill was already acquainted. At Estcourt he found the Times correspondent, Leo Amery, who had been in the top form at Harrow when Churchill arrived at the bottom. Amery was small of stature and, mistaking him for a boy in the lower school, Churchill had pushed him into the school swimming-pool. The tables had been immediately turned, Amery being several years older, head of his house and no mean athlete. But the incident had led to an academic alliance in which Amery helped Churchill with his Latin translations while the future Nobel Prize-winner dictated the older boy's English essays. Now Churchill invited Amery to share his tent in the station yard. Forty years on he would invite him to join his wartime government. There were many others, mostly army officers, who had already come to the notice of the public, but in this sparkling constellation 33 Churchill Wanted Dead or Alive none, new or established, shone more brightly than the youthful, impetuous Churchill. Unusually for anyone except the very highest in the South African firmament, his portrait appears twice in a pictorial record of the Boer War, War Impressions, which was published in 1900 by the well-known British artist Mortimer Menpes. One picture shows Churchill, dressed for the fray, at his tent door. The other is more conventionally posed, with the subject wearing a suit and bow tie. In the commentary accompanying the paintings, the artist's pen is more revealing than his brush. His subject was 'quite ready to retire into the background and listen to any one's conversation - if it is interesting. If it is not - well, I think it might chance to be speedily interrupted.' Menpes...