Winston Churchill military rank second lieutenant
Cuba, India, and Sudan: 1895–1899
In February 1895, Churchill was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the 4th Queen's Own Hussars regiment of the British Army, based at Aldershot. Eager to witness military action, he used his mother's influence to get himself posted to a war zone. In the autumn of 1895, he and his friend Reggie Barnes, then a subaltern, went to Cuba to observe the war of independence and became involved in skirmishes after joining Spanish troops attempting to suppress independence fighters. Churchill sent reports about the conflict to the Daily Graphic in London. He proceeded to New York City and, in admiration of the United States, wrote to his mother about "what an extraordinary people the Americans are!". With the Hussars, he went to Bombay in October 1896. Based in Bangalore, he was in India for 19 months, visiting Calcutta three times and joining expeditions to Hyderabad and the North West Frontier.In India, Churchill began a self-education project, reading a range of authors including Plato, Edward Gibbon, Charles Darwin and Thomas Babington Macaulay. The books were sent to him by his mother, with whom he shared frequent correspondence when abroad. In order to learn about politics, he also asked his mother to send him copies of The Annual Register, the political almanac. In one 1898 letter to her, he referred to his religious beliefs, saying: "I do not accept the Christian or any other form of religious belief". Churchill had been christened in the Church of England but, as he related later, he underwent a virulently anti-Christian phase in his youth, and as an adult was an agnostic. In another letter to one of his cousins, he referred to religion as "a delicious narcotic" and expressed a preference for Protestantism over Roman Catholicism because he felt it "a step nearer Reason".Interested in British parliamentary affairs, he declared himself "a Liberal in all but name", adding that he could never endorse the Liberal Party's support for Irish home rule. Instead, he allied himself to the Tory democracy wing of the Conservative Party and on a visit home, gave his first public speech for the party's Primrose League at Claverton Down, near Bath. Mixing reformist and conservative perspectives, he supported the promotion of secular, non-denominational education while opposing women's suffrage.Churchill volunteered to join Bindon Blood's Malakand Field Force in its campaign against Mohmand rebels in the Swat Valley of north-west India. Blood accepted him on condition that he was assigned as a journalist, the beginning of Churchill's writing career. He returned to Bangalore in October 1897 and there wrote his first book, The Story of the Malakand Field Force, which received positive reviews. He also wrote his only work of fiction, Savrola, a Ruritanian romance. To keep himself fully occupied, Churchill embraced writing as what Roy Jenkins calls his "whole habit", especially through his political career when he was out of office. Writing was his main safeguard against recurring depression, which he referred to as his "black dog".Using his contacts in London, Churchill got himself attached to General Kitchener's campaign in the Sudan as a 21st Lancers subaltern while, additionally, working as a journalist for The Morning Post. After fighting in the Battle of Omdurman on 2 September 1898, the 21st Lancers were stood down. In October, Churchill returned to England and began writing The River War, an account of the campaign which was published in November 1899; it was at this time that he decided to leave the army. He was critical of Kitchener's actions during the war, particularly the latter's unmerciful treatment of enemy wounded and his desecration of Muhammad Ahmad's tomb in Omdurman.On 2 December 1898, Churchill embarked for India to settle his military business and complete his resignation from the 4th Hussars. He spent a lot of his time there playing polo, the only ball sport in which he was ever interested. Having left the Hussars, he sailed from Bombay on 20 March 1899, determined to launch a career in politics.
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