CHAPTER 18

“I SHALL GO ON ALONE”

Although Haldane and Brockie had slowly and carefully planned their escape, they chose the date spontaneously. When they woke on the morning of December 11, they decided, this was the day. “These things,” Churchill understood, “are best done on the spur of the moment.”

As eager as Churchill was to rejoin the war, and as confidently as he had spoken not just of escape but of wholesale revolt, now that the time had finally come, he was sick with anxiety. He hated the idea of “stealing secretly off in the night like a guilty thief,” and he could not help but think of the ZARPs’ highly accurate Lee-Metford rifles, which, at a range of just fifteen yards, would certainly not miss their target. Churchill had also begun to think about what life would be like on the run. If they made it over the fence alive, he knew that he could look forward to nothing better than “severe hardship and suffering.” Worse, he was now willing to admit, there was little hope of success. “I passed the afternoon,” he wrote, “in positive terror.”

Churchill also had a lingering suspicion that Haldane and Brockie were not telling him everything. Although paranoia was one of the most common symptoms of barbed-wire disease, in this case at least, Churchill was right. His partners in escape were very consciously keeping the full details of their plan from their “talkative friend.” After making it very clear to Churchill that he expected him to follow orders, Haldane had told him “in general terms what the plan was, but not in detail, as he would be in my company.” As far as Churchill knew, the plan covered only the escape and nothing else. “Everything after this,” he wrote, “was vague and uncertain.”

Even with limited information, Churchill, as Haldane and Brockie had feared, was constitutionally incapable of keeping their plans secret. He immediately began telling the other prisoners that he was about to make his escape. “Churchill is in a great state of excitement,” Haldane wrote in frustration in his diary, “and letting everyone know that he means going to-night.” Haldane had hoped to keep their plans quiet not only to lessen the risk of the guards finding out but also because he knew that there were officers who would be jealous and would worry that if they succeeded in escaping, those left behind would suffer.

Haldane and Brockie were also worried that Churchill, especially in his current nervous state, would make a sudden, potentially dangerous move that would jeopardize the entire plan. While he had never questioned Churchill’s bravery, Haldane knew that his friend was not as judicious as he could have hoped, or as their escape attempt would demand. “I perhaps have seen Churchill in a situation of greater danger than have others, and can affirm with confidence that he possesses one at least of the attributes of his great ancestor,” Haldane wrote, referring to Churchill’s famously courageous forebear, the 1st Duke of Marlborough. “He can be splendidly audacious at times and, sometimes, at the wrong time.”

Churchill tried with little luck to while away the hours until dinner, when they planned to make their escape. He played chess and was “hopelessly beaten.” He attempted to read one of his favorite authors, W. E. H. Lecky, an Irish historian who had written about everything from Jonathan Swift to the moral history of Europe. Churchill had somehow obtained a volume of Lecky’s History of England in the Eighteenth Century, but even it couldn’t claim his attention. “For the first time in my life,” he wrote, “that wise writer wearied me.”

Finally, the time came. The sky grew dark, the dinner bell clanged, and the men began to file listlessly into the large, open room at the end of the wide hallway. It was the time of day that Churchill hated most at the Staats Model School. Each night, they “crowded again into the stifling dining hall for the last tasteless meal of the barren day,” he wrote. “The same miserable stories were told again and again…until I knew how the others came to Pretoria as well as I knew my own story.”

On this night, for the first time, a current of excitement coursed through Churchill when the sun began to set. At ten minutes to 7:00, he and Haldane slipped away. They were accompanied by a few of the other officers, who knew what they intended to do and were willing to help them. Brockie would follow when he had received word from these men that his cohorts had made it over the fence.

Once in the yard, the men headed straight for the lavatory. A small, circular building, it was next to the iron paling and in that crucial sliver of darkness that Haldane and Brockie were counting on to conceal them. Although night had fallen, the electric lamps were on, flooding the enclosure with a blue-white light that left only a few, velvety black shadows. As the men strode across the grass, passing the tents of the soldier-servants and then those of the ZARPs, no one stopped them.

Nonchalantly entering the lavatory, they quickly closed the door and peered through a small gap in the metal casing. From their hiding place, they could see one of the ZARPs standing directly across from the section of fence they hoped to climb. Most nights, the guard would eventually leave, moving toward the double row of trees that lined the fence just north of the lavatory. On this night, however, he seemed maddeningly content to stay in his corner.

One by one, the other officers left the lavatory, hoping that the guard would believe that it was now empty and would himself move on to another part of the enclosure. Breath held, hearts racing, Haldane and Churchill waited in silence for what seemed to Haldane to be a quarter of an hour and to Churchill two hours, but the sentry never moved. Finally, the two men put their heads together for a whispered conference. It was no use, they decided. They would have to try another night.

As Churchill climbed back into bed that night, still in his dormitory in the Staats Model School, he was overwhelmed not with anger or frustration but with “a most unsatisfactory feeling of relief.” He could not help but be grateful that the tension and uncertainty of the day had at last slipped off his shoulders. At the same time, he steeled himself to take up the yoke once again as soon as the sun rose. “I was determined,” he wrote, “that nothing should stop my taking the plunge the next day.”

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.

“Cannot get out,” Haldane said. “The sentry suspects. It’s all up. Can you get back in?” On the opposite side of the fence, alone and terrified of being found, Churchill knew that he had no one and nothing to help him, and was truly on his own. Instead of panicking, however, he suddenly felt freed. “All my fears fell from me at once,” he wrote. “To go back was impossible….Fate pointed me onward.” There was nothing to do now but test his luck. Whispering through the iron paling for the last time, he told Haldane, “I shall go on alone.”