On This Day in History: March 8

Mad Jack Churchill

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“Any officer who goes into action without his sword is improperly dressed.” –Mad Jack Churchill. He also made sure to take his longbow and his bagpipes. Did I mention this was World War II?

--On This Day in History, Shit Went Down: March 8, 1996--

Churchill was born in 1906 in British Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, and his family moved around between Asia and England. He graduated from the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, in 1926 and served in Burma then retired from the army a decade later to work as a newspaper editor in Kenya. He was talented on the bagpipes—yeah, that’s possible—and represented Britain at the World Archery Championships in 1939. Then, there was a big-ass war.

The line between courage and crazy is a fine one. The determination as to which is which is often apparent in whether or not someone achieved their objectives and/or didn’t fucking die. Jack Churchill refused to fucking die while accomplishing feats of military holy-fucking-shit few can fathom or imagine.

Early in the war, as Germany pushed into France, Churchill was part of the British Expeditionary Force as an officer. It’s rumored his first kills in an attack on a German Patrol were with his longbow, used because it was silent. He then raised his Scottish broadsword to signal the attack, killing a bunch of fucking Nazis before making their escape at Dunkirk. Eager to kill Nazi assbuckets, he then joined the commandos as second in command of a raid on a German garrison in Norway. As the ramp dropped on his amphibious landing craft, he was playing a battle song on his bagpipes, stopping only to throw a grenade. Then he charged into the fray to kill Nazis, some of whom I expect welcomed death if it meant they no longer had to listen to bagpipes. I jest. I’m part Scottish and love that shit. My mom used to play.

In 1943 Churchill led commando raids into Sicily and Italy, encouraging the men into battle with his bagpipes and with his sword strapped to his side. In Salerno just he and a corporal captured 42 Germans prisoners, and he marched them back to the Allied lines at sword point. Then in 1944 he was sent to Yugoslavia to fight with the local resistance. During a harrowing advance into enemy fire when everyone else was killed or wounded, and Churchill was playing his bagpipes to urge them on, he was knocked unconscious by a grenade and taken prisoner.

He was released after Germany surrendered and sent to Burma to fight the Japanese, but by the time he arrived, Japan had already been nuked and surrendered, which pissed him off mightily because he wanted to do more fighting. Three years later he was in Mandatory Palestine and fought against Arabs who massacred a medical convoy, then led the evacuation of several hundred doctors, students, and patients from Hadassah hospital where the convoy was headed.

There was only one enemy that could kill Mad Jack Churchill: Time. He died on March 8, 1996, age 89.

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