The Strongest Soldier Series "Crazy Jack": The Strongest British Soldier in World War II: Putting a bow and sword on the battlefield, capturing 42 German soldiers alive, and two amazing escapes
Text/Kaozaifeng (original article, reprinting in any form)
There is a joke about World War II in the West: a British man persuaded a fortress to surrender the German SS (SS).
British: 10,000 British soldiers are coming soon.
SS: Nothing, there are only 10,000 people, we can persist in resisting.
British: Oh, I got it wrong, only three people come, you don’t have to worry.
SS: Which three?
British: Jack Churchill, David Stirling and Leo Major.
SS: That's too much, we surrender.
Who are these three British soldiers who can make the Germans surrender?
Picture: "Crazy Jack" is a household name in the UK
Today, Feng Ge first said the first one: Jack Churchill, translated as Jack Churchill, but he is not a relative of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill .
Let’s take a look at Jack’s outfit first. The only ones in the British army in World War II: Scottish cage sword, English longbow and bagpipe .
Picture: Jack Churchill's soldier statue
It looks like a medieval soldier traveling to the battlefield of World War II where the machine gun cannon sings the protagonist.
Jack Churchill is a strange alien, a crazy soldier with extremely strong vitality.
is right, his nickname is "Crazy Jack" or "Fight Jack".
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Jack was born in 1906 in the British colony of Sri Lanka. He graduated from Sanhurst Royal Military Academy at the age of 20 and served in the famous Manchester Legion in the United Kingdom.
In addition to loving war, Jack also has many hobbies, such as playing bagpipes, shooting archery and racing motorcycles. Before the outbreak of World War II, he left the army, worked as a model and acted in movies, and represented the UK in the World Archery Championship held in Oslo in 1939.
picture: The picture of Jack participating in the archery competition
picture: Jack's motorcycle, once drove it across Myanmar
After Germany invaded Poland, Jack happily returned to the army and shouted, "When I was not here, this country was in trouble."
As a member of the Expeditionary Force, Jack entered France to fight the German army, and also encountered the famous Dunkirk retreat . During some small-scale contact battles, his unique outfit surprised the German soldiers: Is the guy in front of me a clown or an actor?
Picture: Jack's image of bow and arrow is a legend
The only German who realizes that Jack is a warrior is a German officer. In May 1940, the German officer was patrolled in a small French village called l'Epinette and was shot to death with his feathers deep into his chest along the shaft. The arrow shot from the English longbow won Jack the title of the only British soldier who killed the enemy with a longbow during World War II.
Jack is the leader of a small team. He always brings his three-piece set without any burden when marching: sword, bow and bagpipe. A general asked him why he brought a sword in his operation, and Jack replied: "In my opinion, sir, any officer without a sword is improperly dressed."
Picture: Jack observed a captured field gun in Belgium
Jack commented on this extraordinary character in the war diary of the 4th Infantry Brigade to which Jack belongs: "One of the most reassuring attractions during boarding in Dunkirk was to see Captain Churchill passing through the beach with a bow and arrow..."
Jack is one of those extraordinary figures who regard danger as nothing, and the nickname "Crazy Jack" was obtained at that time.
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After withdrawing from the UK, Jack volunteered to join the famous British commando. In fact, at the beginning, he didn't know what the commando did, but the word commando was worthy of his appetite.
Picture: Commando killing training
In December 1941, Jack accompanied the commando to successfully attack the German garrison in the Norwegian town of Vaagso in the North Fjord. Jack stood on the landing craft and played a song "The Man of Cameron" with his bagpipe. Then he trekked to the shore with his sword, and was the first to rush forward.
Picture: Jack landing with a sword, this scene can be recorded in the history of the military forever
In the autumn of 1943, in the Sicily landing battle, Jack commanded the 2nd Commando. During a night attack, he rushed into a German outpost with his sword, brought only one subordinate, captured 42 German troops alive, plus a complete mortar position.
Remembrance of the German prisoner: He has a fierce mustache and a shiny sword, and looks like a ghost in the darkness.
Picture: World War II painting depicting Jack's battle
In the battle of Yugoslavia, Jack's good luck was used up. He was ordered to attack a German hill named 622. More than a thousand commandos were killed, leaving only six team members, three of whom were seriously injured. Finally, they even had the revolver bullets shot down, and a mortar shell knocked down the others, leaving Jack.
Picture: Jack plays the bagpipe, this is a common scene for the commando
After the German soldiers rushed over, they found Jack leaning tiredly on the body of his comrades, playing a song "Do you go and never return" with the bagpipe. Afterwards, the Germans described his lonely bagpipe sound as "a tragic sound of an unknown instrument."
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As a colonel, Jack should not have become a prisoner of war, but his brave medieval style made him always rush to the forefront.
According to the command of Hitler , the captured commando will be executed by the SS, but a German officer rejected the order. "Like me, you are a soldier," the German officer said to Jack, "I refuse to let these civilian butchers deal with you. I will not accept this order." (After the end of World War II, Jack did not forget to find this upright German officer himself and helped him escape from the Soviet prisoner-of-war camp.)
Picture: Photo of Jack the next day he was captured (right), the Germans took
Next, Jack's luck came again, because his surname was Churchill, who was considered by the Germans to be a relative of the British Prime Minister, so he specially sent him to Sarajevo and moved to Berlin by plane.
Before getting on the plane, Jack deliberately threw a burning match on a pile of paper, causing a chaotic fire. Later in the face of investigation, Jack pretended to be innocent and told an angry Luftwaffe officer that the officer escorted him had been smoking and reading newspapers on the plane.
Jack was locked up in the infamous Saxonyhausen concentration camp, but the prisoner-of-war camp was no problem for someone like Jack. In September 1944, he and a British Royal Air Force officer climbed through an abandoned drainage ditch and successfully escaped to the Baltic coast. However, it was soon recaptured. He was subsequently transferred to a prisoner of war camp in , , Austria.
Picture: Allied prisoners of war in Saxonyhausen concentration camp
Here, the crazy Jack was also not blocked.
One night in April 1945, the prisoner-of-war camp was out of power. Jack seized the opportunity and fled the prisoner-of-war camp with a few canned onions in his arms and hiked to the Alps and the Italian border. He walked on the mountain for eight days, relied on canned onions and vegetables secretly dug in the field to satisfy his hunger. His ankles were swollen, and he finally encountered an American convoy who was rescued. At that time, he shouted to the American soldiers: "Sergeant, please salute - don't look at me being sloppy, but I am a British colonel."
Picture: Jack (Stander) during the commando period got free in training
, while Jack was frustrated, he found that the European war was almost over. He missed many battles and missed the opportunity to be promoted.
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However, World War II was not over, and he said to his friends: "There are still Japanese, aren't they?"
Picture: Jack after the war
Then, Jack went to Asia as the commander of the assault brigade. When he arrived in India, Hiroshima and Nagasaki had disappeared in the mushroom cloud, and the war suddenly ended. For warriors like Jack, the end of the war was bittersweet, and he complained: "If it weren't for those damn Americans, we could have allowed this war to last another 10 years!"
Indeed, the atomic bomb lost Jack the fun of a cage-hand sword against the samurai sword. There was no way, he could only have fun.
To continue his adventurer's lifestyle, Jack qualified as a parachuting athlete and joined the Highland Light Infantry to head to the British-occupied Palestinian against the Arab army. Later, he worked as a lecturer at an Australian military school and became obsessed with surfing. After returning home, he became the first person to surf the Severn River tide.
Picture: Jack in his later years
53 years old, old Jack finally stopped taking risks and retired from the army. By the Thames, he spent his retirement quietly, and his amateur pastime became a model warship controlled by radio.
In 1996, Jack died at the age of 89.
Picture: The name of "Crazy Jack" is widely circulated in the West
Jack Churchill is a rare soldier, a hero of World War II, and a man with extreme vitality. It is unique and unforgettable.
References: English Wiki "Jack Churchill", "Crazy Jack": A Rare Warrior"
