The Badass Chronicles, Pt. IV

Jack. Freaking. Churchill.

You know those men, too numerous to mention, who did things like take on an entire platoon of Germans in WWII and come out alive? All the Inglorious Basterds of the Second World War? There are so many, and all of them so heroic that I had a very hard time deciding which to mention and which to leave to their glory elsewhere...until I found this man.



This is Lieutenant Colonel John Malcolm Thorpe Fleming Churchill. He fought in World War II as an officer, but here's what sets him apart from the rest: he did it with a sword and bow and arrows. Not just any sword, not some pansy-ass rapier or a skinny little marine saber, no, a Scottish Claymore, a HUGE sword, capable of cleaving a man in half with ease. He once said "Any officer who goes into action without his sword is improperly dressed."
He joined the army as a young man, after which he resumed a civilian career. He took up bagpipes, and his skills with pipes and bow earned him a role in The Thief of Baghdad, an important and historical silent film. At the beginning of WWII Churchill joined the army again, signing up for a commando unit, not because he knew anything about it but because it "sounded dangerous." Score one for mindless ballishness. In May of 1940, Churchill and his regiment ambushed a German patrol at l'Epinette, France, where Churchill signaled the beginning of the attack by putting an arrow through the neck of the German officer.
In 1941 Churchill helped spearhead the Operation Archery (ironically named) raid, which began with a smaller-scale, D-Day-like landing. Churchill was the first out of his craft, playing "The March of the Cameron Men," a foot-stomping battle-tune, on bagpipes as he leaped from the boat. He then threw a grenade, drew his sword and charged the beach.
Soon after he went, claymore at his side, bagpipes under his arm and bow on his back, with two commando units to capture an enemy observation post/POW camp. He did this handily, infiltrating the town, cutting down resistance and returning with 42 prisoners, who were forced to carry the wounded back down the mountain. For that he received the Distinguished Service Order.
In '44 he led a party to support the resistance/partisan fighters in Yugoslavia, and after that he went to the German island of Brač, where he organized a motley army of partisans, commandos and resistance fighters into an attack on a German post. The landing went unopposed, but the partisans came under heavy fire soon inland and decided to deffer the attack to the next day. When the next day rolled around, Churchill led his squad of commandos into battle for a flanking maneuver, but the partisans never showed. Only Churchill and half a dozen others were left alive to reach the objective. Everyone in the squad that was not Jack Churchill was then killed by a mortar shell. He played "Will Ye Nay Come Back Again?" on pipes as the Germans advanced. He was knocked unconscious by grenades (Nobody wanted to get near him or that sword) and captured.
He was hauled to a concentration camp and interrogated, but would say nothing but name, rank, serial number. Churchill and an RAF officer crawled under the wire late one night and escaped. They were captured again near the coast and sent to another camp. Churchill didn't like that one either, so he left again. By the time he met up with an American regiment the war was over, which, it is reported, rather disappointed Churchill. He was the only recorded soldier in the war to have killed an enemy with a sword or bow.
He retired from the army in 1959, with the Military Cross and Bar and two awards of the Distinguished Service Order. He died in Surrey in 1996.


(Jack Churchill, far right, sword drawn, leads his men from the front)