Churchill: A Life

As to the liquor traffic, while he supported ‘voluntary temperance’, he was opposed to ‘compulsory abstinence’ through the withholding of public house licences.

Then I saw two men get down on their knees and take aim with rifles—and for the first time the danger & peril came home to me.’

meandering, found convoy again.’ Churchill rejoined his fellow

may perhaps improve my prospects of gaining popularity with the

proceeded,’ Atkins wrote, ‘Winston, with an assurance which I partly envied and

The train journey to Pretoria took nearly twenty-four hours.

There it was linked to a train going to the coast. Burnham, who travelled on the train, was relieved to be told at one station on the route, ‘Oh yes, Churchill passed here two days ago, dressed as a Roman Catholic priest.’

It was agreed to hide Churchill in the mine. As he was being hidden, Dewsnap, who was from Oldham, pressed his hands with the words, ‘They’ll all vote for you next time.’

Churchill decided that he could never succeed on foot, alone, over such a great distance. Instead he would to try to reach the railway line that ran from Pretoria to the Portuguese port of Lourenço Marques, on the Indian Ocean, and make the journey hidden on a goods train. Leaving his hiding-place in the garden he walked straight out of the gate into the road, passing a sentry who stood in the roadway scarcely three yards from him. In bright moonlight, with electric street lights at regular intervals, he walked down the middle of the street in the direction by which he believed he could most quickly reach the railway line. Luckily, he was wearing a brown civilian jacket and trousers. ‘There were many people passing in the street to and fro,’ he wrote, ‘but nobody spoke to me.’

Alone in the garden, Churchill waited; he had no compass, no map, no money and no medicine. He was also dependent on Brockie to be able to communicate with anyone they might meet during their three-hundred-mile walk through the Transvaal.