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The Charge of the Twenty-first Lancers
The end of the nineteenth century was a time of great opportunities for young soldiers who, like him, sought to win fame and rise in the military profession. The British Empire, then near its peak, was maintained and extended by Queen Victoria's armed forces in a series of small but deadly conflicts in Africa and Asia. On leaving school at the age of eighteen, Winston Churchill joined the British cavalry. Between 1895 and 1900 he saw combat in Cuba, India, the Sudan, and South Africa. In 1898, Churchill maneuvered his way into a posting with a British cavalry unit, the Twenty-first Lancers, just before the climax of the Anglo-Egyptian expedition to reconquer the Sudan--the Battle of Omdurman. |
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Fighting the Boers
Churchill resigned his commission in the British Army in 1899 in order to embark on a career of writing and politics. During the Boer War (1899-1902) the twenty-five-year-old war correspondent was captured during a Boer ambush. After his high-profile escape, Churchill joined the South African Light Horse, an irregular cavalry unit fighting his former captors. He remained as a soldier/correspondent in South Africa for several more months, thrilling British readers with his accounts of battle and the army's laborious progress toward victory. He also wrote two books about his experiences. |
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Boer "Wanted" poster in Dutch, with translation |
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Winston Churchill. "Operations in Natal," [London] Morning Post, March 1, 1900 |
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"Lord Randolph Churchill's Brilliant Son," [London] Sunday Telegraph, February 18, 1900 |
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John Spencer Churchill to Clara Jerome Frewen, March 27, 1900 |
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South African Light Horse, 1900 |
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Churchill and the Kaiser
Churchill's interest in military affairs continued throughout his life. This 1909 photograph shows him attending German Army maneuvers with Kaiser Wilhelm. In the accompanying letter to his cousin Marlborough, written "in the midst of stirring affairs" while serving as First Lord of the Admiralty, he derides the "military virtues" of Turkey and warns of a "far greater conflict" than the Balkan wars then taking place: "...the European situation is far from safe, & anything might happen." |
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The Life of an Infantry Colonel
When his political career collapsed during World War I, Churchill volunteered for six months as an infantry officer on the western front and endured the hardships and dangers of trench warfare. As a battalion commander in a Scottish regiment, Churchill led by force of personal example as he repeatedly demonstrated courage, confidence, and optimism in the most stressful situations. He also followed political developments back home closely and waited for changes that would enable him to regain some measure of his former prominence. |
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