In my humble opinion, The Army of Northern Virginia was one of the toughest, well led & finest Armies that America has ever produced. Grumpy
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WWII Trench Shotgun
He came from a line of Philadelphia aristocrats and started life as a spindly, gawky, withdrawn kid who lacked any kind of ambition. by rights, the young blue blood should have been a banker or a doctor or a minister, but there was a renegade gene in his makeup that caused him to love the outdoors: “in very early life i seem to have formed a desire to wander off by myself into unfrequented country.” it was a desire that would give form to a remarkable life.
He became a career soldier and, as a young officer, was fond of vanishing for months into unmapped wilderness, living off what he could shoot or catch. He became an expert outdoorsman and a superb marksman. He wrote about all of it; his first article was published in 1901 and he remained a prolific writer until his death in 1961. His name was Townsend Whelen. His friends called him “Townie,” and there has never been anyone else like him. If there ever was an “ideal” outdoorsman and hunter, that person breathed in the form of Townsend Whelen.
A Boy of Retiring Disposition
Whelen was born on March 6, 1877, and grew into a shy youngster who was happiest by himself. He might have remained so, but in 1891, at the age of 13, his life changed. His father gave him a Remington rolling block .22, and the gawky kid taught himself to shoot. He was soon beating grown men and won his first rifle match two years later. It was to be the first of many. Whelen lived in the outdoors, but at the center of his life was always the rifle.
A second change came in 1895 when he went to see an “exhibition of strength” put on by Eugene Sandow, the Arnold Schwarzenegger of his time. Whelen was inspired and began exercising fanatically. Within a year he gained 30 pounds of muscle. And then he did something very odd for a young man of his refined background: He enlisted as a private in the Pennsylvania National Guard.
Gone for a Solider
After three years, Whelen was a sergeant. In 1898, the Spanish-American War began and his unit was federalized. Within months he was promoted to regimental sergeant major, a post normally reserved for noncoms of at least 15 years’ experience. A few months after that, Whelen was commissioned a second lieutenant.
Though his unit never saw action, he now knew what he wanted to do with his life and applied for a commission in the Regular Army. But it would take a year until the next competitive exams would be given, and so he quit his job, resigned his reserve commission, and headed for the wilds of British Columbia, which at that time offered the best big-game hunting in North America.
“I gathered a little outfit which consisted of my .40/72 Winchester rifle, a .30/30 Winchester Model 94, the necessary ammunition, a light tarp 8×11 feet which I made, a pair of Army blankets and a poncho, a set of nested camp kettles, and practically nothing else.
“At Ashcroft (British Columbia) I bought a saddle horse for $25, two pack horses for $15 each, a stock saddle for $25, two sawbuck saddles for $5, and $25 worth of grub. An old prospector showed me how to pack the horses and throw the diamond hitch…. The next morning I started out over the Telegraph Trail, bound for northern British Columbia.”
In the town of Lillooet he met a stroke of luck in the form of “Bones” Andrews, an experienced wilderness hand and a prospector who took a shine to Whelen and offered to guide him into game country. On Andrews’ advice, Whelen bought a Free Miner’s Certificate, which permitted him to kill as much game as he needed for food.
Andrews was not only a good guide but a good teacher. In particular, he taught Whelen how to cook over an open campfire, using a cross stick held by two forked sticks with a hooked stick as a potholder. A pit under a forelog served as a baking oven.
Whelen lived in the wilderness for several months, taking game of all typ and recording what he did. He even managed to conduct some business on the return trip, buying two groundhog robes from Chiloctin Indians he met on the trail and selling them at a profit in New York City.
Photographs of Whelen taken around this time show a barrel-chested, ramrod-straight young man of over 6 feet, a curved-stem pipe dangling from his lips, dressed in a campaign hat (we call it a Smokey Bear hat), fringed buckskin shirt (later replaced by Army-issue flannel), jodhpurs, and calf-high moccasins. He carried a rifle and a rucksack always, and sometimes a handgun.
Whelen was a frugal man who traveled light. He made his own gear when he could and did not carry an ounce more than he needed (his complete backpacking outfit weighed only 12 pounds). His camps always looked the same: a blanket roll beneath a lean-to tarp (which he preferred to a tent) and a pot suspended above a cooking fire built just as Bones Andrews had taught him.
The Regular
He came from a line of Philadelphia aristocrats and started life as a spindly, gawky, withdrawn kid who lacked any kind of ambition. by rights, the young blue blood should have been a banker or a doctor or a minister, but there was a renegade gene in his makeup that caused him to love the outdoors: “in very early life i seem to have formed a desire to wander off by myself into unfrequented country.” it was a desire that would give form to a remarkable life.
He became a career soldier and, as a young officer, was fond of vanishing for months into unmapped wilderness, living off what he could shoot or catch. He became an expert outdoorsman and a superb marksman. He wrote about all of it; his first article was published in 1901 and he remained a prolific writer until his death in 1961. His name was Townsend Whelen. His friends called him “Townie,” and there has never been anyone else like him. If there ever was an “ideal” outdoorsman and hunter, that person breathed in the form of Townsend Whelen.
A Boy of Retiring Disposition
Whelen was born on March 6, 1877, and grew into a shy youngster who was happiest by himself. He might have remained so, but in 1891, at the age of 13, his life changed. His father gave him a Remington rolling block .22, and the gawky kid taught himself to shoot. He was soon beating grown men and won his first rifle match two years later. It was to be the first of many. Whelen lived in the outdoors, but at the center of his life was always the rifle.
A second change came in 1895 when he went to see an “exhibition of strength” put on by Eugene Sandow, the Arnold Schwarzenegger of his time. Whelen was inspired and began exercising fanatically. Within a year he gained 30 pounds of muscle. And then he did something very odd for a young man of his refined background: He enlisted as a private in the Pennsylvania National Guard.
Gone for a Solider
After three years, Whelen was a sergeant. In 1898, the Spanish-American War began and his unit was federalized. Within months he was promoted to regimental sergeant major, a post normally reserved for noncoms of at least 15 years’ experience. A few months after that, Whelen was commissioned a second lieutenant.
Though his unit never saw action, he now knew what he wanted to do with his life and applied for a commission in the Regular Army. But it would take a year until the next competitive exams would be given, and so he quit his job, resigned his reserve commission, and headed for the wilds of British Columbia, which at that time offered the best big-game hunting in North America.
“I gathered a little outfit which consisted of my .40/72 Winchester rifle, a .30/30 Winchester Model 94, the necessary ammunition, a light tarp 8×11 feet which I made, a pair of Army blankets and a poncho, a set of nested camp kettles, and practically nothing else.
“At Ashcroft (British Columbia) I bought a saddle horse for $25, two pack horses for $15 each, a stock saddle for $25, two sawbuck saddles for $5, and $25 worth of grub. An old prospector showed me how to pack the horses and throw the diamond hitch…. The next morning I started out over the Telegraph Trail, bound for northern British Columbia.”
In the town of Lillooet he met a stroke of luck in the form of “Bones” Andrews, an experienced wilderness hand and a prospector who took a shine to Whelen and offered to guide him into game country. On Andrews’ advice, Whelen bought a Free Miner’s Certificate, which permitted him to kill as much game as he needed for food.
Andrews was not only a good guide but a good teacher. In particular, he taught Whelen how to cook over an open campfire, using a cross stick held by two forked sticks with a hooked stick as a potholder. A pit under a forelog served as a baking oven.
Whelen lived in the wilderness for several months, taking game of all typ and recording what he did. He even managed to conduct some business on the return trip, buying two groundhog robes from Chiloctin Indians he met on the trail and selling them at a profit in New York City.
Photographs of Whelen taken around this time show a barrel-chested, ramrod-straight young man of over 6 feet, a curved-stem pipe dangling from his lips, dressed in a campaign hat (we call it a Smokey Bear hat), fringed buckskin shirt (later replaced by Army-issue flannel), jodhpurs, and calf-high moccasins. He carried a rifle and a rucksack always, and sometimes a handgun.
Whelen was a frugal man who traveled light. He made his own gear when he could and did not carry an ounce more than he needed (his complete backpacking outfit weighed only 12 pounds). His camps always looked the same: a blanket roll beneath a lean-to tarp (which he preferred to a tent) and a pot suspended above a cooking fire built just as Bones Andrews had taught him.
The Regular
In May of 1902, Whelen returned to Philadelphia and was informed that no more than 50 candidates would be allowed to take the exam for a Regular Army commission. His father, through a friend, got Whelen an interview with President Theodore Roosevelt who pronounced him “the type of young man I want to see in the Army.” Whelen made the list.
At Governor’s Island, New York, he underwent an exhaustive weeklong series of physical and written exams and finished second. But two weeks later he was informed that he had failed the physical test because of “insufficient chest development.” Whelen, who at the time had a 44-inch chest and a 29-inch waist, was frantic. He went to Washington to plead his case directly with Elihu Root, the secretary of war. When Whelen asked (essentially) “What the hell?” Root told him not to worry, that he would come out all right. And he did. Whelen was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army.
In 1915, as the Panama Canal neared completion, the Army was given the job of defending it, and Whelen, now a captain, was assigned to the 29th Infantry Regiment, which became part of the Canal Zone garrison.
(At this point, a word about the Panama jungle is in order. After World War II, when the Army was looking for a truly loathsome, horrible rain forest to serve as its jungle survival school, it picked Panama’s. I have spoken with Vietnam vets who claim they never saw anything in Southeast Asia that was half as bad.)
The 29th Infantry was assigned to defend a chunk of unmapped real estate that was, as far as anyone knew, uninhabitable, and how you would defend such country, no one had a clue.
Capt. Whelen took it upon himself to find out. On weekends he set out to explore, taking only a rifle and a rucksack, always alone because: “I knew of no one who would not be more of a hindrance than a help. I had no fear of getting lost, for I knew that my faculty of keeping a mind map would serve me as well here as it always had in other unfamiliar country I had been penetrating all my life. And I discredited all the stories of snakes, reptiles, insects, and wild beasts.
“I soon found that the only way to keep located was to make a continuous map, and¿¿¿that it was necessary to keep the map up to date every 200 yards. I made the map on a little sheet of celluloid which I carried in my shirt pocket-celluloid because paper would not stand the sweat. Every hour I would copy the sketch off the celluloid on to the big sheet in my rucksack.” For Whelen, hardship and danger were too trivial to mention. Given his rifle and rucksack and pipe, a lean-to and a bedroll, he was as at ease in the Panama rain forest as he was in the wilds of Alberta. Everything he saw fascinated him.
When he felt himself to be at home in the jungle, Whelen trained his company to live in it, and they set the pattern for the rest of the 29th Regiment and, most likely, the U.S. Army itself.
In 1917, when the United States entered World War I, Whelen had compiled a distinguished record and had attracted the attention of senior officers. He was assigned to the Army General Staff and spent the war inspecting camps and developing training programs.
After the war, lacking combat experience and having developed an intense interest in small-arms development, he transferred from the Infantry to Ordnance, where he would serve until his retirement in 1936. But his heart remained with the doughboys. Long after he took off the uniform for the last time, he wrote: “I would chuck all the work I have done, all the small success I have made, if I could go back tomorrow as Captain in command of Company F, 29th Infantry.”
Whelen became commanding officer at the Frankford Arsenal (where, in 1804, his great-great-grandfather, Commissary General of the Army Israel Whelen, had outfitted the Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery) and director of research and development at the Springfield Armory. These two assignments put him in daily contact with not just his own highly skilled gunsmiths but with their civilian counterparts. Whelen learned from all of them.
He hunted all his life, taking his first deer in 1892 and his last 66 years later. Whelen’s lifetime big-game bag totaled 110 head. Everything he learned went on paper. He wrote at least half a dozen books and over the years was a regular columnist for Field & Stream, Sports Afield, Outdoor Life, The American Rifleman, and Guns & Ammo.
Confused Moose, Plummeting Goat
Whelen hunted all over Canada, throughout the Rocky Mountains, and in the Adirondacks-wherever there was real wilderness and deep forests. He left no records of what he considered close calls, but others might view the stories differently. On one occasion in the Canadian Rockies, he had come down off a sheep mountain. Lying down at a stream to get a drink, he heard a sound like someone hitting a tree with a baseball bat, then the sound of thundering hooves, then an ominous silence. It was a bull moose in the throes of whatever afflicts bull moose, standing over him. One more step and he would have trod on Whelen’s feet.
Whelen rolled over and aimed his rifle at the moose, just in case. They remained that way for perhaps 10 seconds until finally Whelen inquired in his best Army terminology what the moose thought he was doing there. The moose almost fell over backward and cleared 50 feet in three jumps. Then he stood, horning the bushes, grunting nonstop, with Whelen grunting back at him. Finally Whelen got his drink and went back to camp, leaving the moose to amuse himself as best he could.
(There is a photograph taken on this trip that shows Whelen packing out the head and cape of a different bull moose-roughly 150 pounds. He does not looly, the U.S. Army itself.
In 1917, when the United States entered World War I, Whelen had compiled a distinguished record and had attracted the attention of senior officers. He was assigned to the Army General Staff and spent the war inspecting camps and developing training programs.
After the war, lacking combat experience and having developed an intense interest in small-arms development, he transferred from the Infantry to Ordnance, where he would serve until his retirement in 1936. But his heart remained with the doughboys. Long after he took off the uniform for the last time, he wrote: “I would chuck all the work I have done, all the small success I have made, if I could go back tomorrow as Captain in command of Company F, 29th Infantry.”
Whelen became commanding officer at the Frankford Arsenal (where, in 1804, his great-great-grandfather, Commissary General of the Army Israel Whelen, had outfitted the Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery) and director of research and development at the Springfield Armory. These two assignments put him in daily contact with not just his own highly skilled gunsmiths but with their civilian counterparts. Whelen learned from all of them.
He hunted all his life, taking his first deer in 1892 and his last 66 years later. Whelen’s lifetime big-game bag totaled 110 head. Everything he learned went on paper. He wrote at least half a dozen books and over the years was a regular columnist for Field & Stream, Sports Afield, Outdoor Life, The American Rifleman, and Guns & Ammo.
Confused Moose, Plummeting Goat
Whelen hunted all over Canada, throughout the Rocky Mountains, and in the Adirondacks-wherever there was real wilderness and deep forests. He left no records of what he considered close calls, but others might view the stories differently. On one occasion in the Canadian Rockies, he had come down off a sheep mountain. Lying down at a stream to get a drink, he heard a sound like someone hitting a tree with a baseball bat, then the sound of thundering hooves, then an ominous silence. It was a bull moose in the throes of whatever afflicts bull moose, standing over him. One more step and he would have trod on Whelen’s feet.
Whelen rolled over and aimed his rifle at the moose, just in case. They remained that way for perhaps 10 seconds until finally Whelen inquired in his best Army terminology what the moose thought he was doing there. The moose almost fell over backward and cleared 50 feet in three jumps. Then he stood, horning the bushes, grunting nonstop, with Whelen grunting back at him. Finally Whelen got his drink and went back to camp, leaving the moose to amuse himself as best he could.
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He’s a national icon and hero to many a politician, but much of what people know about Winston Churchill’s life concerns his later years in politics.
In contrast, what follows is a look at Churchill’s earlier military service by historian and writer Jacob F Field, whose book ‘D-Day in Numbers’ featured in our coverage of D-Day 75.
This coincides with the publication of his new book, ‘The Eccentric Mr Churchill’, which you can get here.
Article by Jacob F Field
Winston Churchill’s long involvement with the British Army did not begin well.
His father had pushed him towards a military career because he believed he was not bright enough to study law. It took Winston three attempts to pass the entrance exam for Sandhurst and when he did pass, in August 1893, he did not get enough marks to qualify for training as an infantry officer, so was placed into the cavalry.
This irritated his father because cavalry cadets required an additional £200 of kit per year.
Luckily, as a result of other candidates dropping out, Winston was offered an infantry training place after all and he passed out with honours in December 1894, finishing eighth out of 150 classmates.
He was supposed to serve in the prestigious 60 Rifles but Winston was more attracted to the glamour of the cavalry, where promotions tended to be quicker and his small status would not be an issue. As such, Winston switched to 4 (Queen’s Own) Hussars, a socially elite regiment based in Aldershot.
However, Winston’s first taste of combat came not as a soldier, but as an observer, during the Cuban War of Independence.
In November, 1895, Winston travelled across the Atlantic, arriving in Havana via New York and Florida. He was given permission to join the Spanish forces. Officially a ‘guest’, he could only use his weapons in self-defence.
Winston spent seven weeks in Cuba, and experienced being under enemy fire for the first time, as well as witnessing a pitched battle.
(In fact, the US and Britain had a brief dispute over the Venezuelan border that year, before the US went to war with Spain in 1898, invading Cuba in the process).
The next trip abroad would be to India; in October 1896 Winston arrived at Bangalore, the new base for 4 Hussars.
He was largely restless and unhappy there; his official duties were undemanding, taking only three hours per day and usually completed by 10.30am. His main priorities appeared to be playing polo (he was part of the victorious team in the Inter-Regimental Polo Tournament in Hyderabad), reading, rose-gardening and collecting butterflies (sadly his terrier ate the sixty-five species he had gathered).
Winston was also unhappy about the officers’ mess, complaining it needed new carpet, cleaner tablecloths and better-quality cigarettes. His attitude annoyed many of his fellow officers, and culminated in him being squashed under a sofa in the mess (he escaped.)
Winston would experience some combat, but once again it was not as a soldier. This time it was in the North West Frontier Province, on the border between British India and Afghanistan.
The region was inhabited by Pashtun tribes who often rebelled against British forces. In July 1897 they attacked the British garrison in Malakand. A field force was dispatched to stamp out the uprising.
Winston managed to join the Bengal Infantry, which was part of the field force, but he was attached as a journalist. He spent six weeks with them, filing fifteen dispatches for the Daily Telegraph.
He came under fire ten times, and was mentioned in dispatches for bravery.
During this time Winston developed a taste for whisky; at the time it was out of fashion in England and on the few occasions he had tried it he had not enjoyed the smoky taste. However, it was the only drink available in Malakand so Winston learned to appreciate it by the end of the campaign, and it became his habitual beverage of choice.
In March, 1898, an Anglo-Egyptian army was sent out to defeat the Sudanese Mahdists, followers of the religious leader Muhammad Ahmad, who proclaimed himself the ‘Mahdi’, a messianic figure who would redeem Islam.
As Britain had not fought a major war in over decade, every soldier in the Empire wanted to join the expedition.
Winston was no different. From India, he requested a transfer to a regiment bound for Sudan, 21 Lancers.
This was approved by the War Office but rejected by Herbert Kitchener, the leader of the expedition.
Winston took leave to return home to lobby for the transfer, arriving in London in June. Friends and family spoke up for him, and even the prime minister supported his appeal.
Kitchener, the son of an Irish army officer, still refused, possibly because he resented the young aristocrat’s entitlement and social connections.
Winston finally forced his way into 21 Lancers when Sir Evelyn Wood, a high-ranking general in England who had authority over appointments to the regiment, named him as the replacement for an officer who died in Sudan that July. Winston was with his new regiment by August.
He had arranged to write reports for the Morning Post to finance the trip, as the War Office would not pay his expenses (as well as declining any liability if he was wounded or killed.)
On 2 September Winston took part in the decisive engagement of the war, the Battle of Omdurman.
Kitchener’s forces, though outnumbered two-to-one, were armed with modern artillery, rifles and machine guns. These new weapons cut through the Mahdist lines, killing thousands.
When they retreated, Kitchener sent 21 Lancers, including Winston, to pursue.
After the battle, wounded Mahdists were left to die or shot and bayoneted where they lay. This was approved by Kitchener, shocking Winston, who criticised the decision in print.
He returned to London in October before travelling back to India that December.
Shortly afterwards the British Army instituted a regulation forbidding serving officers from simultaneously working as war correspondents. This contributed to Winston resigning his commission so he could pursue writing, as well as politics.
Winston left India for the final time in March 1899; that July he stood as a Conservative candidate in the Oldham by-election but was unsuccessful.
In October, 1899, war erupted in South Africa between Britain and the independent Boer Republics of Orange Free State and Transvaal.
Winston would cover the conflict for the Morning Post but his journalistic enterprises were interrupted on 15 November, when his train was ambushed and derailed by the Boers. Winston was captured and held at a POW camp in Pretoria, the capital of Transvaal.
On 12 December, he scaled the walls and escaped, stowing away on a freight train.
Without any supplies, he disembarked at the mining town of Witbank to look for food. By this time he was wanted dead or alive and there was a £25 bounty on his head.
Fortunately, Winston came across the home of an English mine manager who agreed to feed and shelter him.
He was hidden first down a mine, then in an office, and, after six days, was placed aboard a train hidden in a consignment of wool bound for Portuguese East Africa (modern Mozambique), where he arrived on 21 December.
Winston then sailed to Durban and joined the South African Light Horse regiment as a lieutenant. He took part in the Relief of Ladysmith before joining in the capture of Pretoria.
After the fall of Pretoria, the war transitioned to a guerrilla conflict between Boer commandos and British and Commonwealth forces that went on until May 1902.
Meanwhile, Winston had left South Africa and on 20 July 1900 arrived home.
Reports of his escape had made him a national celebrity, helping him to be elected MP for Oldham that October.
Whilst pursuing his career as a politician and writer, Churchill decided to volunteer for a yeomanry regiment, and in January, 1902, Winston joined the Queen’s Own Oxfordshire Hussars (QOOH), as a captain. In 1905 Winston became a major in the regiment, and until 1913 commanded its Henley-on-Thames squadron.
In September, 1906, whilst still a junior minister, Winston travelled to Silesia (a region now mostly in Poland, but then part of Germany) and spent a week observing the manoeuvres of the German Imperial Army.
He stayed in Breslau (now Wrocław) and with other guests and officials and was taken by train out to the countryside to view the assembled ranks of 50,000 soldiers going through their exercises.
The evenings were spent at official banquets. Winston would even meet Kaiser Wilhelm II.
He reported that the Germans were very well-organised and disciplined, although he noted that Wilhelm had little conception of the power of modern weaponry.
The next year, Winston attended the manoeuvres of the French Army; he adored their bright uniforms and the pageantry of the occasion.
It made him a firm believer in the recently-established Entente Cordiale, an alliance that would hold steady throughout World War I, which broke out in 1914. By this time, Winston was First Lord of the Admiralty.
He still played close attention to his reserve regiment, the QOOH. Shortly after the war started he intervened to ensure they would be sent to serve on the Western Front.
The regular army did not hold them in high regard, nicknaming them the ‘Queer Objects On Horseback’ or ‘Agricultural Cavalry’.
Winston fell from power following the disaster of the Gallipoli Campaign, which he had been a major supporter of, he was forced out of the position in May 1915, and was demoted to being Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, a post with no real power or influence.
That November, Winston resigned from government and returned to the Army, hoping to play a role in the fighting.
In December, Winston went to the Western Front for one month of training with the Grenadier Guards infantry regiment.
By the new year he was a (temporary) lieutenant-colonel commanding 6 Royal Scots Fusiliers, an infantry regiment posted at Ploegsteert (known as ‘Plug Street’ by the British) in Flanders, a fairly quiet sector at the time.
He made sure he was well-provisioned, taking with him food boxes from Fortnum & Mason, corned beef, stilton, cream, ham, sardines, dried fruit, steak pie, peach brandy and other liqueurs. He also brought a gramophone to put in the officers’ mess, as well as a portable bath.
Winston’s first major initiative was a campaign of delousing, as well as encouraging sports days and singing while marching. He then focused on building and repairing the trenches his battalion was stationed at. He proved to be popular with his men; attentive to wounded soldiers but perhaps over-lenient on disciplinary matters.
In total, Winston made thirty-six forays into No Man’s Land, often placing himself at some risk. However, with little chance of a promotion or a transfer to a more active sector Winston returned home in March.
He eventually returned to government in July 1917, serving as Minister of Munitions (a post formerly held by then PM David Lloyd George) and playing an important role in securing victory for the Allies.
Winston would carry on serving as a reserve officer until 1924, when he resigned from the Territorial Army.
By this time, the QOOH had converted into an artillery force. For much of World War II they served in England and Northern Ireland, until in October 1944 Winston, by now Prime Minister, personally requested they be sent to fight in France.
He was the regiment’s Honorary Colonel until his death, and left instructions they be given a place of distinction in the procession at his state funeral, immediately in front of his coffin.
That procession would take place on January 30, 1965, six days after Winston’s death.
For more on ‘The Eccentric Mr Churchill’, including his time in the military, read Jacob F Field’s book.