Читать книгу Winston Churchill, A Biography - Rene Kraus - Страница 7

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Kitchener remained irreconcilable. Young Churchill’s reputation now was strangely double-edged. His readers were enthusiastic, his fellow-soldiers at Bangalore were proud of him. His commanders, beaming, slapped him on the back. But whenever a few intimates happened to be together, the mess buzzed with words like “medal-hunter” and “self-advertiser.” Even in London the brass hats asked one another how it happened that this young second lieutenant could manage to get furlough enough to be in every campaign. A couple of years’ regular drill would do him no harm. Churchill had not, indeed, invented the strange duality of an officer who at the same time was a war correspondent; there were several of that type in the colonial theaters of war, but they were soon to be compelled by decree to choose between sword and pen. After all, it would never do for a young subaltern to dispense praise and blame to his superiors. What did he know of the higher strategy, anyway? The dilettante!

Dilettante was the one word capable of exciting Sir Herbert, later Lord, Kitchener. He forgot that he had made his own career sixteen years before by an arbitrary act that required an extension of furlough and the help of the press. Today he maintained the strictest discipline. When the Sirdar set out for the Soudan campaign, and of course an application for a commission in the campaign arrived from a certain sub-lieutenant at Bangalore, the reply was one syllable: no.

During the first World War Kitchener and Churchill sat together in the Cabinet, one as Secretary for War, the other as First Lord of the Admiralty. In the course of time a quite cordial relationship developed between the two. Or, more accurately, Kitchener surrendered to Winston Churchill’s charm and enthusiasm. Rather amused and a bit grouchy, he became reconciled to the “dilettante.”

Even as a young officer Churchill would not take no for an answer. There was another furlough due—how on earth did he do it?—and he made use of it to go to London. There lived his oldest ally, his clever Mamma.

Once again Lady Randolph pulled all her silken strings. For two months she lunched and dined her way through the entire list of British generals. After all, they had been friends of her late husband’s. That would excuse an occasional torchlike American glance, which even the most intrepid warrior could not resist.

An accident came to her aid. The aged Lord Salisbury, for the third time Prime Minister and omnipotent leader of the Conservatives—though the real power, Joe Chamberlain with the gold-rimmed monocle in the marble mask, stood behind him—read The Malakand Field Force. He invited the author to Downing Street. Churchill was overjoyed. How could he know that one day he would be master there himself, a mightier ruler than even the great and wise Lord Salisbury? All he knew was that for twenty minutes he would breathe the sacred air of the Cabinet, in which the fate of Empire was decided.

The interview lasted far beyond twenty minutes. Half an hour passed, and still the great man did not dismiss his youthful visitor. When the stroke of the grandfather’s clock warningly recalled the frantic schedule of the day, Lord Salisbury settled back comfortably in his armchair again. Winston Churchill had no way of knowing why the old gentleman was savoring the conversation in such epicurean fashion. In reality Lord Salisbury was thinking back to vanished days, the one special pleasure allotted to white hair. Then he said with old-fashioned formality to the little lieutenant: “I hope you will allow me to say how much you remind me of your father, with whom so many important days of my political life were lived.” They were most unpleasant days. Never had even an opponent involved the Salisbury Government in such critical situations as his own Chancellor of the Exchequer when he laid down his office. But memory gilds even bitterness. “If there is anything at any time that I can do which would be of assistance to you, pray do not fail to let me know!”

Churchill took a few days to assimilate this phrase. Then he turned to the Private Secretary of the Prime Minister, Sir Schomberg M’Donnell.

The next day a telegram from Lord Salisbury went off to the Sirdar. The following morning the answer was there: the Sirdar was sorry. He had all the officers he required, and if any vacancies occurred, there were others he would be bound to prefer before the young officer in question.

Finally drawing-room strategy proved more powerful than all Kitchener’s military art. Lady St. Helier, a friend of Mamma’s, spoke to Sir Evelyn Wood, the Adjutant-General in the War Office. At the moment Sir Evelyn was only an office general. But the stiff-necked independence of the Sirdar, “who, after all, is Commander in Field only of a very small part of the British Army,” had long since got on the nerves of the office generals. The chance for a slight riposte must not be allowed to pass.

Of course the War Office could not force an officer into Kitchener’s Egyptian Army. But what was the British contingent for, which was also leaving to join the Expeditionary Force?

“You have been attached as a supernumerary lieutenant to the 21st Lancers for the Soudan Campaign.” Churchill got this letter forty-eight hours after Lady St. Helier’s intervention. “It is understood that you will proceed at your own expense and that in the event of your being killed or wounded in the impending operations, or for any other reason, no charge of any kind will fall on the British Army funds.”

To raise Churchill’s spirits still further, the President of the Psychical Research Society begged him to get into communication if something unfortunate should occur.

More pleasant was the agreement with Oliver Borthwick, son of the proprietor of the Morning Post, Colonel Blimp’s own paper. Churchill received credentials as a correspondent, at fifteen pounds a column. His rate had tripled since India. When he reported six days later to the Regimental Headquarters at the Abassiyeh Barracks, there was but one worry in this best of all possible worlds: how would Kitchener take it?

The Sirdar simply shrugged when he heard of the War Office ruse. His thick skull was full of greater matters. The battle to annihilate the dervishes had already begun when Churchill arrived, just at the right moment.

The senior officers under whom he was put were not too friendly in their treatment of the uninvited guest. First he was left behind in Assuan to handle the surplus stores. Riding to camp one evening, he lost his way in the desert. For hours and hours he wandered about. His horse went lame. It reared, and assiduously kept its rider from falling asleep in the saddle. Then he began to be tortured by thirst. The night lay dark upon the desert. In its utter obscurity the lone man traveled in a circle. Not until the small hours did the stars rise. Eventually he could make out Orion, which points to the north. Gratefully he followed the faint light.

After two more hours he found the Nile—a spot where a few stunted palms grew. Horse and rider drank their fill. Then it was easier to go back into the desert. Somewhere he found a village. He wanted to inquire for his detachment. But the one word of Arabic he understood was baksheesh. The villagers who howled and danced around him received their tribute. He could get no information from them in return. Then with the point of his sword he drew on a mud wall a couple of crude figures of horsemen. Ah, now they understood him. In that direction, over there ... no, there ... wrong—there, there was where he would find his people.

At last by evening he reached the detachment. It was an advanced outpost. Some Lancers had just tracked down two dervish warriors in the bushes along the Nile. Churchill himself at once set out to hunt for enemies in the brush. His incredible good fortune never deserted him. Within an hour a long-bearded, half-naked wild man leapt from the scrub. Churchill’s eager eye spotted him. He put spurs to his horse, snatched the cavalry saber from its sheath.

“Stop that nonsense!” the long-bearded, half-naked wild man shouted at him in elegant cockney. It was an English spy—painted or merely sunburned, there was no telling which.

The detachment laughed when Churchill came back from his adventure. He scarcely felt like laughing. A thoughtful Colonel put him in charge of the lame horses. The tragi-comic procession was led by two Lancers on donkey-back; then came the ailing horses, next the donkey boys, and last Lieutenant Churchill, the author of a famous book about the Indian war, and correspondent of the Morning Post. In this fashion they marched to the battle of Omdurman. “They want to break my heart, but I will write my book!” Churchill vowed to himself. He was too tough to be broken.

On the evening of August 15 the 21st Lancers crossed the left bank of the Nile at its confluence with the Atbara. In nine days’ march they advanced to the camp north of the Shabluka Cataract. It was a perilous march through the desert. All precautions had to be strictly observed; the advance troops that Churchill was allowed to join after he had finally got rid of his sick horses might be in the midst of the enemy at any moment.

Truly? Where could the enemy be? Not a breath blew through the desert. Not the shadow of a grass-tuft appeared, let alone the shadow of a man. Probably the dervishes had retired. No doubt of it, they had crawled away somewhere into the impassable African interior. The road to the city of Omdurman, the dried-mud residence of the Caliph, would be a mere stroll. What a shame!

The flat-bottomed gunboats and the side-wheelers, with an endless line of sailboats laden with munitions and stores in tow, successfully forced the cataract. One of the gunboats was commanded by Junior Lieutenant, later Earl, Beatty. Churchill was—shall we say delighted?—to see how freshly washed and ironed Comrade Beatty always looked in his white sailor uniform, while he himself was bathed in the sweat of his horse and the dust of the desert. This mild competition in dress did not prevent the two young officers from drinking each other’s health of an evening in champagne, of which the gunboat’s belly was full. Unfortunately they could not clink glasses. Lieutenant Beatty had to hurl the bottle overboard, where Lieutenant Churchill would catch it with monkey agility. Years later, when the one was First Lord and the other an admiral, in the midst of the first World War, the two were to recall this encounter.

This was to be another sort of war. The wars at the turn of the century were still a sporting pastime. No one so much as dreamed that he might fall. True, thirty or forty in every regiment bit the dust of the desert. They were simply unlucky. The more fortunate escaped with trifling scratches. Almost all of them fell on the Western Front fifteen years later, and only a few are left today, ready to die before the German tanks.

The German Army, incidentally, was represented by an observer in the Soudan campaign. The line of battle was drawn up on September 1st. Baron von Tiedemann, envoy of the Great General Staff in Berlin, monocle in eye, saber-cuts on cheek and all, could not choke back the remark: “This is the first of September. Our great day and now your great day: Sedan and Soudan!”

How despicable this comparison by the military tourist sounded—how arrogant! Sedan and Soudan! Germany’s glory against a trifling success! But Lieutenant Churchill held himself in check. After all, the Germans generally were such charming people.

The fact that the Expeditionary Force had finally encountered the enemy, who was far from having crawled away into the desert sands, was reported to the Sirdar by none other than Churchill. With a little grin his commander singled him out for the job from among the officers of the advance guard.

Now that he was about to meet Kitchener face to face for the first time, Churchill was so excited that he began by leading his horse on foot for a quarter of a mile in order to gain time and compose himself. Then he set off at a trot, which immediately turned into a gallop. What was it they said of his father—“He galloped until he fell”?

Easy, horse, easy! A reconnaissance officer must not arrive breathless and excited. Lieutenant Churchill rode slowly toward the center of the infantry masses. Soon he caught sight of an imposing cavalcade following a bright red banner. The Union Jack flew by the side of the Egyptian flag. Kitchener was riding alone before his Headquarters Staff. His two standard-bearers marched immediately behind him. Then, at a respectful distance, came his entourage.

Easy, horse, easy! There, the horse had described a neat semicircle. The lieutenant came to a halt just in the rear of Omnipotence, saluting.

Kitchener looked at him. Not a muscle moved in the full, red face with its heavy mustache and impenetrable eyes. Of course he knew who stood before him. The Sirdar knew every officer in his army—and the only one he did not know was the one he knew best of all.

“Sir, I have come from the 21st Lancers with a report.”

Kitchener did not devour him on the spot. The heavy head nodded faintly. He was ready to listen to the message.

Churchill blurted it out. Again and again he had prepared it on the way, lest he say a word too little or too much. One of the shortest speeches of his life, it was certainly the most difficult. The enemy were in sight, he reported, apparently in large numbers. Their main body lay about seven miles away from his own advance guard. Up to eleven o’clock they remained stationary, but five minutes later they advanced, and forty minutes before this moment they had still been in motion.

“How long do you think I have got?” asked Kitchener, who had gravely taken in every word. Was it possible that the Sirdar was consulting the pushing little lieutenant? War had no terrors left!

“You have got at least an hour, probably an hour and a half, sir,” replied Churchill. That was his entire contribution to the strategy of Omdurman.

It was unintentionally misleading. For the dervishes had suddenly come to a halt, and spent the night standing, singing, praying. It was only at dawn on the following day, the historic second of September, 1898, that they attacked. By then Churchill was long since back at his outlying post.

And yet the famous cavalry charge of Omdurman, the next-to-last in history—the Canadians in the first World War executed the last—took about twenty minutes all told. For those twenty minutes Churchill saw red. He was the first officer in the rank.

Of course there was fighting and firing all day, from dawn until late at night. There is no space here to describe the celebrated battle of Omdurman, which has long belonged to military history. We must emphasize just one moment: the 21st Lancers were attacking; the great charge that each man had been dreaming of during the whole march from Cairo had come at last.

The howling dervishes flung themselves among the horses of the Lancers. Not ten yards away Churchill saw the first two enemies in his path. Odd, he noticed that they were dressed in blue. Both fired at him. Odd again, he noticed that he must have remained unhurt. He reached for his Mauser pistol; since his second shoulder injury he had not been very sure of himself with a saber. Knowing this, he had assiduously practised marksmanship during the entire expedition. Precaution is half of courage and the greater part of success.

A trooper behind him dropped from his horse. So one of the two bullets meant for Churchill must have hit him. With swift animal instinct his own pony bounded into a ditch to seek cover. But the ditch was occupied by dozens of dervishes. Churchill shot his way out. He bounded back upon the hard desert ground. A savage fell down before him. A dead man? No, the dead man was drawing his sword. Churchill flung the pony around out of reach of the sword, and at a range of about three yards he shot the man dead with two bullets. He was just settling himself in the saddle when another sword was flung out at him within arm’s reach. The antagonists were so close that Churchill could simply clap the muzzle of his revolver to the enemy’s head in shooting him down. Ten yards to the left an Arab horseman in bright-colored tunic and steel helmet popped up. Churchill blazed away. The horseman fled at a gallop.

A crowd of hostile riders had now collected forty or fifty yards to his left. Churchill thought he saw indistinctly a couple of brown Lancer uniforms in the turmoil. For that matter, he had straggled from his own troops. Congenital idiot! he cursed himself. What business had he to loiter in the midst of the enemy like this? At last he found his own detachment assembled two hundred yards away. The dervishes were in wild flight. Only one had remained behind. Suddenly he sprang up before the lieutenant, close enough to touch him. The Lancers were so bewildered by this unexpected sight that they clapped spurs to their horses. There was utter confusion. The Arab fell upon Churchill. How unpleasant, it flashed through the latter’s head, to keep killing men so close. It was not even a yard’s distance. Churchill fired. The Arab collapsed.

This small discomfort was soon overcome. “Did you enjoy yourself?” Churchill asked a sergeant.

After the triumph of Omdurman the Sirdar no longer needed the costly British cavalry. The 21st Lancers were sent home. Once again a war was over. But not for Churchill. He wrote his book about the Soudan campaign. And once again he sat in judgment upon the authorities. Once again he was the champion of the weak.

Why, he asked, was word allowed to circulate in the army that it was the Sirdar’s wish to take as few prisoners as possible? Why had Kitchener had the grave of the Mahdi, the Mohammedan shrine, razed by fire from the gunboats? The head of the Mahdi was carried off as a trophy, and his body thrown into the Nile. No doubt the general had had his military reasons. The destruction of their holy place, which they had to watch helplessly, probably made it plain to the Arabs that resistance was useless. But even then, in his formative years, Churchill thought more as a statesman than as a tactician. Great Britain was the greatest Mohammedan state in the world. It was insane to provoke the most sacred feelings of countless millions of subjects. Furthermore it was unchivalrous, and this was what outraged the young lieutenant most deeply. “I shall not hesitate to declare,” he wrote, “that to destroy what was holy and sacred with them was a wicked act, of which a true Christian, no less than a philosopher, must express his abhorrence.”

This was not pleasant reading for the colonels and generals. They felt that this young officer was somehow not one of them. It was only later that he could prove how very much he was one of them. For the moment, as so often, despite all the recognition that fell to his lot he created a rather unfortunate impression. It was not cricket.

Was he to struggle with this profession all his life? Why, after all? There were no more expeditions left. He could never live on his pay as an officer. Nor did he want to use his mother any more. After all, he was already twenty-four. It was high time that he should take his place in the world. The two books he had published and the articles for the Daily Telegraph had cost him little trouble, and brought him in five times as much as three years’ hard service in the Queen’s uniform. The letters about Omdurman that he wrote in the Morning Post, though unsigned, brought him a fortune of three hundred pounds.

He would become a journalist. The Allahabad Pioneer had already made him a splendid offer: three pounds a week for a London letter.

Though, of course, there was still the polo tournament in India. That he must be in. He could not leave his old regiment in the lurch. Out of loyalty he went back to India for a few months more. But then he laid aside the red coat. He had had enough. War? Never again.