journal of the churchill center and societies - Winston Churchill

INSIDE THE JOURNALS
"I passed out of Sandhurst and into the world.
It opened tor me like Aladdin's cave..."
Abstracts by Chris Hanger
-WSC, My Early Life
"Churchill in Cuba" by Michael
Blow, Quarterly Journal of Military
History, [fall 1990], 3:1.
On 20 November 1895, the
steamer Olivette entered Havana
Harbor. Among its passengers
were two young English subalterns,
Reginald Barnes and Winston
Churchill. They had come to Cuba as
guests of the Spanish government.
Churchill yearned for excitement and
the thrill of hearing bullets whistling
through the air. There had been uprisings
in the British Empire among
"savages and barbarous peoples," but
not the kind of real war that interested
him. The Cuban excursion,
Churchill's colonel back home had
said, would be "as good or almost as
good as a season's serious hunting."
Their "official" mission was to
determine the effect and striking
power of the new smokeless powder
bullet used by the Spanish. Eager to
be in the thick of fighting, Churchill
and Barnes arranged with a Spanish
staff officer to join one of the mobile
columns. The young Sandhurst graduates
told the officer that they could
catch up with a column just forty
miles away, but the Spaniard told
them that they would not last five
Chris Hanger diligently seeks out important
articles involving Churchill and represents
their view (not necessarily his) in abstracts. If
you would like to see a specific article abstracted
here, contact Chris by email
(changer@jump.net) or better yet, send him a
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miles. Guerrilla tactics, it seems, were
not taught at Sandhurst.
Confused, Churchill asked where
the enemy was. The Spanish officer
replied, "They are everywhere and
nowhere," a reference to their lack of
uniforms, irregular hit-and-run tactics,
and the inability to distinguish
insurrectos from ordinary peasants.
Churchill appreciated the sturdiness
and stamina of the Spanish
troops, who were required to bring all
their provisions with them as they
chased the legendary guerrilla leader
Maximo Gomez across the landscape.
The Cuban insurgents rode ponies,
lived off the land with the support of
Left: Churchill in Royal Military College cadet's
uniform, just before the Cuban expedition.
the civilian small farmers, and carried
little ammunition.
Nothing happened until November
30th, Churchill's twenty-first
birthday, when for the first time he
briefly heard gunfire. Later, as he ate
breakfast, a volley erupted "almost in
our faces it seemed." In the melee, a
horse behind Churchill's had been
hit. Churchill realized that the bullet
that killed the horse had come within
a foot of his head.
They were fired upon the next
day as they were swimming in a river.
That night a bullet went through the
hut where Churchill was sleeping. He
first thought of lying on the floor but
felt safe because a rather large, if not
fat, Spanish officer was sleeping in the
hammock between himself and the
gunfire.
On December 1st the Spaniards
continually attacked and Churchill
was repeatedly exposed to enemy fire
and "heard enough bullets whistle
and hum past to satisfy me for some
time to come."
During this period Churchill
gained much experience which would
later serve him well. He met Bourke
Cockran, a noted New York politician,
who gave him insightful advice.
He began his writing career and, to
his great delight, was given the Cruz
Rosa ("Red Cross") medal from the
Spanish government. He had tasted
the excitement of battle and soldiering
that was to play an important part
in his career. 15
FINEST HOUR 107 / 48