Winston Churchill's Failed Military Career

Before becoming Prime Minister, Winston Churchill graduated from Sandhurst military academy, fought in Cuba, India, Sudan, and South Africa. He was captured by the Boers during the Second Boer War and dramatically escaped from a POW camp in Pretoria by climbing over a wall, boarding a moving freight train, jumping off and hiding in a coal mine on a South African farm owned by an Englishman who agreed to hide him in a mine shaft, then smuggling him out of the country on a wool shipment. Churchill became a national hero in Britain. As First Lord of the Admiralty during WWI, he planned the disastrous Gallipoli campaign and was forced to resign in disgrace — only to rehabilitate himself and eventually become PM.