Many men will have a samurai complex in their hearts, love cold weapons, and fantasize about the Prancing Horse bending its bow and galloping on the battlefield, but it is just to think about it, in the modern battlefield of gunfire, no one will really use swords to fight guns. However, during World War II, there was an English warrior who seemed to have crossed from the Middle Ages, wearing the uniform of the British army in World War II, but using the medieval English longbow and the Scottish broadsword to kill the enemy. His surname was Churchill and he came from an old aristocratic family in Oxfordshire, England, nicknamed "Mad Jack".
John Malcolm Thorpe Fleming Churchill
Jack the Mad, whose full name was John Malcolm Thorpe Fleming Churchill, was born on 16 September 1906 in Colombo, sri Lanka, which was still British Ceylon. His father was of Scottish descent and his mother was of Irish descent. He was born in Colombo because his father served there. Churchill later followed his father to Hong Kong, where he served as Director of Public Works.
In 1917, Churchill returned to England to attend school, and like many British aristocrats, he attended military school. In 1926, he graduated from the Sandhurst Military Academy and then returned to Asia to serve in the Burmese Manchester Regiment, stationed in Rangoon with the Second Battalion. Here he took part in the battle for the first time and was wounded and hospitalized.
While recuperating, Churchill became acquainted with a major in the Cameron Highland Infantry Regiment, learned from him to play bagpipes, and became obsessed with archery, practicing hard every day.
During this service, he was also sent to India for military training, and at the end of the course, he rode a motorcycle alone for 1,500 kilometers across India to return to the barracks.
In 1936, churchill came to Kenya to work as an editor in a newspaper, where he worked as a part-time male model, appearing in two films, as a stand-in or supporting role in The Baghdad Thief and Oxford.
In 1938, Churchill took part in the Bagpipe Competition in Aldershot and finished second, causing a stir among the Scottishes who competed. With his archery skills in the military, he also represented Britain at the World Archery Championships in Oslo in 1939.
It was in this year that the Germans blitzed Poland and World War II broke out. The coming of the war made him extremely excited, he knew that he could go back to the barracks he loved, and he said with great spirits: "The country was a mess without me, and now I can put on my uniform again!" ”
He first signed up as a volunteer to go to Finland to help the Finns fight against the Red Army, but the operation was later canceled and he was unable to do so. Subsequently, he returned to the old manchester regiment. But this time he appeared in a striking image before his comrades and commanders: in a British uniform and a Tony helmet, in addition to a revolver and a short knife, he carried a longbow and a quiver, carried bagpipes, held a Scottish broadsword, and the arrows of Henry V's time were loaded on the arrows. This made him look like a knight from the Middle Ages. He claimed: Any officer who does not carry a sword is dressed in a disheveled manner!
The army demanded uniform dress and the use of standard weapons, and perhaps his persistence impressed the commander, who was allowed to use these ancient weapons in combat.
Subsequently, he took part in the Battle of France, and during the Dunkirk evacuation in May 1940, he was ordered to lead a small group of soldiers of the Fourth Infantry Brigade to defend Fort Richie near the beach. In battle, his most trusted weapon was not a rifle, but a longbow, and he said to his men: "Listen, I will shoot the first German with my bow and arrow, and this is the attack signal of the whole team!" ”
When the Germans entered the range of his longbow, he aimed at a German sergeant and quickly opened his bow, the other side found him almost at the same time, perhaps he could not believe that the enemy on the other side actually shot at him with a bow and arrow, the German soldier thought that he was hallucinating, so he was a little confused, the shooting action was slightly hesitant, Churchill preemptively shot an arrow, piercing the sergeant's chest, he thus set a record for the first kill of the English longbow on the modern battlefield. The British soldiers who witnessed this scene were greatly encouraged and opened fire together, hitting the Germans hard. Immediately after, Churchill jumped out of the trench, brandished the Scottish broadsword in his hand, and swerved left and right to avoid enemy fire, skillfully approaching the enemy. As he roared and rushed into the enemy position, a fierce white-knife battle broke out, he used both guns and swords, three German soldiers became the ghosts under his swords, the other two were killed by him with revolvers, and finally he captured a German soldier who was frightened and collapsed. Churchill became famous for the operation, and the nickname "Mad Jack" spread throughout the army.
In fact, in Britain, the longbow and broadsword is not a "mad Jack", and the British Prime Minister Churchill, who is equally warlike with his surname, is also a fan of the English longbow. Also in World War II, the prime minister proudly stated: "The power of a thousand arrows fired at a distance of two hundred and fifty yards is beyond the reach of any infantry-projecting weapon at the same distance before the American Civil War!" ”
There's a reason the English longbow made Churchill so obsessed, because the longbow tactics have created impressive records in history.
Originally a Welsh weapon, the longbow was introduced to England in the twelfth century, this longbow is made of purple shirt wood, the bow is six inches long, the arrow is three inches long, the effective range is two hundred and fifty yards, the maximum range is four hundred yards, and it can shoot through the breastplate of a heavily armored cavalry. The longbow is extremely fast, a well-trained longbowman can shoot ten to twelve arrows per minute, and the hit rate is much higher than that of the crossbow.
At the Battle of Cracie in 1346, the English and French first erupted in crossbow fire, and the English longbowmen defeated the French Genoese crossbowmen with only a few salvos.
The heavily armored cavalry was the strength of France's rampant European land in that year, and in this battle, the 35,000 troops sent by France included 12,000 heavily armored cavalry. In medieval Europe, it was a terrible force that destroyed the world, and before this war, they swept the mountains and seas to attack and could level any opponent. However, under the blow of the English longbow, all sixteen charges of the French heavily armored cavalry were destroyed. At the end of the battle, the French army had killed eleven nobles, more than fifteen hundred knights, more than five thousand heavily armored cavalry, and ten thousand infantry. The British, on the other hand, lost only two knights, forty longbowmen, and more than a hundred infantrymen. Since then, the myth of the invincibility of the heavily armored cavalry has been broken, and the English longbow has become the nemesis of the heavily armored cavalry. With such a dazzling history, how can the descendants of the English warriors forget its splendor? "Mad Jack" tries to continue this glory on the modern battlefield with action.
After returning to England from France, Churchill married while also undergoing rigorous commando tactical training. On December 27, 1941, Churchill received orders to lead a small detachment to raid the Norwegian island of Vog, destroy the German artillery positions on the island, and clear the enemy fire threat for the main landing, the code name of the operation was "Archery Operation". At the time of landing, Churchill was armed with a broadsword and took the lead on the beachhead. Sneak in under the cover of thick fog and night, and launch a sudden attack as you approach enemy positions. Churchill blew the "Cameron March" with bagpipes before dropping the first grenade at the enemy.
Churchill took the lead with a broadsword in his hand
The sudden blow caught the Germans by surprise, and more than a hundred German companies with cannons were captured by Churchill. They also destroyed the island's fish oil processing plants and military docks, and they sank German ships moored in the harbor.
In July 1943, Churchill ushered in his highlight moment. At that time, the Allies launched the Sicily landing operation, and Churchill led a commando team to take the lead in landing in Catania. He and three of his men attacked a German observation post outside the town of Morin, where he silently shot the German sentry with a longbow, occupied the post, and captured a German, after which he and a corporal were led by the German prisoner and entered the German stronghold. When he suddenly appeared in the German headquarters, the German commander was stunned by the man in front of him who seemed to have crossed the Middle Ages. Before he could react, he was caught in the throat by Churchill's long sword, and had to lay down his weapons and order his men to give up resistance. Thus Churchill captured forty-two Germans in his stronghold with only two men and captured all their equipment. The rest of the commando captured one hundred and thirty-six Germans near the town of Maureen. Escorted by Churchill, the captives carried captured weapons, including three mortars, back to the British garrison.
In 1944, Churchill encountered his Waterloo. In May, he was ordered to lead fifteen hundred guerrillas and forty-four commandos to attack the island of Brac in the Adriatic Sea, but was hit by fierce German fire, and after two days of fierce fighting, most of his comrades were killed, including him, and only six survivors remained, three of whom were seriously wounded. In the face of a large number of approaching German troops, Churchill neither broke through nor surrendered, but calmly blew "Are You Gone Forever" with bagpipes. The Germans threw a grenade at him, and he was stunned and captured. He would have been shot, but the Germans, based on his last name, mistakenly believed that he was a relative of Churchill and that it might be useful to keep him, so they imprisoned him in the Saxonhausen concentration camp.
But how could "Mad Jack" be willing to be a prisoner, how could he stay in his cell waiting for the war to end? In September 1944, he and a RAF pilot escaped from an abandoned gutter, but were again captured in Rostock, just a few kilometres from the Baltic Sea. He was then transferred to Tyrol, italy on the border with Austria, but how could a setback defeat him? In April 1945, Churchill escaped from prison again and fled south, and with his excellent wilderness survival skills, he successfully crossed the St. Bernard Pass in the Alps with only a small amount of food. On the eighth day of his escape, he came to a distance of 150 miles from Verona, where he encountered an American armored unit, where he was glad that he had finally been rescued, but at the same time he was frustrated to learn from his new American friends that the war in Europe was about to end and that he would have no more to fight, which he could not accept.
Churchill immediately applied to burma to continue fighting against Japan, and his request was approved. However, when he first arrived in India, the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, Japan surrendered, and World War II was declared over. When the whole world was celebrating the re-establishment of peace, Churchill was not at all happy, and he even cursed the American army for dropping atomic bombs on Japan, and he said hatefully: "If it were not for these greedy Yankees who were afraid of death, I could fight for another 10 years."
No matter how reluctant "Mad Jack" may be, the war ends helplessly, but his adventures will not end. He soon threw himself into parachuting training and became a qualified paratrooper at the age of forty. In 1946, with his superb archery skills, he successfully starred as a medieval longbowman in the 20th Century Fox film Ivan Heh.
In the post-war Middle East, where the smoke of war attracted "Mad Jack", he joined the Highland Light Infantry Regiment and served in British-occupied Palestine. During the First Middle East War in 1948, he led paratroopers to rescue and cover Jewish settlers on Mount Sipas, helping them evacuate from attacks by Arab armies.
In 1959, at the age of 53, "Mad Jack" finally ended his legendary military career, and the years that followed, he spent time in England, and until his old age, he still liked to fiddle with his beloved longbow and broadsword. Churchill died in 1996, just six months before his 90th birthday.
Throughout his life, Churchill was brave and good at war, and he was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal twice. He was a true samurai, a man who had been born for war.