By
Running into battle armed with a broadsword, bow, and quiver
of arrows was perfectly acceptable if you were fighting in the Hundred Years’
War or fending off some orcs on Middle Earth. But when it comes to World War
II, such medieval weaponry looks like child’s play next to the technology of
the time. A sword isn’t the most likely of defences against rifles and
tanks. However, for John Malcolm Thorpe Fleming Churchill, nicknamed “Mad
Jack,” there was nothing he’d rather arm himself with than a trusty sword and
bow.
Born into an old Oxfordshire family, he graduated from the Royal Military
Academy at Sandhurst
in 1926. Before his World War II fame, Mad Jack worked as an editor of a Nairobi newspaper, a
model, and a movie extra, appearing in The Thief of Bagdad due to his expertise
with a bow. That same talent with archery took him to Oslo,
Norway where he shot for Britain during
the world championships in 1939. By this time, of course, Europe
was fast approaching World War II. Mad Jack had left the army after ten years
of service, but happily returned to it because of the “country having gotten
into a jam in my absence.”
By May 1940, Mad Jack was the second in command of an
infantry company. He always marched into battle with a bow and arrows and his
trusty basket-hilted claymore by his side. Despite these weapons being wildly
outdated, Churchill defended them, saying, “In my opinion…any officer who goes
into action without his sword is improperly dressed.” His medieval weaponry wasn’t just for decoration, either.
During the 1940 Battle of Dunkirk - in which 300,000 troops became stranded on
beaches and had to be evacuated - Churchill struck down a German soldier with a
well-placed arrow. He was later seen chugging along on a motorcycle with his bow
strapped to the side. A German officer’s cap was hanging on the headlight.
In 1941, Mad Jack volunteered for Operation Archery, an
attack on a German garrison in Norway,
in which he led two companies during the battle; no word on whether or not he
was able to use his bow in the aptly named operation. In the battle, he and his companies were in charge of taking
out the German batteries on Maaloy
Island. On the vessel
bearing him to shore, Churchill stood at the front playing his bagpipes to the
tune of “The March of the Cameron Men.” When they landed, he charged
ahead of the rest of his men with his sword in hand.
His sword also served him well later, in 1943. At the
time, Mad Jack was a commanding officer in Salerno when his troops were forced into line
fighting - something for which they hadn’t been trained. Churchill went ahead of
his soldiers wielding his sword. He leapt out at German sentries from the
darkness, blade held high, and the Germans were so frightened by the “demon”
that they surrendered. Churchill took 42 prisoners that night with the help of
just one other companion and his trusty sword. This was inline with his
philosophy on fighting the Germans, which he described after capturing the 42:
"I maintain that, as long as you tell a German loudly and
clearly what to do, if you are senior to him he will cry ‘jawohl’ (yes sir) and
get on with it enthusiastically and efficiently whatever the situation."
Next, Churchill was sent off to Yugoslavia
where he led a series of raids against the Germans from the island of Vis. In
May 1944, a bigger operation was planned involving three attacks on separate
hilltop positions. Mad Jack led one group up one hill, but only six of them
managed to reach the target. Jack found himself in open view of the enemy with
only a few able-bodied men to defend him, so he did what any sensible soldier
would have done… he played his bagpipes - “Will Ye No Come Back Again” this
time - until he was knocked unconscious by German grenades and captured. Churchill was placed in Sachsenhausen concentration camp
after being interrogated. The Germans had believed that he was some sort of
relative of Winston Churchill, which wasn’t the case, but he was still
considered a “prominent” prisoner due to his rank. As you might expect, Mad Jack wasn’t one to be kept in a
prison camp. He made a run for it that September by sneaking through an
old drain under the barbed wire. He and a comrade were recaptured not long
after and moved to a camp in Austria.
In April 1945, the Austrian camp’s lighting system failed.
Churchill took advantage of the opportunity and melted into the darkness,
walking away from his work detail. He simply kept walking, and eight days and
150 miles later, he ran into the armoured vehicles of the United States Army in
Italy.
He managed to convince them that he was a British colonel despite his scruffy
appearance, and he was returned to safety.
Safety wasn’t exactly something Mad Jack was after, though.
He was disappointed to learn that the war was winding down and that he had
missed a year of it. Rather than return home, he got himself assigned to Burma where the war against Japan was still
in full swing. By the time he got over there, though, the bombs had been
dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, meaning that the war was basically
over. An unhappy Churchill vented, “If it wasn’t for those damn
Yanks, we could have kept the war going for another 10 years!”
The end of the war didn’t mean the end of Churchill’s
adventures, though. He decided to train as a parachutist, and when he qualified,
he was sent into Palestine
as the second-in-command of the 1st Battalion. He later became a land-air
warfare instructor in Australia,
where he developed a love of surfing. He ended up retiring from the army in
1959 and died in 1996 in Surrey.
Bonus Facts:
* In the midst of the war, Mad Jack married the daughter of a
Scottish ship building baronet, Rosamund Margaret Denny. Their happy marriage
produced two sons, Malcom and Rodney.
* Churchill was awarded two Distinguished Service Orders
during his time in the military.
* Not one to let his eccentricities go, Mad Jack was known for
throwing his briefcase out of the train window. His reasoning? He was throwing
it into his backyard, which happened to be right by where the train rode
past. This way, he didn’t have to lug it home from the train station.
* Churchill can be seen in the 1952 version of Ivanhoe. He had
been hired as an archer to shoot arrows from the walls of Warwick Castle.
* Mad Jack once appeared on parade with an umbrella “because
it is raining” - a legitimate enough excuse for any civilian, but a major faux
pas in the military. He was also reprimanded for using a hot water bottle. In
retaliation, he used a piece of rubber tubing instead and filled it from a hot
water tap, circumventing military protocol.
Source : http://www.todayifoundout.com
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