Everybody knows Winston Churchill as the sharp-witted, cigar-smoking, whiskey-drinking Prime Minister that led the British to Victory in World War 2, but his crazy life prior to becoming a world leader is less well known.
By the age of 25, Churchill had written 3 books and participated in four wars across three different continents.
In 1899 he traveled to South Africa as a correspondent to cover the Anglo-Boer War. Following the ambush by Boer forces of a train he was traveling on, he was captured and imprisoned in a POW camp in Pretoria.
After spending 4 weeks in captivity, he escaped the camp with the help of an English mine manager by scaling a 10-foot fence.
Having no map, not speaking the local language Afrikaans, and with only a few slabs of chocolate to sustain him, Churchill traversed 300 miles of enemy territory while making his way to Delagoa Bay.
There he rejoined the British, and to the Boers’ absolute humiliation, led the liberation of the remaining 180 POWs after the fall of Pretoria to the British in 1900.
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