'Mad Jack' Churchill

Locutus

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Jun 18, 2007
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bad. ass.

IT IS NOT RECORDED what the German commander said when he learned that one of his men had been spitted by a broad-head arrow…

It was May 1940, and the German officer’s unit was attacking toward a village called l’Epinette, near Bethune, France. Five of his soldiers took cover behind a farmyard wall, sheltered from the fire of British rearguards covering the retreat of the British Expeditionary Force to the English Channel. Without warning, one German crumpled, the feathered tip of an arrow sticking out of his chest. From a small farm building on their flank, rifle-fire tore into the others.


While he may have known that his enemy was soldiers of the Manchester Regiment, the German leader could not have known that they were led by the formidable Captain Jack Churchill. It was Churchill’s arrow that skewered the luckless German, while his men’s rifles accounted for the rest. However deadly, bows and arrows were surely anachronisms in modern war. They were formidable soldiers and always had been, precisely the sort of men Jack Churchill was cut out to lead.


But then, so was the bowman.




oh yeah, and he carried a Scottish broadsword. ↓






more classic heroic stuff here:


Warfare History Network » “Mad Jack” Churchill—A Rare Breed of Warrior


The British Soldier Who Killed Nazis with a Sword and a Longbow | VICE | Canada


http://gallery.commandoveterans.org/cdoGallery/d/3218-3/Jack+Churchill+Salerno.jpg


World War 2 hero 'Mad Jack' Churchill named one of world's greatest adventurers | Daily Mail Online
 

Blackleaf

Hall of Fame Member
Oct 9, 2004
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Thus World War II was the last war ever to be fought in which bows and arrows were used in combat.