Hey, Austin Smith here and welcome to Knowledge Now. During World War II, in May 1940, Nazi
Germany commenced its invasion of France. Tanks, aircraft, cannon, rifles, and grenades
were among the many weapons employed in the fighting. One British officer, Jack Churchill,
chose to carry quite a different arsenal onto the modern battlefield; however, namely a
longbow and broadsword. Oh, and he also played the bagpipes as he led troops into battle.
Jack Churchill was born to an old Oxfordshire family in 1906 as John Malcolm Thorpe Fleming
Churchill. Yes, he had five names, but most people just called him Jack. And just to clarify,
he had no relation to the more famous Winston Churchill. Jack Churchill graduated from the
Royal Military College at Sandhurst in 1926 and then served in the British army with the
Manchester Regiment throughout his twenties. During this time, he saw service in the then
British colony of Burma in southeast Asia. Today, Burma is the independent nation of
Myanmar.
*Churchill saw his first fighting there during the Burmese rebellion against British colonial
rule and studied the bagpipes under a Scottish major during his down time, also picking up
an interest in archery.
When Churchill visited India for a military course, he traveled about 1,500 miles on his
motorcycle across the country to return to service. In 1936, Churchill resigned from
the army and began work as a newspaper editor. He continued to pursue his interests in archery
and the bagpipes, and also became adept at handling a broadsword. Churchill gained minor
roles in movies as an actor, utilizing his archery skills, and also worked as a part
time model. In 1939, Churchill represented the UK at the World Archery Championships
in Oslo.
*When Britain entered the Second World War against Nazi Germany later that year, Churchill
immediately re-enlisted with his old unit as an officer, taking his longbow and broadsword
with him into service.
Churchill and his unit joined other British forces in defending France in May 1940 against
the German invasion. When Churchill and his men came across a Nazi patrol one day, he
ordered an ambush. Churchill loosed a barbed arrow from his longbow as the signal to commence
the attack, cutting down the enemy German sergeant in medieval fashion as the rest of
the British soldiers opened fire with their guns. Churchill gained the distinction that
day as being the only British soldier known to have felled an enemy with a longbow during
World War II. He soon gained the nicknames “Mad Jack” and “Fighting Jack Churchill”
as he proved himself on the battlefield with his unusual weapons of choice.
As the British were pushed to Dunkirk, Churchill rendezvoused with the rest of the soldiers
after riding his motorcycle to the beach, his bow and arrows hanging from the frame,
and a slain German officer’s cap on the headlight. He had incurred a minor injury
after being struck by a German machine gun, but casually dismissed the wound. After the
fighting at Dunkirk, Churchill returned to England and trained in Scotland for a new
commando unit being formed. There, he met and married his wife with whom he would later
have two children.
*On December 27, 1941, Churchill saw his first action as a commando, leading a regiment on
a raid against a German garrison on the coast of Nazi occupied Norway.
As the ramp fell from the landing craft, Churchill leapt into battle with his men following close
behind. He played his bagpipes as he led the charge before throwing a grenade into enemy
forces. In this photograph of a training exercise prior to the actual raid, British soldiers
are seen exiting a landing craft, guns in hand, while their commanding officer, Churchill
leads the way, wielding his sword.
Later in the war, Churchill led commandos in fighting on the Italian island of Sicily.
Carrying his sword, his longbow and arrows, as well as his bagpipes, Churchill and his
unit infiltrated one of the Axis controlled towns and captured 42 prisoners. In 1944,
Churchill and his commandos supported Allied actions in Yugoslavia. He led a desperate
offensive against a German occupied island where the majority of his unit were killed
or wounded by mortar shells. Churchill himself was knocked unconscious and captured by Nazi
soldiers.
Lieutenant Colonel Churchill was flown by his captors to Berlin for interrogation and
then moved to a concentration camp. After being held prisoner for about four months,
Churchill and a British Royal Air Force officer crawled under barbed wire through an abandoned
drain and began walking to the coast of the Baltic Sea to make an escape.
*Despite their efforts, they were captured again before arriving at the coast.
*Churchill was later transferred to another camp in Austria where he continued to watch
for another opportunity to escape. In April 1945, the chance came when the camp’s lighting
system failed. Churchill walked away from his work detail and disappeared into the darkness,
heading for the Alps and the Italian border on foot. After traveling about 150 miles in
eight days, Churchill finally arrived near Verona, Italy where he caught sight of a column
of American forces.
Churchill returned to England with his freedom, but full of frustration that the war was almost
over and he had missed much of it over the past year. As it was clear the war in Europe
was coming to a close, Churchill was sent to Burma again where battles were still being
raged against Japanese forces occupying the colony. On his way to southeast Asia; however,
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed by American forces and the war came to an end there as
well.
After the war, Churchill was sent to Palestine in the spring of 1948 as the British mandate
there was coming to an end. Leading a parachute regiment, Churchill assisted an Israeli medical
convoy that came under attack by hundreds of Arabs and he later aided in the evacuation
of several Israeli doctors, students, and patients from a hospital.
In his later life, Churchill taught at a warfare school in Australia. There he took up an interest
in surfing and even designed his own surfboard. After he retired from the military in 1959,
Churchill’s eccentric nature persisted while working civilian jobs, sailing with his wife,
and building radio-controlled ship models. Jack Churchill died in Surrey, England in
1996 at the age of 89, the only man known to have carried into battle and successfully
used a longbow and broadsword during World War II.
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