Lieutenant-Colonel Jack Malcolm Thorpe Fleming Churchill, DSO and Bar, MC and Bar (September 16, 1906—March 8, 1996), nicknamed "Fighting Jack Churchill", was an English soldier who fought throughout World War II armed with a bow, arrows and a claybeg. He once said "any officer who goes into action without his sword is improperly dressed".
Contents |
Early life
Born in Hong Kong to English parents, Churchill graduated from Sandhurst in 1926 and served in Burma with the Manchester Regiment. He left the army in 1936 and worked as a newspaper editor. He used his archery and bagpipe talents to play small film roles in the movie The Thief of Baghdad.
Second World War
He resumed his commission after Poland was invaded and volunteered for the Commandos after fighting at Dunkirk. It is said that Churchill was not sure what was entailed in Commando duty, but that because it sounded dangerous, he signed up. In May 1940, Churchill and his unit, the Manchester Regiment, ambushed a German patrol near l'Epinette, France. Churchill gave the signal to attack by cutting down the feldwebel (sergeant) with his barbed arrows. He led two companies in Operation Archery, the raid on the German garrison at Vågsøy, Norway on December 27, 1941. As the ramps fell on the first landing craft, Churchill leapt forward playing the "March of the Cameron Men" on his pipes. The Commandos destroyed the battery and eliminated the garrison. For his actions at Dunkirk and Vaasgo, Churchill received the Military Cross and Bar. He received the Distinguished Service Order in 1943 for capturing the battery at Salerno, while commanding Number 2 Commando. Leading from the front, Churchill infiltrated the town with only a corporal in support. He kidnapped a sentry and forced him to make his comrades surrender. Churchill and the riflemen walked out of town with 42 prisoners and a mortar squad. In 1944, he led Number 2 Commando in Yugoslavia, where they supported the efforts of Tito's partisans. The commandos raided the German-held island of Brač and assaulted hill 622. Only Churchill and six others managed to reach the objective. A mortar shell killed or wounded everyone but Churchill, who played "Will Ye No Come Back Again?" on his pipes as the Germans advanced. He was knocked unconscious by grenades and was flown to Berlin for interrogation after being captured. He was placed in Sachsenhausen concentration camp. In September 1944, he and an RAF officer crawled under the wire through an abandoned drain and set out to walk to the Baltic coast. Their luck was not in, however, and they were recaptured near the coastal city of Rostock, only a few miles from the sea. In time, they were moved to a camp at Niederdorf, Austria. He escaped from Niederdorf in April 1945 and walked 150 miles to Verona, Italy where he met an American armoured column. As the Pacific war was still ongoing Churchill was sent to Burma, where the largest land battles against Japan were still raging, but by the time he reached India, Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been bombed, and the war abruptly ended.
Later life
In 1946 Twentieth Century Fox was making Ivanhoe with Churchill’s old rowing companion Robert Taylor and wanted him to appear as an archer, firing from the walls of Warwick Castle. Churchill took the assignment, flown off to the job in an aircraft provided by the movie company. After World War II ended, Churchill qualified as a parachutist, transferred to the Seaforth Highlanders, and later ended up in Palestine as second-in-command of 1st Battalion, the Highland Light Infantry. And it was there, in the spring of 1948, just before the end of the British mandate the region, that he again risked his life for other people. He rescued 700 Jewish doctors, students and patients from a hospital under attack from Arab militants and his squad of 12 men escorted them to safety. In later years, Churchill served as an instructor at the land-air warfare school in Australia, where he became a passionate devotee of the surfboard. Back in England, he was the first man to ride the River Severn’s five-foot tidal bore and designed his own board. He finally retired from the army, with two awards of the Distinguished Service Order, in 1959 and died in Surrey in 1996. Eccentric until the end, Churchill would toss his briefcase out of the window of the commuter train he rode home every day. Passengers and conductors were shocked because they didn't know he was throwing the luggage into his own backyard as the train passed by. It saved him the trouble of carrying it all the way home from the station.
References
- Fighting Jack Churchill Survived A Wartime Odyssey Beyond Compare by Robert Barr Smith, July 2005
