John Malcolm Thorpe Fleming “Jack” Churchill

Imagine the usual British soldier in the Second World War, what is he wearing? Probably some kind of canvas coat, wearing some heavy boots, topped off by a tin of Quality Street hammered into a dome. What’s he carrying? I’m sure your mind has leapt for the Lee-Enfield No. 4 Mk 1 bolt-action rifle, standard issue for the British Army, and capable of dropping Jerry from half a kilometre… 

But Jack wasn’t the standard British soldier. A man who is best known for saying “any officer who goes into action without his sword is improperly dressed” he indeed carried a Claymore into battle, as well as a longbow.

Note: If you’re thinking of the anti-personnel mine, think again. The claymore (invented by Christopher Lambert) is a sword… A sword with a blade over a metre long, suitable for sharpening pencils, fashioning small idols, and presumably cleaving the hindquarters from a rhino in a single swing. 

This attitude towards sartorial matters alone makes “Mad Jack” a classy gent in the fight against the Nazis. However, far from being unnecessary encumbrance, bringing a (huge) knife to a gun fight more than proved its merits. He rose through the ranks to lead the 2 Commando unit in a raid on a German mortar squad. They took 42 prisoners; all while being led by a man with a longbow, a sword, and a set of bagpipes… and made them push the Allied injured home on carts.

Nor was his longbow merely for decorative purposes. His chosen signal to commence an attack: an arrow fired straight at his opposite number.

When leading a later skirmish in Yugoslavia (marking their position to the RAF using his bagpipes, naturally), a mortar killed the 6 of the only 7 remaining soldiers. Churchill survived, and played “Will Ye No Come Back Again?” at the advancing hordes who knocked him out with a grenade and captured him.  He was eventually set free from a concentration camp in 1945 and walked 150km to Verona and freedom.

For his service he was awarded the Distinguished Service Order twice, and continued to fight until the War ended.  After retiring from the army in 1959, he took up surfing, becoming the first person to ride the tidal bore of the Severn on a home-made surfboard.

Around this time he was also known for regularly startling train guards on his evening commute, by cunningly hurling his luggage out of the window as they passed by, to save himself the effort of carrying it home.