All his life, William Manchester writes, Churchill loved to look at maps, “as much for their utility as for their ability to stoke his imagination. Maps and naval charts lifted him away to far-off places and conjured images of heroic adventures long past.” Many have felt a similar affinity for the possibilities symbolized in maps; but unlike most men, Churchill did more than contemplate exploring distant lands — he got up and went.
Churchill saw his entire life as a romantic adventure – a hero’s journey. And, he felt, there was no greater, more romantic adventure than war — for war was the arena in which heroes were most readily forged.
His was not the fantasy of an armchair general; he intentionally sought out the battlefront his whole life through, saw action in several conflicts around the world, and came under fire over 50 times. Indeed, rather than extinguishing Churchill’s ardor for war, his firsthand experience only heightened it. By way of explanation he famously offered that “Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.”
Churchill’s appetite for the excitement of combat was first whetted when he traveled to Cuba as a 20-something war correspondent. Writing in 1930, with the horrors of the Great War still fresh in his audience’s mind, he tried to explain how the prospect of witnessing a firefight might still emit an aura of romantic adventure:
“The minds of this generation, exhausted, brutalized, mutilated and bored by War, may not understand the delicious yet tremulous sensations with which a young British Officer bred in the long peace approached for the first time an actual theatre of operations. When first in the dim light of early morning I saw the shores of Cuba rise and define themselves from dark-blue horizons, I felt as if I sailed with Captain Silver and first gazed on Treasure Island. Here was a place where real things were going on. Here was a scene of vital action. Here was a place where anything might happen. Here was a place where something would certainly happen. Here I might leave my bones.”
Churchill goes on to describe what it was like to wake up on his first morning after being embedded with Spanish troops, who are preparing to march into the jungle in search of the enemy:
“Behold next morning a distinct sensation in the life of a young officer! It is still dark, but the sky is paling. We are in what a brilliant though little-known writer has called ‘The dim mysterious temple of the Dawn.’ We are on our horses, in uniform; our revolvers are loaded. In the dusk and half-light, long files of armed and laden men are shuffling off towards the enemy. He may be very near; perhaps he is waiting for us a mile away. We cannot tell; we know nothing of the qualities either of our friends or foes. We have nothing to do with their quarrels. Except in personal self-defence we can take no part in their combats. But we feel it is a great moment in our lives—in fact, one of the best we have ever experienced. We think that something is going to happen; we hope devoutly that something will happen; yet at the same time we do not want to be hurt or killed. What is it then that we do want? It is that lure of youth—adventure, and adventure for adventure’s sake. You might call it tomfoolery. To travel thousands of miles with money one could ill afford, and get up at four o’clock in the morning in the hope of getting into a scrape in the company of perfect strangers, is certainly hardly a rational proceeding. Yet we knew there were very few subalterns in the British Army who would not have given a month’s pay to sit in our saddles.”
After covering war as a journalist and experiencing the excitement of battle second-hand, Churchill sought out opportunities to involve himself as a combatant himself. He persistently petitioned his superior officers and anyone else who would listen for a position on the frontlines and eventually saw action in India, Egypt, and South Africa. One of the satisfactions of such adventures, Churchill found, was the way in which their inherent danger and action compelled a man to live simply and narrow his focus. Of his time during the Boer War, he wrote:
“We lived in great comfort in the open air, with cool nights and bright sunshine, with plenty of meat, chickens and beer. The excellent Natal newspapers often got into the firing line about noon and always awaited us on our return in the evening. One lived entirely in the present with something happening all the time. Care-free, no regrets for the past, no fears for the future; no expense, no duns [financial demands], no complications.”
Though Churchill left the military when he was 26 to make a career as a politician and writer, he missed combat and felt drawn back to the frontlines. Thus in 1915 when he found himself out of favor in Parliament, he rejoined the British Army and journeyed to the Western Front to command the 6th Battalion, Royal Scots Fusiliers. During this tour of duty, he intentionally subjected himself to danger by making 36 forays into “No Man’s Land,” the treacherous territory between the British and German trenches where nary another soul dared to step for fear of being picked off by the enemy.
While Churchill lived like a pampered pasha at home, he thoroughly enjoyed his time in the muddy, rat-filled trenches where the “cannonade and fusillade were unceasing.” “I do not know,” he wrote at the time, “when I have passed a more joyous three weeks… I share the fortunes of a company of Grenadiers. It is a jolly life with nice people; and one does not mind the cold and wet and general discomfort.”
Churchill, Manchester writes, simply had “a remarkable gift for romanticizing squalor.” For Winston, the danger and hardships were all part of the adventure.
Comments