The Hero Of The Empire, Winston Churchill, Candice Millard, c. 2016

The Hero of the Empire: The Boer War, a Daring Escape, and the Making of Winston Churchill
Candice Millard
c. 2016
DDS: 968MIL

One can pretty much get the overview of the book by reading the captions of the pictures in the middle of the book. To wit:

• Born in Blenheim Palace, a lavish Oxfordshire manor built in the early 18th century for John Churchill, the 1st Duke of Marlborough; the latter Winston’s inspiration for success.

• Born into the highest ranks of British aristocracy …

• Churchill’s American mother, born Jennie Jerome …

• Churchill’s mother becomes a widow at age 45; marries a young aristocrat only two years older than Winston….

• On his trip as a journalist to South Africa, he carried a pencil sketch of Pamela Plowden, the first great love of his life …

• October 9, 1899, Paul Kruger, president of the Transvaal, told the Brits to leave; the Brits did not; Kruger knew war would break out …

• Soon after war was declared, Sir Redvers Buller was named commander in chief of Her Majesty’s army in South Africa; nicknamed the Steamroller; Brits thought he would end/win the war quickly …

• Boers’ Louis Bother, youngest Boer commander, left the Brits reeling …

• Boers well known for harsh treatment of native Africans and Indians; among the most effective advocates for these people were Solomon Plaatje who would become the first secretary of the African National Congress; and, Mohandas Gandhi, who led a team of stretcher-bearers on some of the most blood-soaked battlefields of the war …

• Churchill arrives in South Africa just two days after war was declared; a journalist; wanted to be involved — this would be 1899 … [July 8, 1918 — Ernest Hemingway injured in Italy as a reporter in WWI] …

• Close friend Aylmer Haldane invited him along on an armored train on a reconnaissance mission .. one of the most dangerous missions in the war ….

• November 15, 1899, just a month after Churchill arrived in South Africa, Botha led a devastating attack on the armored train; Haldane and Churchill on board; train derailed; sixty Brits, including Churchill, captured …

• POW Churchill arrives in Pretoria, the Boer capital …he had great respect for his enemy on the battlefield, but glaring disrespect for average Boer coming out to look at him …

• Churchill was imprisoned with about a 100 British officers in the Staats Model School …

• Churchill turned for help to Louis de Souza, the Transvaal secretary of state for war. Souza could not give Churchill freedom, though he befriended him in other ways …

• He escapes, leaving behind a maddeningly arrogant note, addressed directly to Souza …

• After striking out on his own, attempting to cross hundreds of miles of enemy territory without a map, a compass, weapon or food, Churchill stumbled upon the Transvaal and Delagoa Bay Colliery; taking a wild chance that he might find help, he forced himself to come out of hiding, …

• By an incredible stroke of luck, Churchill knocked on the door of John Howard, the mine’s manager and one of the few Englishmen who had been allowed to remain in the Transvaal during the war; when Howard agreed to help him, Churchill would later write, “I felt like a drowning man pulled out of the water.”

• After hiding Churchill in a rat-infested coal mine shaft, Howard finally found a way to secret him out of the country — burrowed deep inside the wool trucks of the mine’s storekeeper, Charles Burnham. Burnham not only agreed to let Churchill hid in his trucks, he rode with him all the way to Portuguese East Africa, bribing guards and inspectors along the way …

• When Churchill finally arrived in Lorenco, Marques, the capital of Portuguese East Africa, he quickly made his way to the British consulate. Everyone was looking for him; the consulate did not recognize him; told him to go away…

• As soon has escape was known, he became a national hero, greeted in Durban, the largest city in British-held Natal, by cheering throngs;

• After delivering his speech in Durban, he returned to the exact location where the train had been attacked, derailed, and he escaped .. he spent Christmas Eve in a tent on the same railway cutting where he had been forced to surrender …

• He saw the reward poster — upset that the “Dead or Alive” award was so low …

• After he was free, he convinced Buller to give him a commission in the South African Light Horse, though it was against Brit rules for a journalist to become a soldier and vice versa; he was allowed both; paid by the newspaper but not paid by the military; he took part in several pivotal battles before returning to Pretoria, where he and his cousin, the 9th Duke of Marlborough, freed the jubilant men who had so recently been Churchill’s fellow prisoners…

• Just six months after his escape, Churchill ran for Parliament for the second time. This time, to no one’s surprise, least of all his own, he won; owed it all to the South African War.