1. Image:BridgmanArtLibrary
Churchill on the Western Front
The First World War was the formative experience for an entire generation of political and military
leaders: Winston Churchill was among them. But, in his curious case, he served as both cabinet
minister and battalion officer. Stephen Miles thinks his time in the trenches was seminal.
Winston the
Warrior
1915-1917
20
below Greatest Briton of all time? Sir John
Lavery’s portrait of Churchill, in full service dress
uniform and poilu’s helmet. He was serving as
Lieutenant Colonel commanding the 6th Battalion
of Royal Scottish Fusiliers on the Western Front.

2. Image:PressAssociation
MilitaryHistorymonthlywww.military-history.org 21
I
n 2002, Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
was voted the Greatest Briton of all time
in a BBC poll. He is often regarded
as the most influential and inspiring
leader the country has ever had.
Certainly, he was many things: politician,
statesman, writer, aviator, artist, correspon-
dent, and insightful champion of new technol-
ogy. But he was also a soldier with a respectable
record of military service. In Sudan, he took
part in what was considered to have been the
last serious cavalry charge in British military
history at Omdurman (1898), and in South
Africa, during the Second Anglo-Boer War
(1899-1902), he was among the first British
troops to enter Ladysmith.
But it was his experience commanding
troops on the Western Front in the First
World War that gave him a tremendous
insight into the realities of modern conflict
and the newly developing geopolitics of
Europe. Many of his later ideas and projects
stemmed from his engagement with a
modern, technical, and industrial warfare
that he experienced first-hand – unlike many
of his political contemporaries.
The Dardanelles fiasco
When Britain declared war on Germany on
4 August 1914, Churchill held the post of
First Lord of the Admiralty in the Liberal gov-
ernment of Herbert Asquith. As the confronta-
tion with Germany in Belgium and France
moved from an initial war of movement to one
of stalemate, both sides started to dig in. Soon,
the 460-mile-long Western Front was solidified
between the North Sea and the Alps.
The impasse in Western Europe and
growing concern over losses triggered various
proposals for ending the war of attrition.
Parliament was divided over the issue: some
(the ‘Westerners’) opted to defeat Germany
on the Western Front through a military
breakthrough; others (the ‘Easterners’) felt
that Britain and France’s ally Russia should
mount large offensives against Germany and
Austria-Hungary on the Eastern Front, and
thereby take pressure off the West.
To do this, Russia would need to be
supplied through the Black Sea and the
Dardanelles strait, but these were controlled
by Turkey, Germany’s ally. Churchill ordered a
naval attack on the Turkish forts guarding the
strait, but this failed, and the decision was
then taken to mount a combined naval and
land offensive on the Gallipoli Peninsula. It
was a disaster, with 187,000 British, Dominion,
and French casualties suffered by the time
the operation was called off and the troops
evacuated in December 1915.
Churchill took much of the blame for the
failure of the campaign. He insisted that he
had been let down by bureaucracy and poor
political and military leadership. Nevertheless,
when a new Coalition government came to
power in April 1915, he was demoted to the
meaningless post of Chancellor of the Duchy
of Lancaster. On 15 November, therefore, he
resigned from the government (though retain-
ing his position as an MP).
Neuve Chapelle: ‘all is
very quiet in this section
of the front’
Since 1902, Churchill had been on the
reserve as a captain in the Imperial Yeomanry,
Queen’s Own Oxfordshire Hussars. He now
decided to rejoin his regiment, and within
days of resigning sailed to France, labelling
himself ‘the escaped scapegoat’.
Churchill wanted to be given command of
a brigade (roughly 5,000 men), but it appears
this was not immediately feasible due to a
lack of suitable vacancies. With the support
of Sir John French, the Commander-in-Chief
below A young Churchill, serving as Second
Lieutenant, in the tropical field uniform of the
4th Queen'sOwnHussarsin1897,ayearbeforehe
tookpartinthefamousOmdurmancavalrycharge.
Churchill took
part in the last
serious cavalry
charge in British
military history at
Omdurman in 1898.

3. 22 November 2014MilitaryHistorymonthly
danger every day. On 26 November, a dugout
he had been in only 15 minutes before took
a direct hit from a shell, which killed an
orderly. It was not to be his last close shave.
Nonetheless, he resisted pressure from
superior officers who wanted him to move to
brigade headquarters until he was appointed
to command a brigade of his own.
While in reserve, Churchill visited the French
sector in front of Arras, and was photographed
with German prisoners as backdrop. He is seen
wearing a French Adrian helmet, presented
to him by General Fayolle. Churchill kept the
helmet: it ‘will perhaps protect my valuable
cranium,’ he wrote to his wife.
Battalion commander
On 9 December, Churchill heard the exciting
news that he was to be made a brigadier-
general. After a tense period of seven days,
however, the decision was vetoed by Prime
Minster Asquith.
This was a bitter blow to Churchill,
who was now given command of a battalion
(around 1,000 men when full strength).
Nevertheless, he remained stoical, and
commented on his pending command,
‘I hope to come to these men like a breeze…
I shall give them my very best’.
On 5 January 1916, Churchill took
command of the 6th Royal Scots Fusiliers
(RSF), part of the 9th Division. On appoint-
ment, he asked his wife to send him a copy
of Burns – and later a Glengarry cap!
The battalion was then in reserve at
Meteren, resting after a bad mauling at the
Battle of Loos (September-October 1915).
It comprised 30 officers and 700 men. Every
indication is that the 6th were not happy
about being led by an erstwhile politician.
Churchill’s first meeting with his head-
quarters staff at Moolenacker Farm was
of the British Expeditionary Force in
France, he was posted as a major to the
2nd Grenadier Guards.
This was to furnish Churchill with some
authentic training in trench warfare. He was
soon accompanying the Guards when they
moved up to the line at Neuve Chapelle.
On 20 November 1915, he arrived at the
battalion headquarters, ‘a pulverised ruin
called Ebenezer Farm’.
Although he was only in this sector for
two relatively short periods (ten days in
November, and two days in December),
Churchill immersed himself in battalion life,
writing to his wife, ‘I have lost all interest in
the outer world…’. He had not experienced
army cooking for 16 years, and requested
she send him a number of delicacies, such
as chocolate and ‘potted meats’.
Only a week earlier, Churchill had been
speaking in Parliament; now he faced mortal
above Churchill took most of the blame for the
Dardanelles fiasco, and was consequently demoted
to a meaningless governmental post. He decided to
resign from government, and rejoin his regiment in
France, which he did within days of his resignation.
Image:PressAssociation
right Indian troops storm a German position at
Neuve Chapelle in 1915. When Churchill arrived
there in November that year, it was as a major to
the 2nd Grenadier Guards.

4. particularly uncomfortable for them.
‘Gentlemen, I am now your commanding
officer’, Churchill said. ‘Those who support me,
I will look after. Those who go against me,
I will break. Good afternoon, gentlemen.’
There followed several weeks of training,
during which he organised a programme of
de-lousing. Morale was low, so concerts and
sporting events were held.
Churchill showed a keen interest in the
workings of the battalion. No detail was too
trivial for him, as he tried to mould it into an
effective fighting force. One of his officers
remarked how Churchill’s men ‘understood
not only what they were supposed to do, but
why they had to do it…’. Gradually, the con-
fidence of the men in their new commander
was established, and Churchill called them
‘a fine set of warriors’.
Ploegsteert: ‘no part of the
front will be better guarded’
On 24 January, Churchill left Moolenacker
with his men, and moved to the trenches at
Ploegsteert (better known to British soldiers
as ‘Plug Street’) at the southern end of the
Ypres Salient. Here he relieved the 2nd South
Lancashires, and took over 1,000 yards of
front-line trenches.
So began Churchill’s long-awaited com-
mand in the face of the enemy. It lasted
100 days. Churchill was confident his battalion
would, despite its reduced strength, serve
well. ‘Rest assured,’ he said, ‘there will be
no part of the line from the Alps to the sea
better guarded.’
Much of the fighting around Ploegsteert
took place in the wood of the same name
to the north-east of the village; unlike other
wooded areas on the Front, Ploegsteert
Wood never lost all its foliage, and, apart
from a brief period in 1918, was never out
of British hands.
Churchill initially established his battalion
headquarters in a building belonging to
the Sisters of Charity in Ploegsteert village.
This came to be known as ‘the Hospice’.
When not in line, the battalion was billeted
in three nearby farms: Soyer, Delennelle,
and Maison 1875.
Soon after arrival, the battalion com-
mander gave his officers some advice on
how to behave in the sector: ‘Don’t be
careless about yourselves – on the other
hand, not too careful… war is a game that
is played with a smile.’ This might have
seemed somewhat ambiguous in the face of
the incessant shelling that the battalion was
subject to during its time at Ploegsteert.
A few days later, Churchill moved up to his
advanced headquarters at Laurence Farm, a
small, shell-battered building halfway between
the Hospice and the front-line, which he was
soon calling ‘my shattered farmhouse’.
No-man's-land
From Churchill’s HQ, a network of well-
protected communication trenches ran across
flat ground up to the line. Early on, Churchill
had noticed the ruins of an old convent very
close to the firing-line. He arranged for the
draining of the building’s cellars, and dubbed it
‘The Conning Tower’. It was soon his forward
battle headquarters when in the line. It was 200
yards from the edge of no-man’s-land, and only
400 yards from the nearest German trench.
Churchill was active in the line from the
beginning, organising defensive improve-
ments and talking to company commanders.
He commented on how it ‘takes nearly two
hours to traverse this labyrinth of mud…’.
The battalion’s normal stint in the front-line
was six days, after which they returned to their
billets around Ploegsteert. Churchill wrote,
however, ‘I prefer the trenches, where there
is always something going on…’.
Although not involved in any ‘over the top’
attacks (and suffering only 15 killed and 123
wounded in Churchill’s ‘Hundred Days’),
the battalion were sniped at and shelled daily.
Churchill seems to have scorned danger, and is
reported as standing on the trench fire-step in
www.military-history.org 23MilitaryHistorymonthly
above Major Winston Churchill, with British and
French officers, and German prisoners at Camblain-
l’Abbé on 15 December 1915. He is wearing a
French Adrian helmet, which, as he wrote in a
letter to his wife, he hoped would ‘protect [his]
valuable cranium.’
Image:PressAssociation
Only a week
earlier, he had
been speaking
in Parliament;
now he faced
mortal danger
every day.

5. Churchill on the Western Front
24 November 2014
‘War is a game
that is played
with a smile.’
ABOVE When Churchill left the front he returned
to the cabinet as Minister of Munition. Here
we see him in this role with Crown Prince
of Sweden, Gustaf VI Adolf, at a review of
the army of occupation in Hyde Park.
MilitaryHistorymonthly
Leaving the trenches
In March, Churchill returned to Britain on
leave, and took the opportunity to speak
in Parliament (as a serving soldier MP).
The speech was not well received. Even so,
Churchill now began to prepare for a return
to civilian, and thus political, life. In May, his
depleted battalion was merged into the 7th
RSF, and this seemed an appropriate moment
to depart. He later returned to the cabinet –
in July 1917 – as Minister of Munitions.
During his six months on the Western
Front, Winston Churchill had served in
relatively quiet sectors. Nevertheless, his
experience had given him first-hand insight
into the changing nature of warfare, and a
prescient appreciation of the way technology
was to revolutionise conflict. He had seen
aircraft in action over the trenches, and his
support for the ‘landship’ or ‘tank’ was no
doubt strengthened by personal observation
of trench stalemate.
Few politicians have moved from a cabinet
position into the front-line then back to the
cabinet again in the space of a couple of years.
For Churchill, service in the trenches of the
Western Front was a formative experience in
a long political and military career. •
daylight in view of enemy snipers. On occasion,
he went out at night with a small force to visit the
battalion’s forward sap-posts in no-man’s-land.
Like a baby elephant
One officer described Churchill ‘clad in his long
trench waterproof, shining knee-high trench
boots, and blue steel helmet’ diving into a shell-
hole as enemy machine-guns prospected their
nocturnal position. All of a sudden a bright light
came up from the hole, much to everyone’s con-
sternation, before it was realised that Churchill’s
weight in his prone position had put pressure on
his flashlight’s contact switch.
Another officer recalled how Churchill
seemed immune to danger on these excursions,
‘like a baby elephant’, never falling when a shell
went off, or ducking when a bullet went past.
He had a number of lucky escapes in his
headquarters buildings. On one occasion, after
‘an excellent lunch’ with his staff at Laurence
Farm, a shell hit the roof and burst in the room
adjacent to them. Although not bursting prop-
erly, the shell caused massive damage; its intact
nose cap was later presented to Churchill’s wife
by an officer who had been present.
He also risked being shot: ‘At 6 I went
round my trenches, just as day was breaking
and was saluted on my doorstep by a very sulky
bullet.’ The Hospice was also subject to shell-
ing, and in February battalion headquarters
was moved 800 yards back to Soyer Farm.
The future prime minister and war leader
seems to have enjoyed his time in the trenches,
writing from Ploegsteert that ‘it is one long holi-
day for me’ – though the inclusion of graphic
accounts of the dangers in his letters home
might have prompted this kind of reassurance.
Photo:PressAssociation
Winston Churchill
above A British 6-inch Howitzer of the 6th Siege
Battery Royal Garrison Artillery in Ploegsteert Wood,
whereChurchill’stookonhislong-awaited
command in the face of the enemy.
below When Churchill left the Front, he returned
to the cabinet as Minister of Munitions. Here we
seehiminthisrolewiththeCrownPrinceofSweden,
GustafVIAdolf,atareviewofthearmyofoccupation
in Hyde Park.