Determined to become a hero

The name Winston Churchill causes most of us picture an old man acting heroically during World War II. In her 2016 book Hero of the Empire, Candice Millard gives us a new image to consider, a young man acting heroically during the Boer War.

As a young man, Churchill yearned to be a hero the way so many young men today yearn to be rock stars. He ultimately wanted a political career, but what better way to win a seat in Parliament than to become a national hero? To this end, he was willing to go anywhere in the world and face any risk, even to the point of riding a white horse into battle. As a journalist he helped start the Boer War, then went to South Africa to cover the war, but carrying a gun and intending to do more fighting than writing.

His chance for heroism came when he and others aboard a train were captured by the Boers and imprisoned. Churchill tried to convince the Boers that because he was a journalist he should be released, but too many of them had seen him with a gun in his hands. He was also, even then, too famous to release.

When he heard that others were planning an escape from the military prison, he wanted to be part of it. Yet they declined to tell Churchill the whole plan because of his habit of talking too much. They couldn't trust him with the secret. Some four decades later this would be British prime minister trusted with one of the greatest secrets of all time, the D-Day invasion.

On the night chosen for the escape, the others decided at the last minute the time was not right, but Churchill went ahead anyway and managed to get over the fence by himself. Thanks to his resourcefulness and a good deal of luck, he managed to travel hundreds of miles to safety. As a national hero, he was easily elected to Parliament.

As she did with the story of Theodore Roosevelt's narrow escape in the Amazon in The River of Doubt and the unsuccessful attempt to save the life of James Garfield in Destiny of the Republic, Millard makes this narrative as suspenseful as a thriller. Biographies of Roosevelt, Garfield and Churchill give these incidents brief attention. Millard inflates them to life-size to show her readers just how significant they actually were at the time they happened.