Hero of the Empire: The Boer War, a Daring Escape, and the Making of Winston Churchill

by Candice Millard

was to find a camp full of men who were neither excited nor relieved, but merely “jumpy.” “The camp wore an air of vacillation,” he wrote, “and vacillation is the blood-brother to demoralization.”

“There could be only one explanation,” Atkins wrote. “We were going to remain in Estcourt.” Grinning at his friend, Churchill said triumphantly, “I did that!” Then, after a moment’s reflection, he said, in a gesture of friendship so generous it surprised Atkins, “We did that.”

Turning around, he retraced his steps, walking halfway back to the railway line. Somewhere in between the two points, he stopped again and, unsure what to do next, finally just sat down. He was, he would later write, “completely baffled, destitute of any idea what to do or where to turn.” Throughout his

As much as he loved Pamela, Churchill was shocked that she would think for a moment that he would abandon the war. “I read with particular attention your letter advising and urging me to come home,” he wrote to her. “But surely you would not imagine that it would be possible for me to leave the scene of war….I should forfeit my self respect forever if I tried to shield myself like that behind an easily obtained reputation for courage….I am really enjoying myself immensely and if I live I shall look back with much pleasure upon all this.” It was certainly no accident that, for the remainder of his time in South Africa, wherever there was an opportunity for an epic battle, a heroic triumph or a great story, there was Churchill.

“The first time you meet Winston you see all his faults,” Pamela would explain years later to Edward Marsh, Churchill’s private secretary, “and the rest of your life you spend in discovering his virtues.” Churchill was not one to forget old friends.

For the rest of his life, after every war in which England fought, Churchill would exhort his country to offer “the hand of friendship to the vanquished.” For the Boers, he argued, “the wise and right course is to beat down all who resist, even to the last man, but not to withhold forgiveness and even friendship from any who wish to surrender….Therein lies the shortest road to ‘peace with honour.’ ”