CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: THE NEXT TRAIN TO CHIEVELEY

But in the event, nothing much happened. The Boers stayed where they were and, beyond the daily cavalry reconnaissance patrols, we stayed where we were. I did ask Hildyard if we could borrow half-a-dozen of the Carabineers’ ponies to ride back to Pietermaritzburg, but he said that none could be spared. This situation could have gone on indefinitely – or at least until the Natal Field Force had bimbled its way to reinforce us – and, if it hadn’t been for the perfectly disgusting diet served up in the Brigade Mess, I would have been happy to sit tight until they had arrived. But, after a week of idleness and indigestion, on the afternoon of the 14th November all of that changed. I was having a peaceful doze outside my tent, after yet another luncheon that not even our pigs at Wrexham would have eaten, when I was woken by Hildyard’s ADC.

“Colonel Speedicut, the Brigade Commander has instructed me to inform you that you and your party are to return to the coast.”

“But how? We’ve got no transport.”

“The General has decided that you will travel as far as Pietermaritzburg on the armoured train.”

“Marvellous. When are we leavin’?”

“Tomorrow midday - as soon as it returns from Chieveley.”

“What the hell’s it goin’ to be doin’ there?”

“Field Force HQ has instructed the General to carry out a survey of the track between here and Chieveley. Captain Haldane has volunteered to command the train and, once he has completed that task, it will take you and the War Correspondents down the line.”

This was the best news I’d had all week and I sent Fahran off to assemble the hacks for a briefing. All but Churchill welcomed my announcement.

“But surely, Colonel,” said Churchill, with his jaw set in an expression that would not have looked out of place on a bulldog, “if the train is going up the line they’ll be plenty of room for us to go along for the ride, observe and at last be able to file some copy for our editors?”

This was a most unwelcome proposal but I said that I would raise it with Hildyard and report back.

“Out of the question, Speedicut,” Hildyard said in answer to my tentative request.

“I thought as much, General, but I was bound to ask.” ‘… and damned glad I am with your response’, I nearly added.

Only Churchill seemed unhappy with the Brigade Commander’s decision, but he said nothing. Later that evening, after yet more slops masquerading as dinner, I saw him deep in conversation with Haldane. The sight should have put me on my guard, but I was distracted by a sudden gurgling coming from beneath my belt, followed by severe abdominal cramps. By the time I’d dealt with the problem in the latrines, Churchill had slipped my mind. As I thought it might be wise to avoid any further offerings of offal en croûte in the Mess the next morning, I told Fahran to let me sleep-in and only to wake me in an emergency. He did so shortly after eight.

“Huzoor, the train is about to leave.”

“What? Without us? Why didn’t you wake me?”

“No, huzoor, I mean the train is about to leave for Chieveley.”

“That’s what it’s supposed to do – before it takes us south. Wake me when it returns.”

“But, huzoor, Mr Churchill is on the train.”

“What? How do you know?”

“I saw him going to the station with Captain Haldane. I followed them and checked that they both boarded. As soon as I saw that Mr Churchill remained on the train, I came to warn you.”

“Christ! Quick, Fahran, get me into my uniform. I can’t allow the bugger to go on his own. He might write what’s really happenin’ and telegraph it to London from Chieveley.”

Thanks to my valet, and a lifetime of getting dressed at speed, I made it to the station just as the engine gave a shrill toot. There wasn’t time to clamber up a ladder and into one of the armoured cattle trucks but I managed - with a well-timed shove from Fahran - to scramble-up onto the engine’s footplate and into the inferno of the driver’s cab.

“You’re not supposed…” the engine driver started to say.

“I’ll do what I damned well please,” I said cutting him off. “Stay with the War Correspondents, Fahran, and don’t let ’em move until we get back,” I yelled as the train pulled away from Estcourt Station.

What happened next has since been widely reported, so I’ll set down only a bare bones account.182 In a nutshell, the armoured train – with me in the cab - puffed its way peacefully along eighteen miles of track to Chieveley, at which point it ground to a halt. I clambered down and went in search of Churchill and Haldane, only to find that they’d hoofed off to the telegraph office so that Haldane, in his role as OC Train, could send a situation report back to Hildyard. I caught up with them not a second too late, for Churchill was in the act of handing a sheet of paper to the telegraph operator.

“Has that report been passed by me, Mr Churchill?” I demanded. But before he could reply we heard shouting from the train.

“STAND TO! Boers! Dozens of them…”

As one, the three of us dashed back to the nearest armoured truck on which was mounted the six-pounder. We clambered up the ladder and dropped into a wagon full of bog-trotting Fusiliers then Haldane climbed onto a crate and pulled out a pair of field glasses. Actually, they were quite unnecessary because even with my ageing eyes I could see Boers all along the crest of a hill that overlooked our return route some five hundred yards distant. Haldane blew three long blasts on a whistle hanging from a lanyard around his neck, the train lurched in the direction of home and I breathed a sigh of relief. It was premature.

As I watched the figures on the skyline, to my dismay they were joined by three field guns that were quickly brought into action. In no time at all enemy shrapnel and bullets were belting into the armoured side and unprotected top of the train: the noise of the detonations and the impacts was appalling. Dublin Fusiliers started to drop all around me, but Haldane, Churchill and I seemed to be impervious to the deadly rain of steel. Crouched down for as much cover as I could find, I peered through a slit in the wagon’s side: not only were we accelerating away from danger, thanks to the best efforts of the fireman and a downward gradient, but I could see that we would soon turn the corner of the hill and be out of sight of the farmer’s artillery.

“In a minute we’ll be safe,” I shouted over to Haldane. He nodded his acknowledgement, but he didn’t look at all happy. Then I realised why: the Boers were no fools and had probably mined the track. I had no doubt that we were accelerating towards far greater danger than that posed by their shell and rifle fire. No sooner had the thought formed in my mind than there was a bone-crunching shock which threw everyone who wasn’t already on the floor off their feet. Fortunately, as we were in the last truck on the train, no one around me was seriously hurt. I staggered onto my pins, stood on a fire step and peered over the edge of the armoured metal box. We were about half-a-mile on the homeward side of the hill. That was the good news. The bad news was that the first two wagons were lying on their sides beside the track; their dead and wounded occupants – platelayers and Durban Light Infantrymen – were scattered across the surrounding grass like confetti. The third wagon had been derailed and was blocking the track but the tender, the engine itself, and the two wagons between ours and it appeared to be both functioning and still on the rails.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, the hillside swarmed with enemy who brought down a deadly hail of rifle fire on our marooned train. To reverse back towards the guns would have been suicide; but we couldn’t continue our journey towards safety either, thanks to the overturned rolling stock that blocked the route home. Churchill and I both made our way over to Haldane to confer.

“We’re stuck,” I said. “It seems to me we either surrender or fight to the last man,” the latter not being my preferred option.

“I’ll nae run-up ye white flag – at least nae yet,” said Haldane.

“Surely the engine can push the overturned trucks off the line?” said Churchill.

“What good will that do us if the line beyond has been cut?” I asked.

“But we dinna ken that it has,” said Haldane.

“I’ll go and look,” said Churchill, who clearly should have been a 17th Lancer.183 “Can you get the Micks and the matelots to give me covering fire, Haldane?”

“Nae problem, Churchill. Perhaps, Colonel, ye could direct yon naval gun?”

As Churchill nipped over the lee side of the truck, I took command of a brace of jolly jack tars and, in no time at all, I got them to return the Boers fire. A short while later Churchill was back and reported that the homeward side of the line appeared to be undamaged and that, if he disconnected the engine from our trucks and used it as a shunter, he should be able to clear the track of the overturned wagons. Haldane told him to put his plan into action. A bit over an hour later, whilst Haldane and I held the Boers at bay by dint of sustained rifle and artillery fire, I could see that he’d succeeded. At least I thought he had, until – soaked with sweat and begrimed like a chimneysweep – Churchill reported that there was a problem: the engine (but not the wagons) was six inches too wide for the gap he’d created by pushing the overturned trucks off the line and, as they were now jammed together, there was no way of moving them further away from the rails

“What about if you back up and take it at speed?” I suggested. “You might be able to brush past the obstruction.”

“It’s worth a try,” said Haldane.

“But what happens if the impact derails the engine?” said Churchill.

“Then we’ll be no worse off than we are at the moment,” I said.

“But if it succeeds,” said Churchill, “the engine will be one side of the overturned wagons and you and the three other wagons will still be here.”

“Wi’ the muscle power o’ yon Irish labourers,” said Haldane nodding towards the Dublin Fusiliers, “we should be able tae push these trucks doon ye line and reconnect wi’ thee and the engine.”

“Very well,” said Churchill.

The first part of the operation went without a hitch. Churchill backed up the engine and then charged it at the obstruction. To the awful accompaniment of grinding steel, the unstoppable force and the immovable object reared, tussled for a moment in mid-air, then the locomotive was past and the wagon fell back into its former place. Haldane ordered the Micks out of the wagons and, at this point, the plan came unstuck: for, despite the combined muscle power of sixty-odd murphies, the steel-plated trucks refused to budge.

“There’s nowt fer it,” said Haldane to Churchill who had reappeared, “we’ll hae te put ye wounded on ye tender and the rest of us will hae te walk using yon engine as cover.”

As a substitute plan, made at no notice and in the teeth of the enemy’s fire, it was a good plan: but, as plans so often go in warfare, it failed. To this day I don’t know if it was the fault of the downhill gradient, the engine driver or Churchill but, whilst shot and shell struck death all around us, the surviving men of the Durban Light Infantry and the Dublin Fusiliers, my naval gun crew, Haldane and I limped along in the lee of the engine and tender, which were festooned with the wounded. As we did so, the wretched chuffa - with Churchill at the helm - started to outpace us.

“Slow down, you bloody fool!” I yelled, as the cab accelerated past me. I think I faintly heard Churchill swear at the driver before the engine disappeared around the next bend. “Shit!” I managed to gasp before I tripped over a sleeper, pitched headlong and smacked my head on a rail.

…

When I finally came back to the land of the living it was to find that it was raining hard and that someone was trying to tip whisky, which I loathe, down my throat; I think it was the taste of the smoky Scotch piss which returned me to consciousness. Whatever the reason, the rain or the rotgut, I quickly realised that I was drenched to the skin and lying on my back surrounded by my colleagues, all of whom had been disarmed. Beyond us was a circle of gun-toting, slouch-hatted Boers. Churchill, however, was nowhere to be seen. As my powers of deductive reasoning started to return, along with a splitting headache, I assumed that he was by now sipping tea with Hildyard and explaining why he was safe whilst more than half of the Brigadier General’s command were dead, dying or captured. I remarked as much to Haldane who was sat next to me and had been administering his national drink to me by way of an unwelcome restorative.

“I ken ye’re wrong, Colonel. I saw the wee mon being hauled off intae yonder tent,” he said, pointing at what I assumed was the Boer command post. No sooner had Haldane said this than the man himself reappeared under armed guard and was brought over to join us.

“It seems that I’m not to be released,” he said despondently.

“Why the hell should you be?” I demanded.

“Well, as an unarmed journalist… but it seems that they know who I am and regard me as a bit of a prize.” More fool them, was all I could think. “Anyway, we’ve got to march the sixty miles from here to Elandslaagte where they’ll put us on a train for a prison camp in Pretoria. Of all the damned bad luck: now I’m going to miss all the fun and the Morning Post will probably stop paying me.”

“Every cloud has a silver linin’,” I murmured.

“What’s that, Colonel?” he demanded.

“I said ‘I wish the sun would start shinin’.” He clearly didn’t believe me for he turned his back and started jawing to Haldane.

I won’t trouble you with an account of the next few days beyond saying that I faked a bad case of concussion and, as a result, got slung onto a mule-drawn cart and so didn’t have to wear out my shoe leather - or my health - on the march to the rail head and thence to Pretoria. We arrived there on 18th November at which point the officers were separated from the Other Ranks, who went to a compound on the racecourse, whilst we were deposited in a place called the State Model Schools.

As I’ve countless times had to relate, I’ve been held captive more often than I care to remember in conditions ranging from the luxurious (Russia) to the downright dangerous (China). As prisons go, the State Model Schools were at the Russian end of the scale, but without the concomitant pleasures afforded by Alexei Vronsky. The food was reasonable, the living conditions no worse than Rugby and the security didn’t intrude on our daily lives. The worst things we had to endure were boredom and the bossiness of a self-appointed Senior British Officer, an irascible and bugger-hating old Brigadier General called Bridger, who assumed that I – and any other officer over the age of fifty - was, as he would have said, ‘up to no good’ with my younger companions. For once, in my case at least, he was wrong – at least as far as that was concerned.

When not blackguarding Bridger behind his back, the principal topic of conversation amongst the sixty or so officers confined in the State Model Schools was escape. Had I been thirty years younger, I might have been prepared to curl up on my bunk with a good book – plenty were thoughtfully provided by our captors – and sit out the war. However, rising seventy-eight (albeit feeling at least ten years younger), I was acutely conscious of the fact that there was a strictly limited amount of cotton left on my bobbin and it seemed nothing less than a waste to spend one day longer as a prisoner-of-war than was strictly necessary. So it was that I became an active member of Haldane’s escape group. This consisted of him, Churchill (once he had been told in no uncertain terms by the Boers that, despite being unarmed, as the mastermind of the escape of our engine he had forfeited his non-combatant status), a fellow called Brockie (who was actually a Trooper in the Imperial Light Horse, but was impersonating an officer – we didn’t give him away as he knew the country around Pretoria and spoke fluent Afrikaans), and myself.

We wasted the first few weeks of our captivity whilst Churchill tried to convince us of his plan to overpower the guards as they slept, seize their weapons, dash to the racecourse where several thousand Other Ranks were confined, release them, seize the enemy capital and declare the war won. Churchill even gave it a codename: Overlord. It was the sort of heroic, Boys Own Paper rubbish of which Rhodes would have approved, but it was clearly impractical and far too damned dangerous. Eventually, Churchill saw reason and – after we’d persuaded him that digging a tunnel with our cutlery would take more time than even Buller would expend to win the war - a plot of altogether more manageable proportions was developed, thanks to an observation of mine.

To understand the significance of my discovery I must first describe the compound in which we were confined. The State Model Schools was a long, rectangular building located on the west side of an equally rectangular compound. On the south side of this compound were the guards’ tents, in the middle was a cook house and a tall gantry on which were floodlights and – most significantly – on the eastern side up against the perimeter fence were two circular, roofless buildings, one of which housed a primitive water closet. The whole area was enclosed on two sides by iron railings and on the other two sides by a ten-foot high corrugated iron fence. The internal perimeter of each of the four sides of this barricade was patrolled around the clock by two guards in the manner of the Woodentops at Buck House.

Quite by chance, whilst queuing one night for a crap, I noticed that when the guards on the eastern wall were patrolling towards the far end of their respective beats, they had their backs to each other and, consequently, neither could observe the fence behind the latrines. Better still, this particular spot was exactly midway between two pools of floodlighting and, consequently, in deep shadow. To escape over the wall, all that would be necessary would be to enter the heads, climb onto the lid of the crapper then, by main strength, haul oneself over the top of the building and drop down on the other side of the fence into the garden of the villa that was next to our prison.

There were, however, two flaws embedded in this cunning plan. The first problem was that shinning over a ten-foot high wall, even with the aid of a well-placed wooden bog seat, was quite beyond me. The second problem, even if the first impediment was soluble, was what the hell to do once we’d landed on t’other side; and that was assuming that I hadn’t broken my ankles in the process. In the absence of Searcy, I put my observations and the attendant issues to Haldane, Churchill and Brockie.

“My God, Colonel,” said Churchill, “you’ve found the weak spot. I’ll recce the route once it’s dark and, if it’s all as you state, we can make our escape tomorrow night.”

“Now hold on, Churchill,” said Brockie, “what do you propose we do once we’re the other side of the wall?”

“No idea, but I’m sure that something will come to me.”

“I din’ae like it,” said Haldane scratching the stubble on his chin. “It’s seems tae easy.” I also didn’t like the idea of Churchill carrying out a recce. If I was right and the route was navigable, what was to stop him hopping over that very night and leaving the rest of us to face the consequences?

“I think I should come with you,” I interjected. “Apart from anythin’ else, we have to work out how I’m to scale the bog wall.”

“That’s simple,” said Brockie, “There’s only one WC, so whoever goes in first waits for you. Then, if he stands on the seat, he can give you a leg up and over the top of the wall.”

“Good thinkin’, Brockie. If Churchill’s willin’,” I said, “we can try that out tonight.”

“Oh, very well,” said Churchill rather grumpily. Had he, I wondered, been plotting exactly what I feared?

Anyway it was decided: Churchill and I would scout out the route and then – if it worked - we would all make the escape the following night. The problem still remained as to what we were going to do once we were on the other side of the wire…

“Carpe diem,” said Haldane – at least that’s what I think he said, but it may have been some heathen Scotch aphorism.

“Toujours l’audace,” said Churchill.

“Who dares wins,” said Brockie.

“Oh, sod it!” I added for good measure.

In mid-December in Pretoria it gets dark around eight o’clock. Shortly after the floodlights were switched on, Churchill and I sauntered over to the WC building. I paused before we got there, pretending that I had an undone shoe lace whilst Lady Randy’s boy observed the guards.

“I reckon,” he murmured to me as I resumed the upright, “that, from the time they turned their backs on each other to patrol to either end of the fence and the time they’d executed an About Turn, was about two minutes. So that’s the amount of time we’ll each have to enter the bog and climb over the back wall.” Under cover of Churchill lighting a cigarette, we waited until the guards were again on their outward patrol. “Go!” whispered Churchill and together we took the few short steps into the circular office.

Facing us inside the building, which was lit by a bare gas jet that projected from a wall bracket, was a single door. Without thinking, I opened it. There in front of us sat General Bridger, his britches were around his ankles and his right hand firmly grasped around an erect and surprisingly large prick.