The beginning of an occasional series where I present a real life personality that seems like something a player would make as a character. This generally means a wide array of skills, a complex and weird history, and a general sense of being larger than life.
And we have to begin with Jack Churchill, Patron Saint of Player Characters.
Jack Churchill leading soldiers in World War II while playing the bagpipes.
Jack Malcolm Thorpe Fleming Churchill, DSO & Bar, MC & Bar
Jack Churchill was born in Ceylon1 in 1906. In his childhood, his father’s work took him from Englad to Hong Kong. He went to university at King William’s College on the Isle of Man, and then went to the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. During this time he developed a love for bagpipe playing, as well as the archaic weapons of Scottish broadsword and longbow. Before graduating in 1926, he used these talents to play a role in the film The Thief of Bagdad.
He served in Burma, and enjoyed riding his motorcycle around the countryside. After he left the army in 1936, he move to Nairobi, Kenya and worked as a newspaper editor. He also did part-time work as a male model, appeared in the 1938 film A Yank in Oxford, took second place in the 1938 military piping competition, and represented Great Britain at the World Archery Championships in Oslo just a month before World War II began.
World War II
With the war beginning, Churchill rejoined the Manchester Regiment and went to France with the British Expeditionary Force. While ambushing a German patrol, Churchill signalled the attack by raising his broadsword in the air. He also began the ambush by firing his longbow and killing a German soldier, the last recorded longbow kill in a time of war. He fought at the Battle of Dunkirk, and upon returning to England joined the British Commandos.
In late 1941, he was second in command of a commando raid in Vågsøy, Norway. As the landing craft hit the beach, he leapt forward from his position playing “March of the Cameron Men” on his bagpipes, before throwing a grenade and charging into battle.
Jack Churchill on the far right, leading a sea landing with his sword in hand.
By 1943, he was a commanding officer and in Italy, leading landings with his broadsword on his hip, his longbow and arrows around his neck, and his bagpipes under his arm.
At a German observation post outside the town of Molina, he and 2 other commandos managed to take the post and 42 prisoners. He lost his sword in the fighting, but marched the prisoners down the pass into town and back to his army. Then he returned to the town and found his sword. On his way back through the pass, he met an American patrol heading the wrong way. He refused to join them, saying he’s not going back there a “bloody third time.”
In 1944, he was along the coast of Yugoslavia2 at the Island of Brač. He lead the attack on the German position there among heavy shelling. Only he and six others even made it to the Germans. Everyone else was killed and wounded, and Churchill ran out of arrows and bullets for his gun as the Germans surrounded him. He began to play “Will Ye No Come Back Again?” on his bagpipes until he was knocked unconscious by a grenade and captured.
He was interrogated in Berlin, and then sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp. After four months, he and a RAF officer, Bertram James, crawled under the wire, through an drain pipe and headed off to the Baltic coast, but they were captured.
The next spring, April 1945, Churchill was transferred to Tyrol. A German army unit came in to protect the prisoners from the SS guards, who left, leaving the prisoners behind. The prisoners were released and Churchill walked nearly a hundred miles to Verona, Italy, where he met an American armoured unit.
He then went to Burma to fight in the Pacific Theater, but by the time he arrived, the bombs had been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the war was over. He was upset, famously saying, “If it wasn’t for those damn Yanks, we could have kept the war going another 10 years!”
After the War
Churchill became a parachutist with the Seaforth Highlanders and then went to Palestine. He lead the evacuation of 700 Jewish doctors, students and patients from the Hadassah hospital and in his honor, the street leading to the hospital was named Churchill Boulevard.
In 1952, he appeared in the film Ivanhoe as an archer, before moving to Australia to teach at the land-air warfare school. In Australia, he became enfatuated with surfing and designed his own surfboards. Returning to England to work a desk job with the army, he was the first person to surf the tidal bore of the River Severn.
He retired and enjoyed sailing remote controlled model ships.
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