My Early Life: The Autobiography - Winston Churchill

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not do our best.

      *****

      My course at Sandhurst soon came to an end. Instead of creeping in at the bottom, almost by charity, I passed out with honours eighth in my batch of a hundred and fifty. I mention this because it shows that I could learn quickly enough the things that mattered. It had been a hard but happy experience. There were only three terms, at the end of each of which one advanced almost automatically from junior to intermediate, and then to senior. The generations were so short that in a year one was a senior. One could feel oneself growing up almost every week.

      In December 1894 I returned home fully qualified to receive the Queen's commission. In contrast with my school days, I had made many friends, three or four of whom still survive. As for the rest, they are gone. The South African War accounted for a large proportion not only of my friends but of my company; and the Great War killed almost all the others. The few that survived have been pierced through thigh or breast or face by the bullets of the enemy. I salute them all.

      I passed out of Sandhurst into the world. It opened liked Aladdin's cave. From the beginning of 1895 down to the present time of writing I have never had time to turn round. I could count almost on my fingers the days when I have had nothing to do. An endless moving picture in which one was an actor. On the whole Great Fun! But the years 1895 to 1900 which are the staple of this story exceed in vividness, variety and exertion anything I have known—except of course the opening months of the Great War.

      When I look back upon them I cannot but return my sincere thanks to the high gods for the gift of existence. All the days were good and each day better than the other. Ups and downs, risks and journeys, but always the sense of motion, and the illusion of hope. Come on now all you young men, all over the world. You are needed more than ever now to fill the gap of a generation shorn by the War. You have not an hour to lose. You must take your places in life's fighting line. Twenty to twenty-five! These are the years! Don't be content with things as they are. 'The earth is yours and the fulness thereof'. Enter upon your inheritance, accept your responsibilities. Raise the glorious flags again, advance them upon the new enemies, who constantly gather upon the front of the human army, and have only to be assaulted to be overthrown. Don't take No for an answer. Never submit to failure. Do not be fobbed off with mere personal success or acceptance. You will make all kinds of mistakes; but as long as you are generous and true, and also fierce, you cannot hurt the world or even seriously distress her. She was made to be wooed and won by youth. She has lived and thrived only by repeated subjugations.

      Chapter V

       The Fourth Hussars

       Table of Contents

      I must now introduce the reader to a man of striking character and presence who at this point began to play an important part in my life. Colonel Brabazon commanded the 4th Hussars. This regiment had arrived at Aldershot from Ireland in the preceding year and was now quartered in the East Cavalry Barracks. Colonel Brabazon had been a friend of my family for many years, and I had met him several times during my school days. I was complimented by receiving as a Sandhurst cadet an invitation to dine with him in the regimental Mess. This was a great treat. In those days the Mess of a cavalry regiment presented an impressive spectacle to a youthful eye. Twenty or thirty officers, all magnificently attired in blue and gold, assembled round a table upon which shone the plate and trophies gathered by the regiment in two hundred years of sport and campaigning. It was like a State banquet. In an all-pervading air of glitter, affluence, ceremony and veiled discipline, an excellent and lengthy dinner was served to the strains of the regimental string band. I received the gayest of welcomes, and having it would seem conducted myself with discretion and modesty, I was invited again on several occasions. After some months my mother told me that Colonel Brabazon was anxious that I should go into his regiment, but that my father had said 'No.' Indeed it appeared he still believed it would be possible by using his influence to secure me an infantry commission after all. The Duke of Cambridge had expressed displeasure at my diversion from the 60th Rifles and had declared that there were ways in which the difficulties might, when the time came, be surmounted. 'Meanwhile,' my father had written, 'Brabazon, who I know is one of the finest soldiers in the Army, had no business to go and turn that boy's head about going into the 4th Hussars.'

      However, the head was decidedly turned. After my father's last sad home-coming he could take but little interest in my affairs. My mother explained to him how matters had arranged themselves, and he seemed quite willing, and even pleased, that I should become a Cavalry Officer. Indeed, one of the last remarks he made to me was, 'Have you got your horses?'

      *****

      My father died on January 24 in the early morning. Summoned from a neighbouring house where I was sleeping, I ran in the darkness across Grosvenor Square, then lapped in snow. His end was quite painless. Indeed he had long been in stupor. All my dreams of comradeship with him, of entering Parliament at his side and in his support, were ended. There remained for me only to pursue his aims and vindicate his memory.

      I was now in the main the master of my fortunes. My mother was always at hand to help and advise; but I was now in my 21st year and she never sought to exercise parental control. Indeed she soon became an ardent ally, furthering my plans and guarding my interests with all her influence and boundless energy. She was still at forty young, beautiful and fascinating. We worked together on even terms, more like brother and sister than mother and son. At least so it seemed to me. And so it continued to the end.

      *****

      In March 1895 I was gazetted to the 4th Hussars. I joined the Regiment six weeks earlier in anticipation, and was immediately set with several other subalterns to the stiff and arduous training of a Recruit Officer. Every day long hours were passed in the Riding-School, at Stables or on the Barrack Square. I was fairly well fitted for the riding-school by the two long courses through which I had already gone; but I must proclaim that the 4th Hussars exceeded in severity anything I had previously experienced in military equitation.

      In those days the principle was that the newly-joined Officer was given a recruit's training for the first six months. He rode and drilled afoot with the troopers and received exactly the same instruction and training as they did! At the head of the file in the riding-school, or on the right of the squad on the Square, he had to try to set an example to the men. This was a task not always possible to discharge with conspicuous success. Mounting and dismounting from a bare-backed horse at the trot or canter; jumping a high bar without stirrups or even saddle, sometimes with hands clasped behind one's back; jogging at a fast trot with nothing but the horse's hide between your knees, brought their inevitable share of mishaps. Many a time did I pick myself up shaken and sore from the riding-school tan and don again my little gold braided pork-pie cap, fastened on the chin by a boot-lace strap, with what appearance of dignity I could command, while twenty recruits grinned furtively but delightedly to see their Officer suffering the same misfortunes which it was their lot so frequently to undergo. I had the ill-luck, at an early stage in these proceedings, to strain my tailor's muscle on which one's grip upon a horse depends. In consequence I suffered tortures. Galvanic treatment was then unknown; one simply had to go on tearing at a lacerated muscle with the awful penalty of being thought a booby, if one begged off even for a day.

      The Regimental Riding Master, nicknamed 'Jocko', who specialized in being a terrible tyrant, happened during these weeks to be in an exceedingly touchy temper. One of the senior Subalterns had inserted in the Aldershot Times as an advertisement: 'Major ——, Professor of Equitation, East Cavalry Barracks. Hunting taught in 12 lessons and steeple-chasing in 18.' This had drawn upon him a flood of ridicule which perhaps led him to suppose that every smile that ever flitted across the face of one of his riding-school class was due to some inward satisfaction at his expense.

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