#240: The Making of Winston Churchill
Episode Stats
Summary
Candace Millard's new book, Hero of the Empire: The Boer War, A Daring Escape, and the Making of Winston Churchill, details Churchill's capture and escape as a prisoner of war in South Africa during World War II.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast so when we hear
00:00:18.820
the name winston churchill images of the cigar chomping overweight elderly aristocrat who led
00:00:24.100
england through their finest hour probably come to mind what few people realize however is that
00:00:29.560
as a young man churchill lived a life of romantic adventure and daring by fighting at the battlefront
00:00:35.000
in three different wars before he's 23 years old and he capped off his military career by serving as
00:00:40.540
a 24 year old war correspondent in the boer war in southern africa where he was taken prisoner
00:00:45.880
made an audacious escape and returned home to england as a national hero my guest today on the
00:00:51.760
podcast has just published a detailed account of churchill's capture and escape during the boer war
00:00:56.020
and how it launched his career as the statesman we remember today her name is candace millard you
00:01:00.840
probably read her previous book the river of doubt about theodore roosevelt's exploration of the amazon
00:01:05.400
her latest book is called hero of the empire the boer war a daring escape and the making of
00:01:11.040
winston churchill on today's show candace and i discussed supreme confidence churchill had as a
00:01:16.240
young man that he was destined for greatness and how he intentionally sought after dangerous
00:01:20.580
military missions that would catapult him to fame we also discussed the compelling leadership and
00:01:25.340
persuasion ability churchill displayed during the boer war that would later propel his political career
00:01:29.440
as well as the similarities between churchill and teddy roosevelt stay tuned for a fascinating podcast
00:01:35.380
one of history's most fascinating figures after the show check out the show notes at aom.is
00:01:44.320
all right candace millard welcome to the show thank you for having me uh so i've long been a fan of your
00:01:54.480
work uh i loved your book river of doubt about teddy roosevelt's adventure down an uncharted
00:01:59.200
uh part of the amazon river and you got a new book out hero of the empire the boer war daring
00:02:06.260
escape and the making of winston churchill um a lot's been written about churchill he's one of
00:02:12.360
those figures that gets biographers love to write about but it's often about the later parts of his
00:02:18.040
life um what drew you to writing about a younger churchill's capture and escape as a prisoner of war
00:02:24.560
in the boer war well as you say we all um know winston churchill i think there's something like
00:02:31.080
12 000 books about him but a lot of it obviously focuses on his time in world war ii and his role
00:02:39.000
in it and um and the fact that he was such an extraordinary leader um but what interested me is what
00:02:45.320
made the winston churchill we all know where did he come from how did he have this incredible ability
00:02:51.340
and confidence and how was he able to project it to his people and to entire nations and and the answer
00:02:59.600
is south africa you know if you if you look at it it this war not only propelled him to the political
00:03:07.000
stage he he became a national hero during this war because of his escape and he had run for parliament
00:03:13.440
before and lost he ran again and on the strength of his popularity he himself says um coming out of
00:03:19.580
the south african war um won the second time and it launched his political career but more than that
00:03:26.400
you can see him so clearly at this young age um with all the qualities we think of him having later in
00:03:35.560
life with the his his audacity his determination his grit his agility and ingenuity they all come
00:03:44.280
into play in south africa so yeah you're right when most people think of churchill they usually imagine
00:03:49.640
the cigar chomping overweight aristocratic statement leading great britain in their finest hour but
00:03:55.880
as a young man and he was 24 25 uh during the boer war um churchill lived a life of romantic
00:04:04.460
daring that culminated in the boer wars and even before the boer wars he had some military escapades
00:04:10.860
uh can you tell us a little bit about that and and what drove him to put himself in harm's way like
00:04:15.740
that so he had always loved war and been fascinated by it even as a child he had 1500 toy soldiers that
00:04:25.060
he played with and he also was a direct descendant of the first duke of marlborough john churchill who
00:04:30.680
is considered to be one of uh england's greatest generals and so he was very much aware of that
00:04:38.380
legacy and you know he he was born into the highest ranks of the british aristocracy at the height
00:04:44.560
of the british empire so he had a lot of wars to choose from you know the the british empire ruled over
00:04:51.100
450 million people at that point and so they were constantly putting down revolts from egypt to ireland
00:04:59.000
and um and so churchill thought of war as sort of his vehicle to fame and then political power
00:05:07.240
he called it the glittering gateway to distinction and so you're right so by the time he goes
00:05:12.700
to south africa he's 24 years old but this is his fourth war on three different continents you know he
00:05:19.800
he went to cuba um uh right before the beginning uh sort of the beginning skirmishes of the spanish
00:05:25.780
american war he went to british india and fought in malacan he um and he went to the sudan and fought
00:05:32.940
in the famous battle of omdurman so he was a very experienced seasoned um soldier by the time he goes
00:05:40.560
to south africa and i imagine there was something about the culture of victorian england that compelled
00:05:45.960
him to put himself at the battlefront right to england at that time it wasn't you don't they didn't
00:05:53.540
think really about war they thought about gallantry and they spent a lot more time sort of working on
00:06:00.080
parades and pressing their uniforms and shining their medals than they did actually thinking about
00:06:06.340
the realities of war even though they had been in so many of them but many of them were um colonial wars
00:06:13.740
where they you know or they had far better um weapons and more men and could easily overwhelm
00:06:22.740
their enemies um but that turned out to be a serious problem for them from for them in south africa
00:06:29.900
because they were facing a completely different kind of enemy there yeah and we'll talk about that
00:06:35.260
in a bit it seems like the boer war really ushered in modern warfare yeah it did absolutely there's no
00:06:43.020
question it was some of the earliest guerrilla fighting they even called it the khaki war because
00:06:47.740
it was one of the first times that the british army was sort of resentfully convinced to stop wearing
00:06:55.640
their dashing red coats they hated the khakis they said it made them look like bus drivers but they were
00:07:01.460
still fighting in these perfect precise lines sort of set up for the slaughter um it was also some of the
00:07:07.800
first concentration camps and you know changing of um modernization of weapons and um and it really
00:07:16.540
prepared the british army for world war one so we've written a lot about churchill and i've read a lot
00:07:22.640
about him and one thing about him is he is an egoist and he's a self-described egoist he will he will cop to
00:07:29.880
that uh accusation um and you talk about this right from the get-go in your book that from a young age
00:07:35.500
he felt he was destined for greatness where did this feeling of certainty that he would be a great man
00:07:43.400
one day come from i think you're born with it you know but i think what's different about
00:07:48.420
churchill is that um he he not only believed it and i think a lot of young people certainly a lot of
00:07:56.320
young men believe that they're destined for greatness that they're special that they're different
00:08:00.500
they're going to do something extraordinary but he didn't sit around waiting for something to happen
00:08:05.680
to him he went out and he found his opportunities again and again and again and he threw himself not
00:08:11.780
only into war but into the most brutal battles he could find and he would do these extreme things
00:08:19.220
just to get attention so he would get medals and then he thought you know he can turn this into
00:08:24.700
to fame and to power you know he he for instance rode a white pony on the battlefield and malik and
00:08:32.380
to the horror of the people around him just to get noticed but as you say he said he had faith in his
00:08:39.060
star and i remember one of my favorite things he wrote to his mother um when he was in the middle of
00:08:44.840
a war and he had seen his friends not just killed but slaughtered but he said he didn't think the gods
00:08:50.660
would create so potent a being as himself for so prosaic and ending so he just didn't think it was
00:08:58.040
going to happen to him because he had this larger life ahead of him right and i guess one thing he did
00:09:05.000
that was very unbridged like he shared with others his premonitions about his greatness he did and you
00:09:12.220
know other people around him believed it too but the funny thing is again and again and again when i was
00:09:18.380
doing research people would say you know i can't stand that kid winston churchley drives me crazy
00:09:23.880
he's going to be prime minister one day but i just can't stand him and his he he was openly ambitious
00:09:30.620
and that just wasn't done in the british military and the and the british society in which he had been
00:09:38.000
born and so i think of it kind of as the american in him actually the kind of brash pusher and his
00:09:45.960
mother was american right and i mean but one thing i remember from reading about churchill like he was
00:09:51.680
sort of a sensitive boy and like he was kind of overweight um you know kind of soft he was very
00:09:56.700
like he like even as an old older man he liked to wear silk pajamas and he really pampered himself
00:10:01.860
so i mean i can imagine people looking at this sort of aristocrat guy who has kind of a lisp uh not
00:10:08.420
super athletic thinking yeah he's saying he's destined for greatness but i i don't know if that's true
00:10:13.960
did was how did churchill how was he able to transform himself well i think that um it's
00:10:22.080
interesting to me his his early life when he was a child because um especially because he ends up
00:10:28.220
becoming a writer right an extraordinary writer that's how he that's how he supported himself for
00:10:34.120
most of his life and that's actually how he got to south africa as a correspondent and so not only
00:10:39.860
is he sort of you know not strong physically but he thinks and is seen as not strong intellectually
00:10:47.400
which seems incredible to us now but because he um wasn't a great student they didn't put him into
00:10:55.280
you know the greek and latin classes which were for just set aside for the um the more capable students
00:11:01.840
and they just kind of stuck him in the regular english class but he had this extraordinary teacher
00:11:06.840
and he came to know the english language inside and out and so he had this power actually over
00:11:13.520
other people which as you know translated to incredible power i mean the the power of words
00:11:19.900
later on is an incredible weapon and a credible tool to inspire other people and so he had that
00:11:27.300
throughout his life and you know as he became a young man he was more fit and because he had thrown
00:11:34.320
himself into these situations again and again um and he was always very very confident so he believed
00:11:40.440
that he would do fine on the battlefield and he did yeah he did um so you mentioned his mother
00:11:47.480
uh his mother was american churchill had a really interesting family life as a boy and young man i'm
00:11:53.200
sure it had a huge influence on his ambitions um can you tell us a bit about his about his family and
00:12:00.700
his relationship with his parents and how it affected him throughout the rest of his life
00:12:04.460
so his father was lord randolph churchill who had been the chancellor of the exchequer and had been
00:12:12.440
leader of the house of commons so a very famous and powerful man who um was actually very very hard
00:12:18.780
on his son and didn't spend much time with him and it was i think one of the great regrets of
00:12:23.820
churchill's life you know he he later said that he he wished he had been you know a shopkeeper's son
00:12:29.660
um because he would have had a chance to get to know his father which would have been a joy to him
00:12:34.520
but as it was his parents you know sent him off to boarding school when he was seven years old
00:12:39.420
and he they just never made time for him his father was very very busy with his political career
00:12:45.320
and his mother was very busy with her her social life she was um as you say she was this
00:12:51.480
incredibly beautiful american socialite born jenny jerome and um and she when she came to england
00:12:59.160
she became the star the sort of the glittering center of course there are people who resented her
00:13:04.860
um you know because of who she was because she was american for one thing but she just didn't care
00:13:10.320
you know she loved life she loved being the center of attention and um and she was really too busy for
00:13:16.400
him often and it's um i'm a mother myself and i actually found it really heartbreaking to read his
00:13:23.320
letters um home to his parents from boarding school begging them to visit him and they just never did
00:13:29.920
they again and again he would even like figure out you know what trains they could take and what the
00:13:34.980
schedule would be and how they could then quickly get back to london um and then they just didn't take
00:13:39.920
the time um but then churchill's father died when he was just 45 years old um he died a very um public
00:13:48.500
and tragic death and um and then churchill himself became interesting actually to his mother he um became
00:13:56.980
a young man of consequence and she had all these um relationships she had all this power with very
00:14:04.420
powerful men um all this influence and he told her he said look this is a pushing age we must push with
00:14:12.040
the best and i want you to get me these military appointments because i want to be able to go
00:14:17.660
anywhere in the world where the most interesting fighting is going on and she helped him again and
00:14:23.000
again and again yeah that was interesting his mother was like very influential in helping his political
00:14:27.960
career and even she tried to pull strings while he was a prisoner of war as well um and you're right
00:14:34.380
the letters i've read those letters that churchill wrote when he was in boarding school and it just
00:14:37.880
it breaks your heart i mean it's super sad um absolutely so when churchill was a young man he's
00:14:44.160
i guess he's about 24 he begins his foray into politics by running for a member of parliament in
00:14:50.120
oldham in 1899 um he loses how did someone with with so much unbridled ambition like churchill respond to
00:14:58.440
that defeat well he was completely deflated you know and um and he felt like you know he had all
00:15:07.020
this promise and he believed strongly in himself but it was a different thing to try to convince
00:15:12.640
everybody else and um and it was difficult to get there so nothing kind of had worked he had tried you
00:15:20.180
know war and he had tried politics and he he you know here he was he had no income his you know he had
00:15:28.000
been born in blenheim palace um with all this you know incredible opulence around him but they didn't
00:15:34.600
have any money you know even um the people who he didn't inherit the title of the palace but even
00:15:40.500
those who did i mean they were desperately sort of selling off the gems and the library and the
00:15:46.400
and the art collection just to try to stay afloat and his father had left him very little money
00:15:51.380
um his mother had spent most of it and um so he needed to um find another way and he believed that
00:16:00.540
he needed another war he needed another opportunity to prove himself and so when he heard these the
00:16:08.420
rumblings of war happening in south africa he saw that as his opportunity okay so let's go there so
00:16:15.680
before we talk about churchill's involvement in the boer war let's talk a bit about the background of the
00:16:20.880
work for those who aren't familiar with it so it took place in south africa um who were the british
00:16:26.540
fighting exactly during the boer war so the boers were this um group of largely dutch huguenot and
00:16:35.860
german immigrants who had been living in south africa for centuries they were very religious they were
00:16:44.440
unabashedly racist and they were stubbornly independent so most of all they just wanted
00:16:51.260
to be left alone and um they were trying to get away from the british empire by um moving into the
00:16:58.080
interior of africa so in 1835 just two years after the british empire had um abolished slavery um which
00:17:06.780
was sort of the final straw for the boers they um they took what they called the great track which was
00:17:12.700
moving hundreds of miles from the cape into the african interior and they established three different
00:17:18.000
republics at that time um but unfortunately for them they found gold and diamonds um especially in
00:17:26.500
an area called the transvaal or the south african republic one of their three republics and um paul kruger
00:17:34.180
who would become president of the transvaal said that this gold will cause our country to be soaked in
00:17:39.660
blood and he was right so just a few years later in 1880 the first boer war took place between the
00:17:47.100
british and the boers and um to the british shock they actually lost it was a very short war but they
00:17:54.300
lost and the boers had sort of temporarily had their independence but i think they both knew that the
00:18:01.380
british weren't going to forget about it i mean it was a the area itself was very interesting the british
00:18:05.960
anyway because obviously they had to get around the cape to get to india but then with the gold and
00:18:10.840
diamonds they just weren't going to let go and so it just became more and more tense between the two
00:18:16.660
groups okay and i mean i thought it was interesting what's interesting about the boer war it was
00:18:20.100
europeans fighting europeans in africa um i think some people i mean and that's some people have called it
00:18:26.840
like the american revolution in africa and with a lot of americans sympathized with the boers
00:18:32.520
right um right absolutely so churchill goes to south africa but he goes not as a soldier but as a
00:18:40.620
war reporter um for a guy who loved and romanticized battle why did why not go as an officer in the
00:18:47.420
military because he had already left the military and he knew again he's trying to make money and he
00:18:56.420
this was his ticket to south africa and um and he had written while so he had done this unusual thing
00:19:03.280
when he was um taking part in these other wars earlier on he had been both um a combatant and a
00:19:10.780
correspondent and in fact because um he had so openly criticized those who are in command especially
00:19:18.960
kitchener um they had had to make a rule that you couldn't be both you couldn't both write about the
00:19:25.580
war and fight in it um and so he um he very quickly got offers from all of these newspaper publishers
00:19:33.800
asking him to write for for them because he was an incredibly skilled reporter i mean not only um was
00:19:41.720
he incredibly ambitious and intrepid so he would get wherever something was happening he was the first
00:19:47.480
person there um but he was also obviously brilliant and his analysis was incredibly insightful um and
00:19:55.400
but most of all his prose was absolutely beautiful i mean you know i read a lot a lot a lot of
00:20:02.960
newspaper articles um from that time covering this war and without question winston churchill's
00:20:09.700
writing is head and shoulders above everybody else and then he was smart and so he has all these
00:20:15.740
offers and so he takes it to different people and he's like look this this um newspaper is going to
00:20:20.560
give me this what will you give me and in the end he ends up becoming the highest paid correspondent
00:20:27.460
that england had ever had that's crazy how much was he paid in today's dollars he's paid a huge amount
00:20:35.480
i can't remember to be honest it was something like close to a hundred thousand dollars um to cover the
00:20:41.080
war and he also had um a huge stipend so he they would cover you know all of his expenses while he was
00:20:47.420
there and he as you were saying earlier i mean he um he was willing to risk his life and throw
00:20:54.260
himself into these dangerous situations but he didn't see the point in being uncomfortable or
00:20:58.440
uncivilized while he was there so he brought with him his valet and he also bought all of this alcohol
00:21:05.180
to take with him so you know a very nice selection of wines and he put something like 18 bottles of 10
00:21:11.980
year old scotch whiskey to take along and the newspaper paid for it all it's crazy and i mean what's
00:21:16.680
amazing to us keep keep i think people need to keep in mind he was only 24 when he was when this
00:21:21.800
happened um so he's right and he's and he's this is not only his fourth war he's already written three
00:21:27.540
books and run for parliament so he's a little ambitious right it makes me feel like a slacker
00:21:32.920
a complete slacker um keep up with this guy right um so how did he become captured as a pow because i mean
00:21:41.100
if he was a journalist um you would think that well okay he's not really a uh combatant so the
00:21:47.260
laws of war would say you're not you can't hold him as a prisoner of war why did the boars treat him
00:21:51.700
like a combatant because he acted like a combatant because he's winston churchill and he couldn't help
00:21:57.360
himself so he he gets to this little town called escort which is as close as you can get to the front
00:22:03.380
the front was then ladysmith which is just south of pretoria and um ladysmith is completely surrounded
00:22:09.940
by the boars it's under siege you can't get in or out and the only thing that they have in this camp
00:22:15.740
is they have this armored train that goes out for reconnaissance and every person in the camp all
00:22:21.900
these soldiers all these officers hate this armored train because you know it seems like oh that's a
00:22:27.000
great idea it would be protective but it's just a sitting duck you know it's an obvious easy target
00:22:33.020
for the boars they know where it's going they know it has to come back on the same tracks and um so the
00:22:38.800
men hated it they called it a death trap um but a friend of churchill's almer holden um who was in
00:22:46.000
charge of a of a regiment and escort was ordered to take the armored train out for reconnaissance
00:22:51.680
and he invited churchill to go with him and both of them knew that it was just a disastrous decision
00:22:58.120
to take the train out especially that day they had just spotted the boars
00:23:02.780
just outside of escort just the day before and um but holden didn't have a choice
00:23:07.900
churchill had a choice but he was restless he was frustrated and he would later say that he was
00:23:15.040
eager for trouble so he didn't hesitate for a minute when holden invited him along and um and he gets on the
00:23:22.640
train and um the boars of course are watching and as soon as it goes past them they go to the bottom
00:23:30.340
of a hill and they pile rocks on the tracks then they go to the top of that hill they wait for the
00:23:37.360
train to come back as they knew it would and as soon as it gets to the top of the hill they
00:23:41.840
just have this hailstorm of shells and bullets and the train does exactly what they want it to do it
00:23:49.160
goes down the hill as fast as it can to try to get away from the attack and it crashes into these rocks
00:23:55.540
to the bottom of the hill the first two cars are catapulted off the tracks and um several men are
00:24:02.800
killed many are horribly wounded and winston churchill who's one of the few civilians on the
00:24:09.500
train and again it's only 24 years old he jumps out and immediately takes charge of the defense i mean
00:24:16.500
he's running back and forth shouting orders organizing a way for the train to to get away and what's even
00:24:24.340
more extraordinary is that everyone listens to him you know that i mean there were plenty of
00:24:30.020
legitimate uniformed soldiers on that train halden who was in charge he is too he's also listening to
00:24:39.200
churchill he's taking command and he he lets him have at it and they and churchill succeeds that the
00:24:45.840
train finally um gets it has to shove one of the cars off the tracks he figures out a way to do that
00:24:52.300
and it gets away and every man who survives and gets out alive without being killed or captured
00:24:58.220
credits saving his life credits the saving of his life to winston churchill yeah that's crazy and so
00:25:07.140
the boar's captured he's acting as a combatant but i guess you also mentioned the book that they were
00:25:10.500
keen on keeping him because i guess his father had kind of rubbed them in the wrong way and they wanted
00:25:16.620
to like i don't know they hold on to this guy because he's the son of the guy that kind of did us
00:25:21.540
wrong right they they are thrilled to have winston churchill because yeah one he's a he's the son of a
00:25:28.360
lord um who represents everything that they hate about the british their arrogance and their aristocracy
00:25:34.420
and um and also as you say randolph churchill had been there just a few years earlier and had um written
00:25:41.740
letters home that were published in british newspapers excoriating the boars um for their
00:25:47.380
backwardness for not being educated but mostly uh for their treatment of of native africans which was
00:25:54.100
absolutely true um but it didn't make them hate him any less so he got captured a prisoner but the way
00:26:00.840
you described it doesn't seem like it was that terribly bad the conditions were that bad it seemed
00:26:05.000
like churchill was able to wander the streets i mean he was able to buy stuff hats clothing liquor and
00:26:11.080
he made friends with i guess the minister of war for the boars or something like that what were the
00:26:16.320
conditions like yeah he wasn't able to leave but they were and you know incredibly um comfortable he
00:26:26.220
the the boars really hated the thought that the british thought that they were these backward buffoons
00:26:33.340
and so they went out of their way to show that they were very civilized and so this was a prison just
00:26:40.020
for officers and as you say yeah he i mean he was able to have a a barber come in and cut his hair
00:26:46.920
he was able to order a tweed suit he they got they got the newspapers in um when it was hot they let them
00:26:54.060
sleep in the hallways instead of in their rooms um and so they had sort of this comfortable life but
00:27:01.980
for churchill it was absolutely unbearable and from the minute he was captured he was determined
00:27:09.880
to win his release whether it was so arguing he wasn't a combatant they weren't listening to that
00:27:15.860
because they obviously had seen it and they had read the newspaper accounts um from the other men
00:27:20.340
who'd been on the train praising churchill or through escape you know and he he would write about it he
00:27:27.060
would remember how it felt to be a prisoner for the rest of his life and he would say that his
00:27:33.060
captivity he hated more than he had ever hated any period in his whole life and um and he would
00:27:41.160
remember you know when he later on in life um when he came to power when he was a home secretary
00:27:46.100
he made a point of making sure that prisoners um had access to books had access to the outdoors and to
00:27:55.280
exercise um because he remembered that as just being this unbearable situation all right so
00:28:01.660
churchill had to get out of there he started making plans when um his his um channels of trying
00:28:07.720
to talk his way out didn't didn't come to fruition um his original plans and in typical
00:28:13.140
churchillian fashion he came with this like really grandiose and complicated plan um and people were
00:28:19.760
like yeah let's do that but then when he got there's a certain point they're like no that's
00:28:23.540
actually not a good idea um can you talk a little about churchill's original plan to escape
00:28:28.780
right so again this is winston churchill so he's not going to just you know have some quiet little
00:28:34.720
plan or just he can escape no he wants to take over the entire prison and then take over the prison
00:28:40.960
where the soldiers are kept and then take over pretoria and kidnap the president and end the war
00:28:47.000
so this is really really elaborate grandiose plan and um and you know everybody's like that's not
00:28:54.900
going to work that's ridiculous um and they kind of um shoo him away um but he overhears his friend
00:29:01.380
almer holden um who's the guy who had invited him to go on the train um at the beginning and this other
00:29:07.800
guy adam brocky who's a really interesting guy who had been in south africa for quite a while
00:29:12.440
knew the train really well and actually spoke zulu and afrikaans and he overhears them talking about a
00:29:20.680
plan of their own and he wants in so yeah they they decided to make this plan and all they all
00:29:25.480
three of them were going to escape together but it didn't work out that way uh churchill ended up
00:29:29.000
being alone and he had to get back to i forgot where it was he had to travel you know a couple
00:29:34.600
hundred miles to get to safety and it was the area was teeming with boars um so how did he make that
00:29:42.920
escape i mean was it just primarily luck or was there some skill and savvy involved
00:29:47.640
so he um as you say he's able so the their plan is just um you know there's this six and a half
00:29:54.680
foot tall fence surrounding the prison yard and there there are armed guards everywhere but they
00:30:01.560
see that at night when the electric lights have these new electric lights when they come on there's
00:30:06.320
one corner of the yard that's still dark and they think that you know if a guard's turned at just the
00:30:12.180
right moment they can quickly get over and um and they um brocky and holden had tried and were kind
00:30:20.040
of giving up for the night churchill gave it one more try and got over um and holden and brocky
00:30:24.700
couldn't join him um the problem was that they had all the provisions churchill found himself on the
00:30:32.020
other side he couldn't get back in he'd be shot but he's on the other side of the fence with no map
00:30:37.860
no compass no food no weapon he doesn't speak the language and um and the boars when they find out
00:30:46.900
are humiliated and enraged that anyone would escape but especially that it would be winston
00:30:53.500
churchill and they are determined to catch him and he has ahead of him almost 300 miles of enemy
00:31:01.280
territory he's trying to get to um what's now mozambique was in portuguese east africa
00:31:06.800
and um and a lot of it is luck i mean it's it you know he he and he fluctuates between
00:31:13.740
sort of this easy confidence and and despair and um and it's really just an extraordinary
00:31:21.920
extraordinary story of survival and um it really is incredible that that he did come out alive
00:31:29.400
right and we won't get in the details of his lucky breaks that he got but uh save that for the book but
00:31:34.300
yeah churchill indeed had a had a star uh shining upon him so he he he returns uh to england and
00:31:42.360
he's a hero a national hero so i mean if there wasn't a boar war and there wasn't an escape from
00:31:49.260
this prison would there have been a churchill that led britain during their finest hour
00:31:53.240
absolutely i think that he would have found a way no matter what you know he just he just he never gave
00:32:01.220
up he never stopped and that's what made him so valuable during world war ii and that is what was
00:32:06.520
going to propel him to the forefront of the national stage um no matter what now this was a faster and a
00:32:14.600
more um exciting way to get there um and it's a and it's a it makes for a a really incredible
00:32:22.440
story and it was a pivot point in his life you know he would later say you know this misfortune his
00:32:28.280
capture had i known it was to lay the foundations for my for my later life and it and it absolutely
00:32:34.560
did but there's no question in my mind at least that he would have found a way there somehow somehow
00:32:41.740
all right we mentioned earlier candace that your previous book was about theodore roosevelt
00:32:45.880
um his adventure down the river of doubt in the amazon um and churchill and roosevelt lived in
00:32:52.680
about the same time period some of that same era as you were writing about churchill did you find
00:32:58.760
similarities that existed between him and roosevelt constantly i was constantly stunned by how much
00:33:05.980
they were alike you know they're both um such incredibly ambitious and arrogant men they were
00:33:12.940
both incredibly well read they were both extraordinary writers um they were both born leaders you know they
00:33:20.560
i i think it's interesting to study people like this because i i really believe that to be a great
00:33:28.680
leader you have to be born a great leader and i think you know like any other skill you can learn it to
00:33:35.200
some limited extent but um but i don't think that you can be a winston churchill or a theodore
00:33:41.840
roosevelt if you're not just born that way and it was really interesting to me just to quickly go
00:33:47.060
back to the attack on the armored train as he's giving orders there comes a moment when um the
00:33:54.080
the train driver jumps out of his cab and he's been hit by a fragment of a shell and he's bleeding
00:34:00.020
and he's furious and he looks at churchill and he says look they don't pay me enough for this i'm not
00:34:05.400
a member of the military and he's going to make a run for it and churchill realizes that if he does
00:34:10.460
then they have no hope because nobody else can can um drive the train and so he immediately
00:34:17.300
gives him this sort of you know mini saint crispin's day speech you know look this isn't a terrible
00:34:23.560
thing this has happened to you this on the contrary this is an extraordinary and rare opportunity
00:34:28.600
and you can prove your gallantry you can prove your bravery and your devotion to your country if you get
00:34:34.480
back in that cab and if you do i will make sure that you're acknowledged for it and the guy looks at
00:34:39.880
him and says okay and he does and he turns around and he gets back in the cab and he does everything
00:34:45.700
churchill says and churchill's 24 and churchill's not even a member of the military so he just he not
00:34:51.160
only was he himself deeply confident but it was something that was contagious he could he could
00:34:57.660
he could transfer that to whomever he was talking to or entire nations you know if if he believed in
00:35:04.680
you if he believed that you were brave that you're resourceful that you're extraordinary and you could do
00:35:09.440
extraordinary things you believed it too and you were capable of it well candace this has been a
00:35:14.260
great conversation where can people learn more about your book oh thank you very much so they can
00:35:19.060
go to my website candice millard.com or um they can just pick up a book anywhere awesome well candice
00:35:24.480
millard thanks so much time it's been a pleasure i really enjoyed it thank you my guest today was
00:35:28.720
candice millard she's the author of the book hero of the empire it's available on amazon.com and bookstores
00:35:33.460
everywhere you can find out more information about her work at candice millard.com and also check out
00:35:38.320
the show notes at aom.is slash millard that's m-i-l-l-a-r-d
00:35:42.580
well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice
00:35:56.920
make sure to check out the art of manliness website at art of manliness.com our show is edited
00:36:00.780
by creative audio lab here in tulsa oklahoma if you have any audio editing needs or music production
00:36:05.680
needs they're the place to go you can find them at creative audio lab.com and if you've enjoyed this
00:36:11.000
show and have gotten something out of it i'd appreciate it if you give us a review on itunes
00:36:13.880
or stitcher helps us out a lot as always thank you for your continued support until next time this is