The Churchill Series - Sept. 6, 2006

(One of a series of weekday posts on the life of Winston S. Churchill.)

I'm still recovering from travel so we won't have the parliamentarian post until tomorrow. Here's a Churchill story in his own words about an incident that he say taught him something about discipline and the "old British army. At the time of this soty Churchill was 19 and a cadet at The Royal Military College, Sandhurst:

The rule was, that if you went outside the college bounds, you first of all wrote your name in the company leave-book, and might then assume that your request was sanctioned.

One day I drove a tandem (hired) over to Aldershot to see a friend in a militia battalion then training there. As I drove down the Marlborough lines, whom should I meet but [my very strict Company Commander] Major Ball himself driving a spanking dog-cart home to Sandhurst.

As I took off my hat to him, I remembered with a flash of anxiety that I had been too lazy or careless to write my name in the leave-book. However, I thought, "there is still a chance. He many not look at it until Mess; and I will write my name down as soon as I get back."

I curtailed my visit to the militia battalion and hastened back to the college as fast as the ponies could trot.

It was six o'clock when I dot in. I ran along the passage to the desk where the leave-book lay, and the first thing that caught my eyes was the Major's initials, "O.B." at the foot of the leaves granted for the day.

I was too late. He had seen me in Aldershot and had seen that my name was not in the book, Then I looked again, and there to my astonishment was my own name written in the Major's hand-writing and duly approved by his initials.

This opened my eyes to the kind of like which existed in the old British army and how the very strictest discipline could be maintained among officer without the slightest departure from the standards of a courteous and easy society.

Naturally, after such a rebuke I never was so neglectful again.

Whenever I read this story I'm reminded of the time during WWI when Churchill was serving at the front and checking the sentry posts one night. At one he found the sentry, a very young but veteren soldier asleep.

Had Churchill put the sentry on report, the soldier would very likely at the least have received a 2 year sentence at hard labor; and possibly worse, if the regiment decided to make an example of him.

Churchill says he put a great fright into the sentry, and then said no more of the matter.
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Winston S. Churchill, My Early Life. (pgs. 49-50) for the Sandhurst story; my recollection for the WW I story.