#319 The Making of Winston Churchill Part 1

Transcript from https://podmenti.com/t/67076c6b197492c7

Although he was still a very young man, Churchill was no stranger to situations of great personal peril.
He had already taken part in four wars.
on three different continents and had come close to death in each one.
He had felt bullets whistling by his head in Cuba.
And saw his friends hacked to death.
In British India.
Although he had tried again and again in war after war to win glory.
Churchill had returned home every time without the medals that mattered.
No more distinguished or famous than he had been when he set out.
The Boer War, he believed, was his best chance to change that.
To prove that he was not just the son of a famous man.
He was special.
Even extraordinary.
And he was meant not just to fight for his country, but one day
To lead it.
Although he believed this without question.
He still had to convince everyone else.
The one scenario that Churchill had not envisioned was crossing enemy territory.
Alone.
Without companions or provisions of any kind.
He didn't have a weapon.
A map.
A compass or even any food.
He didn't speak the language.
Beyond the vague of outlines, he didn't even have a plan.
Just the unshakable conviction.
That he was destined for greatness.
That was an excerpt from the book I'm gonna talk to you about today, which is Hero of the Empire. The Borer War
A Daring Escape and the Making of Winston Churchill, and it was written by Candice
Millard.
So about a year and a half ago.
I read one of my favorite biographies of Winston Churchill, it's written by Paul Johnson.
It's only like a hundred and seventy or one hundred and eighty pages long, and I thought it was excellent.
It's episode two twenty five if you haven't listened to it.
But what's fascinating is
The cover of that book.
Made me think of something.
All the pictures.
in my mind and things that I've ever seen of Winston Churchill.
Where like the Winston Churchill
That fought the Nazis.
And yet the cover of Paul Johnson's
Book has four different pictures.
Two of them.
Or of a young Winston Churchill. So after that
I realized hey, I should really read
Well I mean, what's the subtitle? The Making of Winston Churchill. So I'm always fascinated by these
Biographies and I've read a couple of them.
Where they cover like the first like, you know, twenty, thirty, maybe forty years of somebody's life.
And so I ordered two books.
uh that I could find on young uh Winston Churchill. One is called a young Tycoon.
and I ordered the the book that I'm holding in my hand. I will leave both link below in case you want to get them.
But the reason I started I wanted to start with this one.
is because the author of this book, Candice Millard,
Also wrote
Uh my I've read a bunch of books on Teddy Roosevelt. He'll appear in this book as well.
But my favorite book so far that I've read on Teddy Roosevelt is a book called The River of Doubt and Candice Millard.
uh was the r was the author of that book as well.
So if I'm reading to understand
What Winston Churchill was like.
I might as well start with the with the author.
that I already love her work.
This book is only going to cover this is incredible. It's an incredible story.
This book's only gonna cover the first twenty five to twenty six years of Winston Churchill's life and then it ends.
There's a maximum that I repeat over and over again that became really obvious and really apparent.
The more you study history's greatest founders and that is
belief comes before ability. This book
If you had to summarize
This book. That that's how you would summarize it.
By the time Winston Churchill's twenty four, he is utterly convinced that it is his destiny.
to become prime minister of England.
And so let's jump into his personality and some of the things that were motivating him to make the decisions he made when he was a young man.
Since his earliest childhood memory, Churchill had been fascinated by war.
There is no ambition I cherish so keenly, he said.
As to gain a reputation for personal courage.
And the important part of
Or one of the important parts, I should say.
of having this ambition for
personal courage to being interested in war and then using the like being a hero and being coming famous as a
like a entry or a gateway into politics.
Is he doing this at the time when the British Empire is at its apex or its zenith.
At this point, it was uh the British Empire covered more than a fifth of the world's land surface. The British Empire had come to rule about a quarter of the human race.
It was the largest empire ever known. It was five times.
The size of the Roman Empire.
By the time Churchill reached adulthood, the greatest threat to the empire no longer came from other major powers.
But from the ever expanding burden.
of ruling its own colony. So we are going to be in eighteen ninety nine.
And nineteen hundred.
for most of this book. Now this is why
Churchill took an early interest in this.
To Churchill such far flung conflicts offered an irresistible opportunity for personal glory and advancement.
This book has a bunch of excerpts from letters that he wrote.
Books that he wrote.
There's a lot of correspondence between him and his mother.
And he tells her exactly what he wants. He w he wants a chance to prove himself.
Churchill was born into the highest ranks of British aristocracy. And what what I respect about him is, you know, he could have lived a life of privilege and a life of leisure.
And very much like Teddy Roosevelt, he desired to test himself and to live a full life and not just rest on the laurels.
of the like his his the family that came before him for a member of Churchill's high social class
Such bold, unabashed ambition was a novelty.
This is actually really important because it's gonna come up over and over again.
He did not really act British, or he did not act as he was supposed to act.
And so one thing that Churchill had from a very young age is this like
I don't even know how to describe it like
Unbelievable relentless self belief almost like this God complex.
And usually with that you have an indifference to the opinions of other people in in regards to
how you should behave or what you should be doing.
So says in his open pursuit of fame and popular favor.
Churchill seemed far less victorian.
As he was expected to act, right?
Then Rose of Veltian.
They mean Theodore Roosevelt. There's going to be a lot of parallels between a young Theodore Roosevelt
And a young
uh Winston Churchill. In fact there'll be a direct comparison a little later on.
This is some of the complaints.
that other people he's like you're not being Victorian, you're not acting like you're an aristocrat. What are you doing? Winston advertises himself as simply and as unconsciously as he breathes.
Churchill was widely criticized for being a self advertiser.
And he did not care at all about this criticism. He thought, hey
If I could actually seek fame, if I can
win glory in these wars and I can act that's like the the way I'm gonna break into political life. He says this explicitly he says distinction in turn could be parlayed into political clout.
The kind of public life that he longed for.
and which he believed was his destiny. For that he was willing to risk anything.
Even his life.
And that's the important thing. He was willing to risk his life on things that he believed in.
You know, he they they said it like he could have stayed he could have spent his time playing polo or fox hunting or anything else.
Instead, he goes to Cuba as a military observer.
I think he's like twenty one years old at the time. And this is the first time that he gets up close with death.
He's actually there's a bullet that goes right over his head.
and strikes and kills the horse that is standing next to him.
When he doesn't get the glory that he wants in Cuba, he's like, Okay, well then I'll just go and fight in India
And he'll use this is another thing.
I guess two things. One
He never waits for an invitation. And two, he's completely fine pulling every single string.
And using every single relationship that he has to get what he wants.
Churchill had never had any qualms about pulling every string he had. I am certainly not
One of those who needs to be prodded, he said.
In fact, if anything, I am a prod.
And this is a great description of him at this time. Churchill did not need encouragement. He only needed a chance.
And so he goes to India to help the British.
Fight the passions. Now
In his description of the enemy we see
the traits that he admires in other people.
And then
Based on his actions, this is what I mean.
I don't even know how to describe it.
Meglomania m might be the way you describe it. Like his
You'll see you'll only see what I'm talking about in a minute.
In his actions, it just shows you the level of self belief in this th his complete belief that he's like destined for greatness.
He can't be killed.
because there's no way he's too important and fate wouldn't have him just have like this normal ending.
The description of Churchill's like self belief in this book are my biggest takeaway from it because it just happens
you know, page after page after page. So let me just get into this and and hopefully
You'll see why just I'm I'm I'm at a loss for words. Like
It's incredible the way this guy thought about himself.
Uh, so he says the Passions fought hand to hand and face to face.
They seem terrifyingly heedless of their own safety or even survival. And Churchill would you can his behavior.
You could say the same thing about him.
They fought when they had no chance of winning.
When they were alone on the battlefield, when they had been shot and speared and bayoneted.
Careless of what injury they may receive.
Churchill observed in awe.
They devote themselves to the destruction of their opponent.
And so this is what I mean about this like meglo maniacal
Self belief, Churchill understood that he could very easily be killed in the battle that lay before him.
But he did not for a moment believe that he would be.
I have faith in my star, he said.
That I am intended to do something in the world.
In fact, soon after arriving in India, he had told a fellow officer that he expected
To be prime minister one day.
And so he does something in the note I let myself on this page like I don't understand this. This I don't understand.
He
He's not trying to blend in on the battlefield. He literally
Wants to stand out.
Gray pony.
And his entire point is to stand out to the enemy. I this is crazy.
Churchill took great satisfaction in the knowledge that he would be impossible to miss.
I rode on my grey pony all along the front of the line of the skirmish line where everyone else was lying down in cover.
He would later confess that
Foolish, perhaps, but given an audience, there is no act too daring or too noble.
This mentality continues. This is after the battle, he winds up shooting this is the first time he's ever killed a person.
Says he would never know how many men he killed that day before help came, but even as he looked down on the mutilated bodies all around him, the bodies of men he knew, men very much like him.
He knew that he would not share their fate.
He was meant to live. Of that he was certain.
More than that, he was meant to do something great with his life. I do not this is
Check out this quote.
I do not believe the gods would create so potent a being as myself to
For so prosaic an ending.
So I think I should actually pause and back up. Like why
Why am I doing so many this is a third podcast I've done on Churchill. I think I've done two on Napoleon. I'm gonna do a ton, you know, over the next few decades, I hope I do
ten or fifteen or twenty different episodes on both of these people. And the reason is is because
If you study the history of entrepreneurship, two people
That are not f like
didn't start companies. They're not f typical like entrepreneurs.
are mentioned over and over again by history's grades entrepreneurs. So if you're studying the history of uh history's grades founders before World War Two,
They all say the same thing, they're motivated.
And inspired by Napoleon.
After World War Two, Napoleon is still there, but then they bring up Churchill a lot.
And so I wanna know why some of the people that built the world's most successful companies ever
We're inspired by
People like Churchill and Napoleon, and there's so many times where Churchill's talking
and writing and giving speeches where I'm like this just sounds like
Napoleon. And so this is the first time in the book.
Where I got I'm reading this where it's like I don't believe the gods would create so potent a being as myself for so prosaic an ending.
I have no idea why, but when I read that line I thought of something I learned.
in the book The Mind of Napoleon that I did on episode three or two, and Napoleon said
If I have any ambition
It is so natural to me, so innate, so intimately linked with my existence.
That it is like the blood that circulates in my veins, like the air that I breathe.
This innateness, this self belief is innate.
In
Churchill he everything that happens to him he reads as an affirmation.
That he should believe what he believes about himself, as sobering as Churchill had found the carnage that he had witnessed.
His faith in himself and the future had not for a moment been shaken, on the contrary.
He was acutely aware of the fact
that the all the men all around him were killed and and he emerged, not just alive but whole. Nothing touched me, he wrote.
I destroyed those who molested me, and so passed without any disturbance of body or mind.
But just because he has this level self belief doesn't mean he's always right. He thought he could leave the army.
Right. He's like okay.
I think I've done enough. I'm going I wanna run
His whole is like
Get glory in war and then parlay that into public office, right? Then get elected to like a, you know, basic level and then eventually work my way up and
become prime minister one day.
And so this is his first mistake where he does this
He st he leaves the army, he says, I shall not be a soldier.
He's gonna run for elected office and lose.
I like how he described this though.
He knew he could believe that he was destined to do this, but it wasn't guaranteed.
It is not without some misgivings that I let go of my toe rope, he said.
And commit myself unaided.
To the waves of life's oceans propelled only by my own machinery. He's saying, I will take the risk of not being a soldier anymore.
For my true goal, I want to be in public офіс.
I want to be prime minister one day.
This reminds me a lot.
When I got to the section of if you read any of Robert Carl's books.
His multiple
port biography on Lyndon uh Johnson. So L B J
He had a plan to be president.
And it started with getting elected to Congress, if I'm remembering correctly.
He even turned down
He even turned down
The ability to run for the governor of Texas because like that's not my goal. My goal is federal office, my goal is the presidency.
I'll have a better chance of getting there going to Congress first.
And so he has a lucky turn of events for him. Unfortunately one of the representatives
dies uh unexpectedly of pneumonia, so that opens up the opportunity
for Churchill
to run, but this is where his relentless self belief is going to be proven wrong temporarily.
So it says he was stricken down with mnemonia pneumonia. This was less than a month before the election. Churchill was got himself on the ticket, whether he was ready or not. In his own mind, of course, he was more than ready.
There is no doubt he wrote.
That if anyone can win this seat, I can.
And so as you can guess, we know that he
is gonna lose the selection because this entire book
is about his time in the Boer War.
And re specifically the fact that he becomes a he becomes a cap he's a POW.
He gets captured.
And then he has this
Daring a s successful escape.
That makes him world famous.
What I did admire about his approach to running for office even at a young age though.
It's just how much
He would practice he could use this relentless combination of practice and self confidence.
Obviously the public praises people for what they practice in private.
Churchill's known.
He's give some of the best speeches. Well, this is how he actually did it.
For Churchill, few things in life could compete with the thrill of climbing onto a stage, stepping behind a podium, and commanding the attention of every man in the room.
As much as he loved public speaking, it did not come naturally to him.
He overcame this problem with practice and perseverance. That is his quote.
Although he would become famous for his sharp wit.
Churchill was also uncomfortable addressing an audience unless he had carefully written
and exhaustively rehearsed every line of his speech.
Winston spent hours preparing for every formal lecture and even his brief remarks.
And would do so throughout his life.
A friend would later joke that Winston had spent the best years of his life on
composing his impromptu speeches.
And then in typical Churchill fashion he
He starts to get
slightly good at something and he's like, Oh I'm gonna be the best in the world best in the world at this
It was clear to them
That he had the potential to become a great one, perhaps even the greatest.
And so even with the self belief, even with the practice, it's not good enough. He loses his first election. He is twenty four years old at this point. And so other politicians are making fun of him. They say stuff like this. I thought he was a young man of promise.
But it appears he's a young man of promises.
This searing assessment only hardened Churchill's resolve.
He had no money.
No occupation and it appeared no one who believed in him
Quite as much as he believed in himself.
The only thing he knew with any certainty was that in the end he
Whatever it took he would succeed are quite literally.
Die
There is a
quote an image of a quote that I keep on my phone.
from this author Steve Renella, who also makes podcasts and and uh shows on Netflix.
And he says you're often driven by the hatred.
Of the version of yourself that would quit.
And so he goes away.
To recover, to scheme, to plot, to figure out what his next move is. Now here's the crazy thing.
His family
They have a family history that goes back like hundreds of years.
His family had a palace.
You gotta Google image search this thing. This is incredible.
So his family's palace is called
Blenheim.
And this is where he's gonna go.
Churchill had always believed that Blenheim, its history, its grandeur, its power to all.
Had molded him.
Creating the foundation for the great man he was destined to become.
We shape our buildings, he said, and then our buildings shape us.
Blenheim served as a painful reminder of his inability thus far to
To live up to it.
And so at this point the palace is like this entire dedication
to somebody had lived two hundred years before
Which is John Churchill, who was
believed to like be one of the greatest generals in history.
And in fact, uh Winston writes a bi later on, Winston writes a biography.
of John Churchill and he said that he had one skill that made him indispensable. He never lost on the battlefield.
And it was because of all the wars that he had won that he actually gets this palace. It was given to him.
And uh so it says nearly two hundred years later, the weight of John Churchill's legacy followed his ambitious young descendant wherever he went.
It's fascinating so sitting here thinking about what's taking place.
on these few pages, what's going on in the mind of Winston Churchill at this point in his life.
And essentially like he's being stretched to what is possible, right? And I think
I don't have a family palace. You probably don't have a family palace either, but I think biographies of people who achieve great things.
Actually stretch.
What you think
is possible.
And if you think about it, it's kind of this weird closed loop because people that live lives so remarkable that somebody wrote a book about them, wrote a biography about them.
In their biographies you realize
that they're reading biographies too.
And so it just goes on and on and on.
And so as prone to happen at this point in history, there's another
Uh war.
that Brit the British are fighting.
And so Children had already written like two or three books at this point.
Mostly about his time at war.
And so he winds up becoming the best paid war correspondent in England.
And so he's going to go to South
Africa for the Boer War.
And his approach is remarkably consistent. So it says when it came to taking advice, Churchill was his mother's son.
He was defiantly determined to decide for himself whether
Where he would go and what he would do.
And so he starts writing about this. The reason he wants to do this is one, he's looking for glory.
to pour lay back into
political power, right? But he also thinks he's a gift writer. He says
He had long
Had faith quote in my pen.
The success of his books had only strengthened his already substantial confidence. Churchill was no hack and he knew it.
My literary talents
Do not exist in my imagination alone.
And so he has to go on this two week trip on a boat.
to get from England.
to South Africa.
And he's struck.
By the arrogance and overconfidence
of the British military officers that are on the boat with him. This is again there's a lot of
uh similarities between what's taking place in eighteen ninety nine and nineteen hundred in South Africa coming from the British.
As we covered last week.
Forty years after this.
the British attitude and I guess opinion towards the Japanese
uh that that took place, you know, nineteen in the late nineteen thirties, early nineteen forties. It's essentially the same thing.
It says some of our best officers were on board, Churchill wrote.
And they simply could not conceive how, quote, irregular amateur forces like the boars
Could make any impression against disciplined professional soldiers.
And so right away, immediately, in fact, before Churchill's boat even gets there.
The boars.
I I would describe them as this. They're perpetually prepared.
The Brit here's the problem. The British are utterly predictable.
The boars know the terrain.
Their knowledge of the game is gonna give them an edge.
They're gonna wind up killing one of the most famous British generals and just rolling over him even before Churchill gets there.
And so after I read through this section and I was making my notes, I just s I just wrote to myself, I don't ever
want anyone to be able to guess my next move.
And it's
Eventually this turns around, you know, about a year from now.
But not after the loss of a ton of British supplies.
soldiers, generals, they just the boers just kick their ass.
Whatever waves of panic the British Army might have imagined, the reality was starkly different.
The boars were not frantically preparing for war.
They weren't rushing together maps and men, supplies, and ammunition.
They didn't have to.
There had never been a time when
Either in their own lives or in those of their forebears where they had not been ready to fight.
Every born man and boy between the ages of sixteen and sixty
And many much older and younger than that set out for war.
There was no need to enlist in the army because there was no standing army.
And there was no need to find a uniform because there was no uniforms.
Uniforms, this is the Boer perspective, okay? Uniforms are something soldiers wore.
And boers were fiercely adamant that they were not soldiers.
A term they found deeply offensive.
They refer to themselves only as citizens.
This is an example of how they were perpetually prepared. The average bore man was accustomed to living
Off of just a handful of staples, coffee, brown bread.
and dried meat.
They had been stockpiling weapons. When it came to marshmallow
It was impossible to compete with the boers.
They were used to hunting lions. Their lives depended every day on the speed and accuracy of their shooting.
They were the finest mass of rifle armed horsemen ever seen, Churchill wrote.
And the most capable mounted warriors since the Mongols.
They were also determined to win. They felt that they had no other choice. They believed that this land was their birthright.
And a gift from God.
So a boy growing up in their culture
learned how to shoot a rifle as soon as he was strong enough to hold one.
Everybody in their culture had spent the great majority of their lives at war in one form or another.
And so it wasn't just the British generals that were on the boat with Churchill that thought like these guys, these are like little farmers.
We're the greatest empire. We're gonna roll right through them. In fact
This is the death of this guy named Pen Simmons. So Pen Simmons is a famous general
When Churchill is getting close to South Africa, another boat pulls up.
and writes out like the big a big sign.
Telling them that Penn Simmons
Was killed.
And the people that were on the boat with Churchill, the er arrogant generals and people in the military, couldn't believe it.
And he was killed because of British
Overconfidence.
That's what gets them killed. This is just like their attitude forty years later.
Against the Japanese, uh episode three eighteen if you haven't listened to last week's episode.
Pen Simmons continued to insist that there was no cause for concern. He scoffed.
That no Boer commander would dare attack a British brigade.
I feel perfectly safe.
He said.
And so the next day at five in the morning, they get attacked.
And his arrogance is not just in words, it's in actions as well.
So they're getting attacked.
They don't know the terrain. They don't know how many people it's it's raining too.
They didn't know how many people were attacking them.
They were completely unprepared.
And he does some weird things where
He decides he d he refuses to make himself blend in. In fact, he goes out of his way
To make sure that the enemy knows who he is.
He insists that his aide to camp
ride by his side holding a dashing
Scarlet.
Pennant.
And so if you're the army fighting this guy and you have their leader saying he waving like a giant red flag, here I am, what do you think's gonna happen to him?
He winds up uh getting into a fight. He says he had been shot in the stomach.
And he said, I am severely mortally wounded.
The general on the other side, and they wouldn't even call him a general, is this guy named Botha.
Sending somebody like Penn Simmons in pursuit of somebody like Botha in this land and terrain.
Is like sending a cow in pursuit of a rabbit.
Botha knew the region well. He had been born nearby and had grown up herding cattle over hundreds of miles.
Of its scrubby grassland.
The British, on the other hand, knew almost nothing about this place or its surroundings, and had no idea what tactical opportunities or dangers it held.
So not only are the British utterly predictable, not only do they not know the terrain.
But they're also excessively slow. This reminds me of something that I learned.
From reading about Ernest Shackleton, I'll get to in a minute.
In comparison to the astonishing mobile boars.
who were able to wage war with little more than men
Horses and guns.
And to move from battlefield to battlefield at a moment's notice.
The British Army moved at a glacial pace and
Way down.
By the sheer number of its possessions. And it goes into detail of all the weird things.
Kinda like creature comforts.
uh that they carry into battle into war.
It's just very bizarre behavior.
And if you've ever read the the famous book Endurance.
Uh, which is the story of Ern Shackleton.
There's a line in there that's one of my favorite uh ideas that I've ever come across in any book that I've read. And it says from studying the outcomes of past expeditions, he believed that those who burden themselves with equipment to meet every contingency.
Had fared much worse.
Then thrificed total preparedness for
For speed.
That's a description of the boars. They had sacrificed total preparedness
For speed.
And we see another bizarre choice. This is again just like
the British in Singapore where they'd make they're in the tropics. It's a hundred degrees. It's humid. It's disgusting out.
And they're making them wear these wool caps and these
uh costumes, hi costumes to these uniforms that are made for much colder climates. They refuse to adapt
to the actual environment that they're operating in.
So it says to the boers, however, even the khaki uniform seemed elaborate, if not ridiculous.
British officers were high
peaked pitch helmets that shaded their eyes from the sun, but were hot and uncomfortable and made easy targets.
For boar sharpshooters.
It's remarkable how so much of human nature repeats. And you just see this over and over again.
So now we get to the point where I mentioned earlier.
that Churchill didn't act British, that he was he acted Rooseveltian.
So there's a bunch of other war correspondents.
that are going to be stationed in and around Churchill.
And one of these guys
uh spending a lot of time with church on he's like man this is this is another Teddy Roosevelt.
Atkins had been with Teddy Roosevelt in
Cuba. So it says Atkins found Churchill not just amusing, but fascinating.
He had seen his like only once before in Cuba,
During the Spanish American War.
Atkins, who was used to the almost extreme discretion and modesty of British military men.
was startled.
By Roosevelt's blatant self promotion.
But he didn't hold it against him.
In fact, he found it honestly refreshing.
Nor did Atkins believe that Churchill was simply boasting when he reeled off his accomplishments and outlined his audacious plans.
He thought that Churchill, like Roosevelt, was probably just telling the truth.
And Churchill, like Roosevelt, was willing to put himself in harm's way.

So he's talking about
He's like, I gotta get to the front. You can't be a war cursepond.
He says he's a war correspondent, but he's he's armed. He's gonna wind up playing a decisive role in a battle and and trying to like save a bunch of people.
Just like this quasi like
Most like a soldier slash reporter.
Well what he realized is like the rest of these war correspondents are not the rest of them, but the some of them w are scared. They don't want to get to the front.
And so he feels taking this risk gets him ahead of the vast majority of people that refuse to do so.
This is a quote from
Churchill, a man should get to the front at all costs.
For every fifty men who will express a desire to go on service.
There's only about one who really means business.
And he will take the trouble and run the risk of going to the front.
So there's a bunch of examples of the difference in
The way the d the British approach war.
And the way that the boars
approach it. So the British war was like this grand adventure.
And you can kinda see it with some of the weird decisions they make on the battlefield.
To the boars, it was a trade.
And so it says for the boars, war was not an exciting adventure, but the cold
cruel, inescapable business of life.
The boar went out in a business like way to kill men.
As he would
To kill dangerous wild beasts.
And he saw no more glory in dying at an enemy's hand than in being eaten by a lion.
And so the boars do everything possible to try to win.
So if you're having a shootout with somebody, you're gonna take cover behind rocks or whatever you can, right?
The British wouldn't at the very beginning. Eventually they're like, Oh
Uh, they're first of all the the boars can they're they're way more accurate. So they can you know they hunt lines.
They're used to hitting targets from far distances. And so they wind up killing a bunch of British soldiers.
And this is the British
Response.
They were beginning to see the advantages of blending into their surroundings, being quiet and
Quick and even ducking.
We are learning lessons every day from the boar. We are getting to know his game and learning to play it ourselves. Nothing but being shot at will ever teach men the art of using cover.
Now that statement, the art of using cover. So the way Churchill is going to get caught.
They are using their the British are moving the railways.
to move supplies and troops and everything else, right? They have these things called the British armored train.
It is the most misnamed thing I've ever heard in my life. So picture a shipping container with the top cut off.
And so because the British are so predictable, the boars set a trap.
They knew that
what they'll do. So they cause this train that Churchill's on to retreat.
They had put a bunch of rocks around this corner so they knew once the train hits it
The train's going to d derail.
All of these s British soldiers are gonna tumble out of this
Ridiculous non armored armored train.
And they can just pick'em off as they please.
And so that's exactly what happens.
Churchill's actually incredibly brave. There's all these eyewitnesses about what he did.
he's gonna wind up surviving, he winds up helping other people survive too, and this is where he gets captured. But this is actually
This is what was said about Churchill says Winston is like a strong wire that stretched always springs back.
He prospers under attack and disparagement.
He lives on excitement.
The more he has to fight for, the greater the obstacle.
The greater the triumph.
And so he's taken prisoner, they're forced to march to where they're gonna hold all the prisoners in this like makeshift prison.
What was interesting though
Is one
He he he flips out immediately because he just can't
Except the fact that he's forced to submit, to obey and to adore to another
Person, right?
But he's also shocked at the civility.
It says he was struck by the civility of the men, meaning the people that it w were
Had taken him captor captive.
The bores.
If you listen to last week
Essentially Churchill is in the exact opposite environment that the forgotten Highlanders that the Gordon Highlanders were in.
And so even on this march
They were being civil to him. They said, You need not walk fast, one of them said in perfect English. Take your time.
When Churchill lost his hat.
Another boar had toss him his own.
And this level of compassion came straight from the top of the person running the Boer army at the time.
When they kill Penn Simmons, what I mentioned earlier.
The leader of the Boer army, this guy named Joe Burr.

Penn Simmons.
Widow a letter of sympathy.
Then he demands that the boers treat wounded British as they would treat their own men.
And in many cases they were even more compassionate to the British.
than they were to their own men.
They gave the wounded the blankets off their own saddles and slept themselves.
On the naked velt.
So the word Velt
is actually used over and over again. I had to look it up. It's actually
An uncultivated country or grassland in southern Africa.
But I could not fathom the treatment of these British POWs after what we went through last week. Listen to this.
The boars allowed their prisoners almost unheard of latitude. They were permitted to receive visitors.
To buy newspapers and to be waited on by their soldier servants. So some people like
Churchill.
They actually went to war.
With like a man servant.
The prisoners could buy almost anything they could afford, from cigarettes to bottled beer to even clothing, bedding, towels.
And even a new suit.
And yet, is through this imprisonment, right? Churchill's personality is revealed to us.
Through this imprisonment, this is like the four seasons.
Compared to the stuff that was going on.
With Alistair Urquart in in Singapore.
In Japan last week. Although Churchill acknowledged that he was the least unfortunate kind of prisoner to be, he had hated his captivity with an intensity that surprised even him.
He could not bear the thought.
of being in another man's control.
And so immediately he goes starts going crazy. He can't focus. He's miserable. Churchill would allow nothing to distract him.
From his one overriding, all consuming goal.
Escape.
And so he starts hatching all these different plans.
And then especially at this age, he may have been this his whole life, but he has a giant mouth. He just can't shut up and so he tells people what he's gonna do. He's still around other military officers that outrank him.
So they can tell him hey, you can't do this.
When some of the senior officers found out about his wildly ambitious plan, they quickly end to it all.
Churchill was disappointed.
But as ever unrepentant. Who shall say what is possible or impossible in these spheres of action?
One cannot tell without a trial.
was his response.
And so eventually he is going to hatch a plan with two other people. In fact actually these two other people
Come up with the plan.
And then Churchill.
goes off on his own. He's actually w the only one out of the three that is able to escape at this point.
Which why is why the books at the beginning wasn't planning to be alone. Without food, without a compass, without a plan.
But that's just how it happened.
But this is wild.
This is what he does. Like I
I don't know the word for this.
I keep using the word megalomaniacal. I don't even know what it is.
But what this guy does is
He's gonna escape before he escapes. He writes a letter.
Ти секретарі в стайфорвор.
Of his enemy.
And he leaves it on his bed.
So it is found and discovered after he escapes.
Unable to leave without having the last word regarding his imprisonment.
Churchill had written a letter to the Secretary of of State for war.
And left it where it could not be missed.
It was an imprudent
Not to mention dangerous thing to do.
Keep in mind
He is hundreds of miles away.
From
Even neutral territory.
And he's
You're liberally poking the bear kinda like
Look what I did. I escaped.
And this causes the entire like nation to be mobilized. And they they send out like thousands of pictures of him looking for him.
They even put out a poster saying you can capture him dead or alive.
This was not a smart thing to do.
And so the way he escapes is rather basic.
He just waits for
The guards to move.
And then he goes to an area defense that's not guarded.
It's nighttime.
And then he just jumps over it.
But what he did after that I thought was fascinating.
Where he goes out and like the
The prison is right
in this town.
And he just decides, he's like, Okay, what am I gonna do?
Do I try to sneak out? He's like, No, I'm just gonna act as if I belong here.
And so he said he made no attempt to hide or even keep in the shadows.
I said to myself, always more audacity. This is one of my favorite might be my favorite idea in the book.
Because at every turn that that is
That is Churchill's guiding maxim. Always more audacity.
So he knows he has to get to Portuguese East Africa.
What he doesn't know is how he's gonna get there with
No food, no weapon, no compass.
So it's like w how do I even know if I'm going in the right direction?
And so he's he realizes, hey, I'm just gonna follow the train tracks.
Now he's outside of town, he found the train tracks, he's sitting like hiding in a bush.
And he asked his stuff, he's like, Well
What train should I take?
And then he instantly answered.
The first one, of course.
But what he realizes without any supplies
He only has a few days to figure this out.
And nearly everywhere he turns he risks
Getting captured.
or and potentially killed.
And so the first night that he's free, he knows he has to try to make cover the most distance as possible because in the morning they're going to discover
Uh the fact that he wasn't there. And the fun th it's kind of a
Yeah, a rather humorous way.
That they discovered.
Uh that Churchill had escaped.
This also speaks to the fact that this really wasn't like prison like conditions. Guards would bring you coffee in the morning.
You actually could get regular haircuts and shaves.
So the way he's discovered is because he had forgotten that he had made an appointment for a shave.
And the barber was going around couldn't find'em anywhere.
And so he's going around asking everybody's like, Where the hell's Churchill? Where's Churchill?
The people
they were inside the camp that knew he escaped, were trying to talk him out. He was like, Oh, he's sick or he's in the bathroom.

create such a stink.
And refuses to leave, that is how the guards realized that Churchill had escaped.
And so it's during this uncertain period.
of him trying to figure out how the hell do I get to Portuguese.
East Africa.
He's alone at night.
And what's fascinating is you ever hear this this term that there's no atheists in a foxhole?
Well, Churchill's doc like he wrote a lot about it.
He he was not a religious man.
And yet at maybe the deepest, darkest point of his life.
He finds himself in hiding.
And he spends the night praying, and he said he prayed long and earnestly.
And a day or two later he gets the biggest break of his life.
He is running low on food. He is not he has no shelter.
He's all alone.
He has no idea.
what the right move to make is, and he's only twenty five years old at this time.
And so he desperately needs a break more than any time.
In his life ever, up until this point.
And so it says throughout his adult life, which had largely been made up of a series of wars, each one following hard on the heels of the last.
Churchill had had moments of worry.
Fear and even despair.
But never before had he been tentative. This time
'Cause I think he understands, like this is life or death, right?
This time, for perhaps the first time in his life, he was paralyzed with indecision.
And so as he had been following the train tracks, he jumped onto some trains and then jumped off.
He kept seeing these like little
Collections of civilization.
And he saw one that even in the middle of the night was lit up and so he walks towards it.
It is three in the morning, he walks up to it and he realizes it's a coal mine.
There's a bunch of small houses on the actual property of the coal mine, right?
He has to take a risk. And so
He's describing how he felt at this point. Remember, three in the morning, he'd been on the run for multiple days, very little water, almost no food, no weapon, no compass, no shelter, nothing, right? No knowledge that he's even on the right path.
It says says his strength was slipping.
The prospect of further futile wanderings is
Terminated by hunger.
Fever.
Discovery or surrender.
What other choice did he have?
He advanced towards the house and knocked upon the door.
And what happens next is unbelievable.
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 area during the war.
When Howard agreed to help Churchill
Churchill said he felt
Like a drowning man pulled out of water.
Saying that's incredible luck, I don't even think is
Is good a good enough description, right?
In this area, this p this part of the world that he's in.
There's a hundred and ten thousand square miles around him, and somehow
Churchill had stumbled upon one of the few places
In a hundred and ten thousand square miles.
Where it was still possible to find an Englishman. There had been a proclamation.
By the poor government.
Ordering British subjects to leave the country.
Two months earlier.
This guy was allowed to stay because a German own the mine.
And said that his presence this Englishman's presence
was integral.
For the successful
Continued operation of the mine.
And even more remarkable, earlier that day.
The government had been out to the mine looking, they w they're searching house to house to house.
Every single spot looking for Churchill. This is where the part of the book where they said they had printed out over three thousand
Pictures of Churchill's face.
Largely spawned on from the fact that he decided to write that stupid letter.
to the Secretary of State of War.
And so John Howard may be running the mine, but it's also there's a punt of Dutch people there, there's Boer people there.
He's like, listen.
We have to f I I don't we're gonna I'm gonna help you, I'm committed to help you get out of the country, right? I'm gonna help you escape.
He's gonna give Churchill unbelievable amount of resources.
But until I've come up with a plan.
There's only one place I can put you and he puts him deep down in the mine in like a stall for a pony.
There's absolutely no lights down there. It's pitch dark and it's covered in rats.
And so John and a small group of other Englishmen and people that wanna are willing to help Churchill
When it'd taken him down there.
Then he Churchill sees him walk out and he has this realization, right?'Cause like you see the the the lantern, the light slowly disappear into the distance.
And it says his fate now resting in the hands of men he did not know.

And so after several days of planning and trying to figure out a way to get Churchill out,
They realize like they can't just leave'em down there. It's completely dark. It's it's rather inhumane.
There's like this secret hiding space in his office.
Churchill still can't go anywhere and he's gotta be sneaked food.
But he's at least inside.
And during the like it's actually light.
And he has access to books. So
That's another thing, like fundamental understanding.
of Churchill. He was a terrible student, but an incredible reader.
For most of his life Churchill had taken refuge in books.
He had never liked school, finding it a grim, joyless struggle.
and himself more often than not at the bottom of his class. He wasn't well liked by the other boys, and his parents had all but abandoned him. So
I haven't even touched upon
His relationship with his mom.
or his father who's passed away at this point in the story.
When I read that other book called Uh The Young Titan.
I I'm sure I'll go into more detail about that. This is just about this incredible escape.
Uh that he that he that that that takes place in Africa.
But this idea where I I'm pretty sure his dad thought he was dumb.
Obviously not them.
I just says he wasn't well likely the other boys and his parents had all but abandoned him.
So he was left with few places to turn for solace and friendship. The greatest pleasure I had in those days was reading, Churchill said. He would read books on history, philosophy, economics, and evolution. He read for four or five hours.
Every day.
I remember reading biographies of Aristotle and Nassus, so later on in his life, towards the end of his life.
Churchill's the most famous person in the world. And he's actually on he spends a lot of time aboard Aristotle and Asis's.
Yeah.
And what he does is he has that same schedule where he'd wake up, wouldn't leave bed, and he would just read and read and read for hours and hours in bed.
When I'm getting out like
Noon or something like that.
So that habit of just reading for hours and hours and hours every day when you had
Essentially like a kid he kept
Uh, for most of his life.
This is a really important point point I need to make. As much as he's a formidable individual, he has unbelievable levels of self belief.
obviously willing to take great risk and to try to
Like go after what he wants in life. Churchill could not have done this alone.
Other people had.
They had to go to great lengths to help him escape or he would have never happened.
And they're doing so.
If they get caught
Under the penalty.
So they come up with this idea.
There's a guy that works at the mine that also has a side business where he buys wool.
From the Germans and then he ships it
to the coast. And that's exactly to the port where
Churchill have to go. This is the first like neutral territory, which is Portuguese East Africa.
Okay, so they have this idea. Well
We have these giant bales of wool that we're shipping.
By train.
Enough to fill seven box cars.
I think we can hide you inside one of these.
And this is what I mean, like he has to put his fate completely in the hands of other people. They do this, and so it says as soon as he burrowed into one of the wool.
Bales.
He would be obliged to rely on chance, or worse.
to Churchill's perspective, someone else's intelligence and cunning.
This state of affairs was far less appealing to him than the dangers he would face in the
If he were once again on his own.
And so he gets in there and look at all the things they have for him. They gave him a gun, they gave him enough food to sustain him.
For a journey that was twice as long.
So you get a bunch of chickens to eat, loaf of bread, some fruit, that kind of stuff.
They gave him three bottles of tea and a bottle of whiskey.
And this is not a big area.
The area that they they set up for him is just tall enough so you can sit up, so you can't stand.
And then just long enough to lie down. Now here is the crazy thing.
Charles Burnham, right, which is the guy that owns this wool business.
He's just a shopkeeper, and he decides it's now his obligation to go with Churchill to make sure he gets there to safe.
Because he's got a bribe the the whole s this entire book is just a series of bribes.
And so he decides like not only would he turn a blind eye as Shurchill crawled into one of his box cars, but he would ride with him to make sure that he actually made it. So he's obviously not in the wool barrels. He's in a compartment on the train. And so it says the train would have to stop at several stations along the way. And Burnham knew that it would be inspected by armed guards.
Someone would have to intervene.
And so unexpectedly, the bribes start really early.
Burnham had expected to bribe a few men before he and Churchill reached their final destination, but he now realized that he would have to open his wallet before they even left.
And so sometimes they want money.
At other station uh stops on like the tra different train stations.
They actually want like bottles of whiskey.
And so at every stop along the way, you have Burn'em. So this is what I mean about like
He's running interference for Churchill. All Churchill can do is either sit up or s or lay down. He cannot make a sound. He can't do anything. He's
His life is completely in
Burnham's hands.
And there's all there's all these guards everywhere.
And so they get close and like
Sometimes he uh also is like Hey, you want some coffee? He'll he'll
Like distract the guards. Let's go walk and get coffee. He'll do whatever he can to keep them away from
Churchill's hiding spot.
And so this lasts for three days, three days where he's stuck inside this compartment, right?
Then once they cross the border.
This is this is what I mean about his maxim is always more audacity, right?
As soon as he was certain that no one could see or hear him, he forced his head out.
And felt the wind rushing through his hair.
He lifted his revolver and shot it again and again and again. This is just like
So I mean about the like
Church is a little nuts.
He's gonna write a letter before he escapes.
to the Secretary of State of War.
And
He just crosses over the border. That doesn't mean he's safe yet.
And he just decides, hey, I'm so I have to celebrate. He's not free. He's still stuck in the train when he's doing this.
Luce's le revolver shoots it again and again and again.
And literally screaming for joy, and he said, I sang and I shout and crowed at the top of my voice.
I was carried away by thankfulness and delight.
The problem is he was not yet out of the enemy's grasp until he steps inside.
the doors of a British consulate, he could still be recaptured.
So eventually they stop at the final destination, right?
Burnham is still with him. Burnham sneaked across the border as well.
He gets Churchill out of there, says Churchill leaped from the train and cover it was covered in coal dust.
Looking black as a sweep. So like the people that cleaned chimney sweepers.
So now there's another dangerous part of the trip'cause now they have to get from the train station to the British consulate.
Burnham has to Burnham knows the area.
He has to lead him through this. He actually gets seen transporting a stranger to the British consul later on, he actually gets questioned.
And they threatened to kill him, but they could never prove that it was Churchill.
And again, his life, his very life is in Burnham's hands.
As Churchill followed Burnham through the turn in chaos, the two men did not exchange a single word.
or even acknowledge each other's existence. With no idea where he was, Churchill turned tight corners,
Passed small houses, crossed street after street, until suddenly Burnham stopped.
Standing in silence, the older man gazed across the street.
His eyes on the roof of a large building.
Churchill suddenly realized with a catch in his throat that
Flying from its roof were the bright red and blue colors of the Union Jack.
And we see through his actions that even after this ordeal, his personality remains the same.
Crossing the street, Churchill passed through the gates, across the garden and up to the front door, thin, exhausted,
Covered in suit from head to toe.
With a gray gleam of triumph in his eyes, he demanded to see the council general.
The council secretary, who had no idea who this filthy madman was, attempted to turn away.
Be off, he said. The council cannot see you today.
Instantly filled with outrage and fury, Churchill did not even acknowledge the fact that the secretary had spoken.
shouting, at the top of his lungs, he simply repeated his demand, insisting
That he see the council personally at once.
So great.
was his indignation and so loud his voice
That it carried up to an open window.
Wondering who could possibly be making such a racket.
The consul general himself
Put his head out the window.
A moment later, the council stepped up to the young man standing at his door.
And asked his name.
It was one of the last times in a long life that anyone
Would ever again
Need to ask Winston Churchill
That question.
What an ending. For the full story, I highly recommend
buying the book. If you buy the book using the link that's in the show notes in your podcast player, you'll be supporting the podcast at the same time.
That is three hundred.
And nineteen books down.
One thousand ago?
And I'll talk to you again soon.