Hi
I thought you may be interested to read this article published in the the Eastern Daily Mail and Straits Morning Advertiser of in Singapore on 13 November 1907 at page 3:
Mr. WINSTON CHURCHILL’S ESCAPE.
Somebody lately wrote that Mr. Winston Churchill escaped from the Boer prison in Pretoria by “prematurely leaving his fellow-prisoners with whom he had agreed to make the attempt conjointly.” This has induced Captain A. E. Haserick to vindicate Mr. Churchill from the implied charge of treachery. Captain Haserick’s account tallies exactly with Mr. Winston Churchill’s own story published in his book “London to Ladysmith,” and it also appears to furnish the explanation for the timely help which during his flight Mr. Churchill received from a source which he was precluded from revealing when he wrote his own story. Captain Haserick writes: - As one of these fellow-prisoners - five of us intended making the attempt, in two parties - I desire to state emphatically that there is no truth in this accusation. We were at the time prisoners in the Model School, Pretoria, and the escape was to be made at night over the playground wall, at a very dark and badly guarded part of it. An officer who followed bugled, and the noise attracted the attention of guard, who ordered him off the wall, but fortunately made no further investigation. Mr. Churchill, I know for a fact waited a considerable time in the garden into which he had dropped before making off. I may add that one of the officers who was to have accompanied him, a Colonial, spoke the Taal fluently, and Mr. Churchill, who spoke not a word of dutch, had naturally relied very much upon this officer for an escape from the Transvaal. Under the circumstances only a miracle could save him, and this took place, for, compelled by exhaustion to seek help, he approached the house, its tenant of which happened to be the only Englishman in the district.
Best regards
Peter
