Lions Led By Donkeys Podcast - Episode 151 - Mad Jack Churchill

Episode Date: April 19, 2021

Jack Churchill was a lunatic and one of the most interesting people to ever run screaming onto an enemy beach while wielding a sword. sources: https://allthatsinteresting.com/mad-jack-churchill https://www.historynet.com/the-daring-exploits-of-mad-jack-churchill.htm https://www.badassoftheweek.com/jackchurchill https://www.warhistoryonline.com/instant-articles/jack-churchill-carry-a-sword.html https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/2019/01/07/mad-jack-churchill-a-rare-breed-of-warrior/ Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/lionsledbydonkeys

Hey everybody, Joe here from the Lions Led by Donkeys podcast. If you enjoy what we do here on the show and you think it's worth your hard-earned money, you can support the show via Patreon. Just a $1 donation gets you access to bonus episodes, our Discord, and regular episodes before everybody else. If you donate at an elevated level, you get even more bonus content. A digital copy of my book, The Hooligans of Kandahar, and a sticker from our Teespring store. Our show will always be ad-free and is totally supporter-driven. We use that money to pay our bills, buy research materials that make this show possible, and support charities like the Kurdish Red Crescent, the Flint Water Fund, and the Halo Trust. Consider joining the

Legion of the Old Crow today. And now, back to the show. Hello, and welcome to yet another episode of Lines Led by Donkeys podcast. The only podcast where you might get a hint of my co-host spitting tobacco spit into a pop can. Nick, what's up? Yeah, that's me. Did I guess correctly? Are you using a can? No, I'm using a beer bottle from last night. God damn it. I thought I heard the acoustics. Like, that's metal. See, I'm not so good at this.

I mean, your ears are fucked. That's true. I'm not going gonna argue that um this is like the earliest we've ever recorded and both of us have are like still half asleep because of time changes like your your time just jumped back right from where i was at yeah well not from like washington to texas but like we just had the you lost an hour or whatever yeah we don't have that in hawaii our time just our time just stays constant uh i ran into this problem because i record with francis and shocks for uh various things and their time all changed and it was already like four hours behind mine and then my time didn't and so like i was at the

like the gas station buying an energy drink i just get a message like hey ready to record and i had no idea that the time changed i completely forgot so i had to like put everything back jump in my car and race home like the one time i leave my house during the day in between podcasting and studying for school is the time that I miss work. The one hour that I had to record. I had to skip on my weekly dose of sun rays. Is it still bitterly cold in Texas? It's actually very nice.

Except for the Texas part. it's doing its best which is yeah you know d average maybe yeah i would say that that's a good average to have d's get degrees or in texas d's get i don't know trying to come up with a a snow-based pun based on what just happened, but it's escaping me. D's get downed power lines. I'm sorry, Texas. I love you. Now, Nick, we've been doing this show for a very long time. Three years almost at this point.

Nice. And we haven't ran out of anything. Oh, we will never run out of anything. Because if there's one thing that humans are constantly good at, it's killing each other while also being simultaneously kind of bad at killing each other. Like, you know, we have covered wars that involved like spears and swords all the way until nuclear weapons. Right. And there's one constant and that is as good as science gets and there's like nothing that makes humanity jump forward in science

more than like trying to come up with better and more like efficient ways than murdering one another but then they simultaneously find cartoonish ways to fuck that up is this a cartoonish episode it is but for a different reason every once in a while on the show we talk

about people that are just like larger than life um you know like heroes i and and we don't use that term on the show because like people really can't be heroes i mean look at the title right um but like people who like you could honestly just make an action movie about their life. Yeah, like Tom Cruise. This guy... This is like Leo Major territory. Actually, this is like if Leo Major and Bill Millen... We're going top shelf.

Yeah, we're definitely going top shelf. And this one's been requested a lot. And I was doing other things, working on different series. And I had eight people at once request this. So I sat down down did it uh so every once in a while i do listen to your requests okay i'm doing my best um uh also thought i'd point it out newest stripper back at lewis named top shelf super cool we just talk

about baseball all the time i'm gonna go on a limb and say topelf was not her real name. No, absolutely not. But my friends dragged me to this place and I just talked to strippers about baseball to get them to get away from me. That's certainly one way to spend money badly.

Except for her. She stuck around and was talking about baseball with me. Solid. Top Shelf, if you're listening. Every once in a while we talk about a guy like their life is like it could be a segment in a Call of Duty game. Huh? Really?

Yeah, like Bill Millen, Leo Major, Byerly. There are a couple people in some of the series, mostly, is when they fall into. But dudes that when you hear about what they did during their war, it's almost like, okay, some of this has to be made up. Like, nobody's this over the top.

And today's guy is a bit of both. And that is Mad Jack Churchill. Why does that sound familiar? You will immediately remember who I'm talking about when I start describing him. Okay. Mad Jack Churchill, born John Malcolm Thorpe Fleming Churchill because he's British.

It's a very British name. He only gets more British. This is the most British man to ever exist. Okay. And he's a guy that exists in listicles, right? Like, it's one of those guys, like, this guy did this crazy thing. He's the last person to do blank and I want to ruin it at war. And so like

people kind of gravitate towards that. And admittedly I do too. Because like that's why we fucking started the show. And I have never found a guy that more embodies the saying dudes rock than Jack motherfucking Churchill.

And like you do have to like you do have to look past old-timey racism i'm not asking you to do that but this is a british man in the 40s oh so i mean it's implied and you also have to overlook the fact that john malcolmpe Fleming Churchill is like a white guy anime energy attack type ass name. It's just overlong. We know the territory we're in. He was born September 16th

of 1906. This is where the history... Good year. It could be worse. He could have been born too late to take part in his favorite war um now there's a lot of conflicting history about him um so i'll do my best to either tell you what both sources say or try to figure out what i think the truth is and i hope at some point someone's

like no joe you're wrong uh which is fine it's fine i don't care please correct me that's what research is um so one source says he was born in colombo ceylon which is modern day sri lanka and another says that he was born in hong kong which was then both of of these were British territories at the time. Some say he moved to Hong Kong when he was 10 years old, and other people say it was the other way around. He moved to Sri Lanka. Military brat? No, his dad was civil service.

British Imperial Civil Service. I don't know. The paperwork of empire. The most boring, overpowered bureaucrat on earth. It's like a super successful job. It's one of those jobs. He didn't work for the British East India Company or anything.

What was his bureaucratic number? I don't know, but he probably had one. I assume that the soulless, dead-eyed imperial worker drones that kept up the British Empire looks a lot like that episode of Futurama, just without the flying desks. I want to see a flying desk. His youth, Churchill's youth abroad, is kind of a blur.

Like I said, we do know his dad worked for the Hong Kong Civil Service and you can assume that meant that he grew up in something of a life of comfort the only real information I could find is that he was just kind of an eccentric youth something that would almost certainly be given an

ADD or ADHD diagnosis in modern day he rarely focused on school and just continued to... Same. Would run out into town trying to go on adventures. He liked exploring. His entire life he wanted to be an adventurer.

He didn't care exactly what it was. He enjoyed doing new things and a lot of those new things involved him getting in trouble. Okay. Which I can identify with. I can get down with this guy. Already liking this. This is a good episode.

This is why the next thing he did is like what most of us did, at least the two hosts of this show. And he joined the military. Though... Dumbass. Owned. Yeah. Though because he was a rich guy, he did the normal officer thing

and went to the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst in 1926. See, we didn't do that. He definitely would not graduate from Sandhurst. Like, imagine, like, Gideon, because I assume Sandhurst is a lot like West Point, where amongst the upper crust of society, every once in a while, they let normal people in. And Sandhurst is where royal family and shit go.

I believe, I'm sure Nate could interject here and be like, actually, they just give them break, which, sure. which sure um i know the whatever the royal i think is harry or whatever actually had like a normal grunt officer job for quite some time and i think he went to sandhurst but like imagine just like you like sergeant nick sitting down across from like the fucking prince like so uh you do anything you can use that spit bottle can Can I get that Coke bottle so I can spit dip in it? Got any porn? Actually, I'm going to go on a limb here and say you do not want to take

any porn a member of the royal family gives you. It's probably illegal. Oh, God. It's probably awful. Now, he did fine in Sandhurst. He wasn't like the top of his class type graduate which sure uh but churchill wanted to continue his explorations and his dad wasn't going to put up with his shit forever so he assumed the best way to continue doing that was get a commission and what a lot of these guys are do is end up in, Burma, Sri Lanka, wherever, somewhere in the far-flung British Empire, just away from the British Isles.

I truly believe that's why the British Empire became so large. It's because the British Isles suck so much that people just wanted to get as far away from them as possible. And they're like, nope, Africa isn't far enough. We have to keep going. People were just trying to get rid of their kids. They like oh we need a bigger empire here this isn't this isn't the empire is latchkey for fail sons um so he graduated when he was 20 years old and was immediately sent off to burma which is modern day myanmar Also sometimes modern-day Burma, depending on what you

read. For people who are unaware, this is also known as the place that Rambo single-handedly freed them in the span of a single movie. We did a bonus episode about that. I still identify it as Burma. I didn't know about the other name to be honest. Burma is...

Someone's going to correct me on this. My understanding is Burma is someone's going to correct me on this. My understanding is Burma was the colonial name. When it gained independence, it was switched to Myanmar. Ah, okay. And some of that is drenched in the military dictatorship wanting to put

their stamp on things. It's complicated. I don't know a lot about Myanmar. I just know that fuck the people currently shooting protesters in myanmar uh this podcast is now banned in myanmar so he got sent there and uh you know once in uniform and sent abroad, Churchill had little intention of actually being a soldier. Nice. I can respect deeply. There was a very... He did serve very briefly and was known as a Burma rebellion, but didn't see any leadership or combat.

He kind of... The whole thing was kind of over before he could do anything. And he seemed like... We've talked about this before, like the gentleman adventure where back in the day where war was just thought of as a gentlemanly, adventurous thing to do. That really seemed like

what he wanted to do. He felt like war would be like this lark. To be fair, a lot of people thought that before World War I. And then World War I happened and shook that up

for a lot of people, but he missed that. You see? He didn't watch his friends get churned into mud in the trench so he's still off trying to do his adventure thing uh that also may involve murdering people rich people are weird man uh you really are can't identify yeah and he found peacetime the peacetime army incredibly boring. So he began picking up random hobbies. So he learned how to shoot the longbow and play bagpipes. Because this man is a walking stereotype.

We have to talk about bagpipes again? Bagpipes? If Jack Churchill is the star of this episode, his bagpipes? Co-star. Bagpipes? Awfulstar. Bagpipes. Awful. Just screaming bags of your own air. I know

they can be lovely if played correctly, I guess, but I've never heard it, and not in person anyway. I've been to more than one military funeral, and the bagpipes not add anything we're not Scottish I don't know why it became a custom

I've heard a bugles played live every day in Japan yeah and did they actually get someone was it just some guy with a bugle that didn't know how to play so you just see if you're gasping for breath like evening bugle time perfect morning bugle that didn't know how to play so you just see if you're gasping for breath like evening mute bugle time perfect morning bugle time it was like like uh fry trying to play in the

holophone so like yeah yeah it's the it's the day shift strippers but but for a horn like it was they played it in the u.s barracks they played it in the in the US barracks and we didn't go off of their time. So it was just, oh my God. At that point, they're just trolling you. Oh, absolutely. And they had an announcement for everything. And they're like, attention, attention. And then they just go on for like, oh my God. We taught him how to play Bugle incorrectly as a joke.

Yeah. So this is a guy, we've talked about people like this before is that they just don't pick up new hobbies they just immediately excel at them like they're the guy that you hate like you know you introduce your friend to a hobby that you have and they just immediately become better than you at it i fucking hate that because i'm not good at a lot of things i tend to pick up things yeah i tend to pick up a lot of things i get okay at it and then i introduce something to somebody and they're fucking immediately better than me.

That's Jack Churchill. He picked up pipes and bow because... I'd have to cut his line when he'd go, no. I'll stuff a cartoonishly large stick of dynamite into his bagpipes. He learned these things because there's officers, other officers that did them

uh in burma and they taught him and then he immediately became fucking experts at them uh and this still wasn't good enough to keep his attention so he ditched his daily duties and spent literally years touring burma on a motorcycle um nice now if you're not aware of burma currently it's a quite rural place with not a lot it doesn't have a great road system outside like the major cities and this is in the fucking 30s i'm imagining uh tom cruise uh during top gun when he's driving when he's uh riding his motorcycle it always goes back to tom cruise we have a lot of Tom Cruise on here. Did you join the Church of Scientology when I wasn't looking?

Is that why you've been gone so long? You're on your Z-Soul trip? We have a lot of Tom Cruise on here. It's fair, we do. Can't bring, cannot bring him up. And he keeps making movies where we eventually go back to the Tom Cruise well. It's unfortunate.

He's like... I'm sure it'll come back up. He's just a shorter, angrier Mel Gibson. In regards to our show, I don't mean to imply that Tom Cruise is anti-Semitic. He might be. I don't fucking know.

Scientology is weird. This podcast is now banned at the Church of Scientology. I assume it already was. Probably is. Yeah. There's not a lot of roads. And this is like before motorcycle technology

was particularly good. So it's kind of impressive he managed to pull this off. For instance, between the cities of Puna and Calcutta, he rode 1,500 miles on a motorcycle. Now, Nick... Would you do that on your absolutely not i was just about to point this out i i have a motorcycle which without knowing what kind of motorcycle churchill is using i can say with certainty mine is a hundred times more

reliable and comfortable oh yeah um yours is probably a thousand times heavier it definitely is yeah i wouldn't be able to ride it where he was riding, for sure. I've done long rides. In Washington, there's the Anacortes Oyster Run or whatever, which goes to Anacortes. It's in the title. It's not even a long ride. It's like two hours or whatever,

but by the end, I'm fucking bored. My ass hurts. My ass hurts. My ass hurts. I'm bored. My knees hurt. Are we there yet? I'm just a whiny bitch, which I'm sure you've picked up on. Like sitting on...

I imagine his bike was like sitting on bleachers. Oh, yeah. For hours. Bleachers with a thin pillow over the top, maybe. Oh. And with no suspension you know uh like you know fucking 20 cc's of engine power or whatever um and also one of these times he was like going down a trail nearly got murdered by a water buffalo i don't know a lot about water

buffaloes i always assume they're pretty chill i know like cape buffaloes in africa murder a ton of people every year but i thought like water buffaloes were just chill i'm i know the chill of the buffaloes you you ruin this buffalo's fucking nirvana now he's gonna gut your ass with his weird looking horns i stand the water buffalo honestly that motherfucker didn't do anything wrong he's a water buffalo you can do water buffalo stuff buffalo stuff yeah and a lot of places where he rode there's no roads at all uh but there was a railroad system put in place by colonial uh britain so like

he rode on the railroad tracks which again incredibly uncomfortable but also occasionally he'd have to dodge oncoming trains like is it like oh train's coming and you just have to like bunny hop your motorcycle all the way or you die no no it's not something i would do no absolutely not i wouldn't do that

in a car and cars are much more comfortable even back then but whatever um so even this when he was apparently just allowed to give just years of leave to wander around Burma and the countries around it. I think that's called AWOL. If you're enlisted, yes. Even this constrained his energy a bit too much. He felt very constricted by the British military, and he got out in 1936. Though, according to his biographer, there was more to it than this. Jack Churchill began to show the eccentricities that would kind of define his life after this and why people would know him.

So he was bored. And like any bored soldier, he starts doing dumb shit. So I told you that he learned bagpipes. And one of the things that he did was randomly show up to a guard house at 3am and play bagpipes until he got bored and would just go away. I'd be so mad.

I think he was a captain or a lieutenant at the time. And the British military is much more strict those days than anything that we're used to. So you can't just be like, Hey, fuck off, Lieutenant. I'm trying to sleep. He also just didn't bother to study for his promotion exam.

So he just showed up and bombed it. And I heard another story that same. I heard another story that he studied for the wrong promotion exam, which I, both are funny. And he bombed it. So when he knew he wasn't going to get promoted the little amount of fucks that he had to give quickly dried up uh he started doing things that piss off other officers who i mean even you know back then in comparison now famously have sticks up their asses and this is the british military we're

talking about so this is like the one percent of stuck up army officers that we're used to right um this including doing things like using an umbrella when it was raining out which infuriated people and we know a little bit about this it's like using the hood on your wet weather gear drives people nuts for some reason for some reason ever when i first went to my first duty station the best duty station ever um it was ingrained not to use any of my cold weather or wet weather gear yeah or like if your hands are cold don't use your pockets oh i still use those bad boys fucking rebel um and like he it was cold one morning so he had like a hot water

bottle that he stored and like i believe it was his chest pocket to keep him warm. And the people just consider these ungentlemanly because he didn't want to get rained on or be cold. Makes sense. Yeah, it's just an old-timey hand warmer, which even the US Army lets us use without yelling at us. At this point point his commanding officer said that maybe he should try doing something else with his life so he did uh and he moved to nairobi kenya which was also then under british control uh once there he became a journalist and a male model because fuck it why not nice yeah i don't know what male modeling

looked like in the 1930s. I imagine not good. I know they weren't like modeling underwear. No, of course. That would be very, I don't know, body or whatever. And the underwear back then didn't look good. It's just like fucking wool pantaloons pulled up to your nipples. Yeah. I assume it's just an endless amount of cigarette

ads and like for like bourbon or whatever yeah I can't even imagine because I own a pair of 40s underwear why God you already know why you know I get that you're an actor but did you have to wear period authentic underwear too

I just wanted to see but it felt like like they were like giant trunks no support just made out of like the the cheapest wool possible it was literally cotton and like there was no stretch to it you're ripping it comfort hadn't been invented yet actually no because you'd wear that and then you'd wear long johns under, and then you'd wear wool over. This sounds like something that people would do in Gitmo to make them tell secrets. Oh, God.

Your ball's itch enough yet? Please. Quick, quick. Get his wool wet. I'll tell you anything. Just let me scratch my balls. After this, he became a small-time actor getting roles in the movie is sabu sabu um oh yes sabu yank at he was an ecw yeah he jack churchill became an

four-time hardcore anywhere champion um what do they call him the elephant uh fuck i can't remember his name remember his little nickname uh he was also in a yank at oxford in the thief of baghdad now i'm not familiar with any of these movies they're all small parts but the fact is like he's like i'm gonna be a journalist i'm gonna be a male model i'm gonna go be a movie star is like man fuck you save some for some of the rest of us you dickhead yeah then there's that one guy that gets out with him but he becomes like an author uh yeah unfortunately i can tell you from experience that guy is significantly less good looking yeah he didn't do any male modeling gigs no

good luck on his future podcast by the way no no we would rather have this guy mill with your book yeah it's like millie vanillie but for authors um and the reason why he got these roles is not for his acting it was because he looked really good and all of these roles were based on the character being able to shoot are you gonna post a picture oh yeah yeah okay i want to see what he looks um honestly conventionally very normal looking um okay i guess the 30s standards were quite low um and the reason was he could do his own stunts with a bow and arrow all of the rule like he got all these rules based on being moderately good looking and be able to shoot a bow and arrow i could play the bagpipes i can ride a motorcycle and i could shoot a bow and arrow he's a the bagpipes i can ride a motorcycle and i could

shoot a bow and arrow he's a triple threat baby uh and like like i said before he didn't just know how to shoot a bow he's very very good at it uh he wanted to represent britain in the world championship in oslo norway in 1939 where he got 26th place which i mean he didn't you know podium but like he did it he's certainly certainly better at shooting a bow than me. Oh, absolutely. I don't think I've ever touched one. I know I've touched one. I also know I've never hit anything with it.

Nice. He also competed in a military piping competition at the Elder Shot Tattoo. That competition would suck. It's the most annoying competition ever. And he was the only Englishman in a field of Scottish people because bagpipes are Scottish. And he placed second place,

which ended up being a bit of a scandal because an Englishman doing so well. But it was 1939 now, and it became clear to everybody, at least anybody with a brain, that war was coming to Europe. And since that was something that Churchill always wanted, he quickly rejoined the British Army. Okay. But, you know, he assumed that immediately war was going to hit,

but then we know now that what happened next was the Sitzkrieg or the Phony War. Now, for people unfamiliar with that, people expected, much like World War I or whatever, that once the UK and Germany declared war, it was going to be these massive armies moving against one another. But they accidentally found themselves in a period of relative calm on land while naval warfare was going on uh but germany had invaded poland with the help of the soviets and the soviets were getting smacked around by the fins but on the western front where people are expecting you know world war one you know redux not quite what world war ii would turn into obviously because the french were not expecting a mobility war uh spoiler alert um nothing was actually really happening everybody's defense uh like the the uk and the french defense were all based on static defensive lines they were not

planning on a drive into germany at all Some argument to say that if they did, they could have ended the war within a year because the Germans were also not ready for war in the West. But, you know, could have happened. The UK and France had declared war on Germany due to their agreement with Poland, but then lacked the ability or will to do anything about it while the Franco-German border was so fortified it looked vaguely like

the Korean DMZ. So everybody just kind of sat around it for a while. But Churchill was trying to find a goddamn war to fight in, so he volunteered to go join a group of soldiers that were planning to be sent to aid Finland because the UK and the Soviets were not allies yet.

Which was then called off. This plan was made with the help of a guy named Mike Colvert, who also has a weird life of his own, who had a tendency to run headlong into battle in front of his men, earning him the nickname Mad Mike.

I don't know about you, but if I was a soldier and the two guys in charge of me were both called Mad, I would be a little worried about my safety. Granted, Churchill had not earned that nickname yet, but he

would. Eventually, the phony war would become real, sending British and French armies into a fighting retreat towards Dunkirk. It's at this point that Churchill was an infantry commander. He didn't technically start off an infantry commander, he just kind of took over.

He was in Dunkirk? What? Where he quickly got a reputation for leading his men from the front and refusing to withdraw from battle even when ordered to or when it made sense. Just by himself sometimes yeah you guys

could go back I'm staying now one of the things that he really liked was irregular warfare he loved to raid behind enemy lines so like even when he did order a withdraw his men were drawn he'd take you know hand

pick a few that were that he thought were the best. And then he'd start raiding behind enemy lines. Um, armed with a Scottish Claymore. Oh, why? What? Uh,

for people who are unaware, a Scottish Claymore is fucking huge. Yeah. It's a fucking like seven foot sword. So it can be seven feet. His was four and a half. Oh, okay. On the small side.

But he was not only armed with a giant fucking William Wallace sword. He was also armed with a longbow and wearing a kilt. Yep. Fuck it.

Why not? This man is not Scottish, by the way. He had an identity crisis. When asked, someone eventually asked, why the fuck are you carrying a giant sword into battle? He said, quote, any officer who goes into action without his sword is improperly dressed. I think he has personality disorder or something.

Something's certainly cooking wrong up in his old brain pan. And I do have... Excuse me, sir. What's going on? Don't you mean William? Oh, he thinks he's William Wallace today. I do have to point out that people said that he would mutter war cries, which I assume is just blood-curdling screams

while swinging a claymore at people and like saying that an officer that goes into battle that assures improperly dressed again most British thing ever fair surprise not carrying like a rapier or something rather than a claymore like and just

trying to fence people that he finds along the way that would be amazing now he threw he threw another one at them all right now pull up your guard this is the german with a gun just confused german dueling uh is so weird uh obviously fencing is super popular um i believe that they're like the Prussian dueling clubs where men duel each other with sharpened swords and it's considered ungentlemanly to dodge it. So you just take a sword in the face.

What? Why? And like having the scars from the swords is considered like a mark of manliness. It's wild shit. And that continues to this day then actually the nazis tried to get rid of it because even they were like this is really stupid that's kind of hardcore like you guys are blinding and cutting off each other's noses like this is detrimental to our

superman thing so like could you stop carving each other up with swords but it continues to this day um but this is the now i know one time we wanted to do Kendo now would you do that I would not because I'm ugly enough I don't need a sword scar your nose would be a big target yeah and it's already kind of crooked so like

hopefully it's crooked enough to dodge sword blades yeah so this is the part of the story I do kind of have to break people's hearts maybe so Hopefully it's crooked enough to dodge sword blades. Yeah. So this is the part of the story I do kind of have to break people's hearts. Maybe. So the story of Jack Churchill is pretty well known. And like I said, it's developed something of its own mythos. And those mythos have then kind of developed legs. And they've been running across the internet ever since.

Around 84 miles north of Leon, um churchill churchill learned that an advancing unit of germans had decided to lay an ambush for them and i guess this is where churchill's like you can't ambush me i ambush you and send an ambush for them nice um the old razzle dazzle yeah uh so when the germans were advancing he singled and signaled the ambush by uh firing an arrow into the chest of the first german soldier killing him could you imagine how confused the other german soldiers were he just fell over there's no sound at all um there's a stick inside used to be a nazi like you until i took an arrow in the knee. And this is supposedly Nets Churchill, the only known longbow and last longbow kill of,

of, of modern war. Here's the problem. If he missed, he's like, Oh, one second. Well,

the problem is it probably never happened. And the reason for this is Churchill himself has never spoken about it and said that in fact, it couldn't have happened. According to historian James Owen in his book Commando Winning World War Two Behind Enemy Lines. Hell of a title. Maybe edit that one down next time, James. Churchill said at this point in the war, he no longer had his bow because a truck had run it over while it was packed into his rucksack breaking it and he would not

get a new one until he was evacuated back to Britain a few weeks later where do you go to just buy one I don't know it's a long bow sometimes at some malls they got like the sword guy the sword store and you can go to him but I don't think they had that back I think maybe

like I don't know Nate has told me there's American specialty stores in the UK where you go to get like I don't think they had that back then. I think maybe, like, I don't know. Nate has told me there's American specialty stores in the UK where you go to get, like, I don't know, fucking Cheez Whiz and really gross food. Really? Yeah, those stores totally exist. Maybe there's... Oh, they got, like, fucking Scrapple over there?

I think it's just, like, Hamburger Helper and other things that make your heart explode. Maybe there's also just, like, a British specialty store where you need things that are just so British um maybe there's also just like a british specialty store when you need things that are just so british you can't get them anywhere else knight's armor a fucking long bow i don't know um yeah so like he would

go back to britain get another one instead he said he singled the start of the ambush by drawing his giant fucking anime sword and rushing at the german patrol instead which again screaming the whole way that's also same thing same scenario imagine how confused the soldiers

were yeah screaming this guy has to be just filthy because he's been fighting you know the evacuation all the way back to Dunkirk for weeks at this point wearing a kilt with a fucking the evacuation all the way back to Dunkirk for weeks at this point. I don't even shout. Wearing a kilt. With a fucking... No underwear. You already know it.

I hope not. And a sword that is a foot shorter than him. And just bellowing random shit as he charges. While everybody else is shooting them, mind you. And I do have to point out that he does carry guns he just doesn't use them

he carries I believe like an m2 carbine most of the time that he's that he got from some American somewhere but uh yeah now this tale of him killing someone with a long bow has spread through dozens of different publications to the point it just become accepted

fact this includes shit rags like coffee or dye to vice and has even been noted in actual historical journals, mostly citing other historical journals. It's one of those things that just exists. Now, everything I've ever seen regarding this has been a second hand account of it occurring rather than Churchill himself talking about it and I do have to say

as much as Churchill's a fun character he loved him some Jack Churchill and if he killed a fucking guy with a bow he would have said it are you talking to the third person? I don't think so that would have been amazing he was especially when it came to his wartime service he was very when it came to his wartime

service he was very fond of talking about what he did so uh mad jack did this and uh he separates his persona so he doesn't have to confront all of the nightmares oh

he's turned that dark i mean that this man had i don't think he ever killed anybody with his sword, but he probably tried. He really wished he could. You know he wanted to. I have no doubt...

Oh, absolutely. ...that he wanted to kill someone more with a sword than he did a bow. But I have no doubt... Because Claymores are heavy. They're heavy as fuck. They're supposed to... I'm pretty sure they're really heavy

so they can cut through armor, but I'm not sure. I'm not a sword guy. I'm not much of a sword guy either. I have no doubt that if Jack Churchill killed a Nazi with a bow and arrow, that's all he would ever talk about for the rest of his life. Should have carried a katana. Those are sweet. He's the mall katana guy.

I'm not saying I don't believe it. I'm saying from what I've seen, I don't believe it. I'm saying I, from what I've seen, I don't believe it. Okay, well, I'm going to go ahead and believe it because it sounds sweet. I absolutely want to believe it. That's like one of the bad parts of being the guy who researches this stuff. It's like, oh, I wanted to talk about how he killed a Nazi with a bow. Because that's one of the things I went into knowing about Jack Churchill is like, he had a sword and he killed a Nazi with a bow.

And it turns out only 50% of those things are true. I mean, at least we get something out of it. Yeah, and I don't want to take anything away from anything else that he does. It's just like, it seems that this did not happen. I'll say undecided. undecided. If anybody has first-hand accounts or Jack Churchill talking about it, I would fucking love to see them because I'd be

really excited to talk about how Franz got his fucking lungs ventilated with a goddamn arrow. Yeah, if you somehow have like Jack Churchill tapes, somehow, go ahead and send them on in. This is a Pruder film, but it's a Nazi getting shot with a bow and arrow.

Back and to the left. Back and to the left. Multiple times. Back and to the left. Back and to the left. There is another guy with a bow and arrow on the grassy knoll. Now, this was Jack's first real campaign commanding soldiers, and he actually did not like it it and it's not for the reason that you think you know all of the death and suffering

he thought that all soldiers should be as insanely fearless and brave as he was exactly one person said that Churchill never fully understood the common soldiers desire to simply survive and live another day rather than I don't know

charging like a fucking maniac at a group of soldiers while wielding a fucking claymore all of you guys should do this i don't understand are you sleeping what we sleep you should be practicing your bagpipes it's like the scottish hagakure we must play bagpipes. It's like the Scottish Hagakure. We must play bagpipes. Now, eventually, Churchill would be evacuated along with everybody else from Dunkirk. His first campaign. Do you think he was like drag kicking and screaming? I want to stay.

Probably. Some of the things that he would say at the end of the war, which we'll get to, leads me to believe that he thought the evacuation of dunkirk was a bad idea oh yeah it's just the annihilation of that whole army uh now this campaign would cost him a unfortunately crushed longbow and a partially shot off ear while earning him a military cross once back in britain you think he's more upset about the longboard the ear probably the longbow or the ear? Probably the longbow. Absolutely. I never heard him remark anything about his ear. Didn't need it.

Got another one. That's why you have two ears, pussy. Once back in Britain he heard of another new kind of unit being stood up. The Commandos. I thought it was going to be like Inglourious Bastards or something. It kind of turns into that,

minus the cartoonish assassination of Hitler, which would have been way cooler. Yeah, that would have been great. Details were pretty vague, for obvious reasons at the time, but they promised an aggressive service, something that Churchill had been looking for. As remember, he was very disappointed at regular soldiers

and figured these new Commando types might be up to his standards. Maybe they all have claymores. Everybody's like goes to CAF and gets a bagpipe issued to them, a longbow, a fucking claymore and just a massive sling to carry your gigantic balls. Now to the surprise of absolutely nobody, Churchill fucking loved training to be a commando. Days and weeks out in the

field, freezing and crawling through the mud while eating like shit was something he'd been searching for his entire life. That's the guy I don't want to hang out with. He's a guy I want to be in the same unit as, but not go hang out with him. This guy is very good at his job. He's just an insufferable prick. I want to be in the same unit as but not go hang out with him like his this guy

is very good at his job he's just an insufferable prick if you watched generation kill that's Rudy the guy who puts on a gas mask and bought a battle rel and runs wind sprints around the fob everybody loves them but they don't want to work out

with them did you have that guy yeah Yeah, absolutely. Everybody did. I was junior that guy in the fact that wherever I was, I'd always find a way to exercise out of boredom, but I would never be like, I need to deadlift while wearing my pro mask type guy. That guy fucking sucks.

Why? What? I don't know. People do that? I've definitely seen people it's like the guy who goes to the gym wearing those stupid oxygen those o2 masks or whatever like they don't fucking do anything you goddamn idiot oh the elevation yeah they don't fucking do anything that's not elevation that's breathing through a straw congratulations just go for a jog you'll be out of breath eventually yeah let me set this to 10,000 feet unless you're doing burpees and Kilimanjaro just shut the

fuck up why the fuck are you deadlifting on Everest so yeah he loved training a bit too much unfortunately when they weren't training and we're just like back in their barracks which was in Largs Scotland he would

occasionally do what he did while he was in Burma, and that is wake everybody up in the middle of the night with vigorous bagpiping. Oh, God. Now, I was in a commando. I have been to selection. If somebody woke me up with my two hours of fucking sleep that I get with

bagpiping, I would stab them. I would fucking pop their bag immediately. As soon as I saw him walk in with the bag I'm popping it I'm gonna waterboard him with his own bagpipes yeah because from what I know it needs air to play

yes and he can't play the bagpipes if he doesn't have lungs so instead of popping the bags he's popping his lungs what are lungs but meaty bags after all um it's true so but again you know he's an officer so we can tell him like hey go play that shit somewhere else um no eventually his commando training would be over and they would be put to the test finally and the commandos are i thought they would kick them out like hey you're

like too hardcore for this. You need to go. We're going to set up your own commando unit. You're just going to be alone. And you're going to lead the Normandy invasion. Solve that problem. You'll be on the boat by yourself. Sweet.

And the commando units would finally be put to the test, raiding the Norwegian island, raiding a Norwegian island in the most accurately named operation in history. Operation Archery. I don't think they did that on purpose either.

Why archery? Usually there's something I don't know. Back in the day before the military I don't know. I can the day before the military turned bad because it's the military. It's definitely not one of the best names we've heard for operations. It was normal names for operations

which were like overlord and things like that to keep things secret. If someone found Operation Archery, it doesn't tell me anything about this. Are they going to attack us with longbowmen? Which they did. Now it's like Operation Iraqi Freedom. i know exactly what that's about and it's bad oh okay yeah yeah i mean says it in the title names used to be so much cooler now it's operation enduring

freedom operation i don't know resolute hope fucking lame give lame. It sounds like Star Wars names. Resolute Hope. Much like Star Wars, they never end. I like Star Wars. 50% of the things we just compared that to are good, and it's not the worst. I'm not a Star Wars fan, but I will say I enjoyed them much more than the Global War on Terror. It's fair. That's fair.

Probably killed fewer people now uh during the operation british and free norwegian commandos came ashore and were probably as shocked as their nazi defenders were in the middle of machine gun and artillery fire churchill stood in the middle of his landing craft which he made sure was the first one. Wearing a kilt. How the fuck did he make sure that? Bagpipes in hand and began playing loudly the March of the Cameron Men. What?

Yeah. Now this is a little weird. So this isn't the first time we've talked about bagpipes and beach landings. Way back in the day, maybe even before Nate was our producer. It was a long time ago. We talked about Bill Millen, the D-Day bagpiping guy.

Now, he played Highland Laddie as he ran ashore on D-Day. Do you remember the order that was given to him? Yes. So there was an explicit order that military pipers were no longer allowed in the British military. And Lord Lovett told Bill Millen that that order did not apply to them because they were Scottish.

Keep playing. Yeah. Now, Highland Laddie was the only song that Bill Millen knew. So he played it. Okay. And ironically enough, the unit that Bill Millen was a part of was the Cameron Highlanders. So yeah. That's kind of cool.

Yeah. So Churchill played his song that he did not know how to play. And Jack Churchill was not in the Cameron Highlanders. He's in the Commandos. Though also Bill Millen eventually became a Commando. So I'm starting to think there's something to this bagpipe thing. So, I'm still confused on how he made sure his craft was the first one. Did he sabotage the other crafts?

I wouldn't put it past him. He's like, I start ten minutes before you or something. Bumper boats. He fucking undid their lines. No, I definitely will be first now as soon as the landing craft hit the shore he ditched his bagpipes I would really like to think he has a special three point bagpipe

sling um it's not a two point he just puts it on his chest he has a chest rig for his bagpipes um he leapt ashore pulled out his fucking sword and sprinted off into what one person called quote into the thick smoke uttering warlike cries uh i would have been

confused looking at him like what shortly thereafter the town of malloy fell quickly to the commandos uh their job was like silent shore batteries so they couldn't threaten um the the rest of the invading force and the entire it seemed like the entire point of operation archery was to force the germans to station more soldiers in norway and you know take resources from one area and so they withdrew thereafter now in celebration of this, prior to withdrawing, Churchill found a bottle of wine in one of the homes that they had cleared, and he opened it to share it with his men.

And then Churchill said that a British demolition expert, quote, blew him up. What? You think he was just looking at, ooh, a nice Pinot Noir? Oh! Now, what happened was, depending on what you read as a demolitions expert was attempting to blow up a nearby

wall to set up a firing position and this guy's looking through a wine cellar and Churchill was too close so when the bomb went off it exploded the wine bottle and said glass pieces into his face if there's one thing Jack Churchill does not need,

it's a brain injury, guys. No. I'm pretty sure he already had some from his Burma days. Probably from the water buffalo. Yeah. Yeah. Now, for his actions... You think that got him thinking straight?

He was just like, what am I doing? What the fuck are these bagpipes? What is this bagpipe? Why am I wearing pants? Now, for his actions in Norway, Churchill was given another military cross. Now, with the raid in Norway over, he found himself landing in Salerno, Italy in 1943. The commander...

I'm imagining him sharpening his crosses and using them as weapons now. Throwing stars? Yeah. He's going full mall ninja. He was the commander of number two commando because the British are really bad at naming units. We already have number one. What's the next one?

That's what you got to do. The seal team six. You're just like, Oh, that's commando six. So if anybody, everybody will think that you have five other teams. That's literally how they got their name lame

I mean at an intelligence level it's so dumb it's smart but it's also kind of a fucking name factor in my eyes lame definitely you can name it like I'm a name guy Churchill's dragons I don't know their

unit patches Churchill's scrotum the fucking unit patch would look like one of those spray painted vans uh with for like hair metal bands slam fans now uh churchill i imagine like a like a chiotos fucking album cover that's exactly what it'd look like goddamn chiotos uh great band i don't care care whoever. I really wish the lead singer didn't turn into a really weird guy. Should have known. He's from Detroit. Churchill led his men into a

heavily contested beach landing and very confused fighting around the town of Marina. Someone said that they landed nearby a unit of army rangers. Pretty much both of them were just used as regular infantry because of how chaotic the fighting was.

The commando's unit's mission was to destroy the Germans' ability to place artillery fire in the western half of the Bay of Salerno, and Churchill directed the final counterattack, which broke the last German attempt to destroy the commando beachhead. But this is where things get wild because it's fucking Churchill now at one point he organizes men to six different columns single

file lines and split them up you know a commando unit is not that many people and he wanted to make them look like he had way more people than he actually did so when night fell, they went to the town of Pagalati.

Pagalati. I don't fucking know. You can't see it, but I'm doing the hand gesture. I see Borat. Wow, wow, wow. Wow, wow, we went to the town of Pagalati. My Borat is exactly the same as my fake Italian accent.

Whatever. I think they're both spot on. Greater Italy also covers Kazakhstan now. So it's nighttime. They have no night vision technology doesn't exist yet. And they're trying to organize an attack on this town, which is, you know, garrisoned by Germans.

And Churchill has to find a way to like, we have to accidentally not shoot one another. Right. Um, okay. So they, so they, friendly fire is a thing.

They, they surrounded, uh, yeah. Unfortunately for everybody, uh, uh, night vision goggles had not been invented yet,

but friendly fire had been invented hundreds of years prior. Um, so he surrounded the town with these six columns of men, and then as they charged the town, they started screaming, Commando! Commando! That's awesome. That's awesome.

That's fucking awesome. Parallel. Now, as dumb as this sounds it is dumb it worked imagine every time they do something cool like jump wall commando

combat roll commando it's like it's one of those it's so dumb it's like if it's this dumb and it works it's not really dumb because obviously if don't shoot at the screaming if you hear someone scream commando that's your

that's your command don't shoot them but also the Germans thought they were surrounded by significantly more than one unit of commandos um it can you know confused ideas from the darkness like commando oh

god come in oh shit um and like the Germans were fucking confused as hell that I'd be a third. From the darkness? Like, commando! Oh, God. Commando! Oh, shit! And, like, the Germans were fucking confused as hell. And in the darkness, Churchill, helped by a random corporal known only as Raphael, ambushed 10 different German sentry positions,

capturing them all at sword point. At one point, this group eventually grew to 42 different POWs who must have just been absolutely terrified by the sword-wielding maniac who appeared in their position in the middle of the night screaming commando in their faces. I want to hear those POW tapes.

Yes, 100%. And all we heard was commando. This insane shit got Churchill Award of the Distinguished Service Order. At the time, it was the second highest order the British military had to offer after the Victoria Cross. And also his third ninja star to add to his belt. That's right.

They're only arming him with more weapons. Now, the way that Churchill explains this is, I don't know, I would say Churchillian, but everybody just compares that to Winston Churchill, a man I deeply hate. Absolutely. So it's the better kind of Churchillian. but everybody just compares that to Winston Churchill. A man I deeply hate. Um, so, so, uh,

it, it's, it's the better kind of Churchillian. He says that all he had to do is walk into German positions and demand they surrender and broken German, which they did. He said, quote,

I maintain that as long as you tell a German loudly and clearly enough what to do, if you're senior to them, they will cry. Yeah. And get on with it enthusiastically and efficiently, whatever the situation.

That's why they make such good soldiers. I imagine it's just not broken German. It's just like how stupid Americans try to talk to people who don't speak English. Slowly and loudly. Yeah. That's all I imagine. Now, I don't think it's that much as it is

he appeared in the middle of the night in their bunker with a goddamn sword. I would surrender to. Like, if the Taliban snuck into my fighting position and brandished a claymore at me, I'm like, I guess I'm Bo Bergdahl now, buddy.

Yeah, like, fuck. I don't want to get stabbed. There's a lot of things I don't want to do one of the top of them is get cut with a goddamn sword did you get mugged in Detroit? yeah but it wasn't with a sword could you imagine that?

honestly bias the side yeah like look man I respect the hustle that you're mugging me with a goddamn Scottish claymore here take my car so after this Churchill took his show on the road the goddamn Scottish claymore. Here, take my car. So, after this, Churchill took his show on the road where the commandos were sent to Yugoslavia to help legendary partisan

Joseph Brostito. They're going on tour? The commando world tour where his partisan army was fighting the Nazi occupation forces. Now, once with the partisans, Churchill got to do one thing that he always loved to do, ambushes, because he fucking loved them so much.

He was like a pig in shit, man. He was like, I'm with people that all they do is fight irregular battles. This is my jam. Well, my comparison with ambushes is really sad compared to a lot of people that probably listen to this like i had sweet reenactor ambushes i will say i am not a fan of ambushes because i've only done the receiving end of them oh okay i during mine i used to have to check if I had real ammo. Like, holy fuck, he dropped. Now, yeah, he loved being a fucking partisan fighter.

And, you know, the partisans were deeply thankful that the British sent them help and weapons, mostly. But they also had to be very, very confused by the bagpiping because he brought his bagpipes. Absolutely. Like, is that a cat dying? Is that, what's going on? Is this supposed to make the Germans surrender? He also brought his sword and bow with him as well. Okay. Now, like I said.

Not a primary or a secondary I'd pick still. He did have a carbine. He had an M2 carbine at this point. I don't think that was anywhere near his weapon wheel. I think if we're talking RPG weapon wheel here, the carbine is solidly in inventory. Oh, it's in his backpack.

It's not on the quick swap button. Absolutely. It's something where he was told, hey, you have to carry this. He's like, alright, but I'm not going to use it. It's a key item that he never plans on using. You mean to tell me I have to clean this before I turn it in? Oh, shit. I'm not going to use it. It's a key item that he never plans on using. You mean to tell me I have to clean this before I turn it in? Oh, shit.

I'm not using this. It's weird that this guy was just so much of what he was, which is like the traditional gentleman adventure type military officer. Because those guys generally think guerrilla war is being dishonorable or whatever. He fucking loved it.

At one point, he loaned out his commandos to the Royal Navy to turn them into nighttime hit squads. Yeah. The Nazis held the Dalmatian Islands. I guess they got reports from the civilians at one particular Dalmatian

Islands. Yeah. 101 Dalmatian Islands, yeah. 101 Dalmatian Islands. Dogs. Imagine dogs. With bad hearing from the fire trucks. The Nazis were in charge of the most depressing dog pound on Earth. These areas that you'd have...

You'd have a Nazi commander that's in charge of... It's like being the area commander. He's in charge of all these villages on this particular island. It's not a concentration camp. It's just like people live here. He's the area commander of it. He was being a dickhead. He's apparently treating civilians really bad.

So members of the commandos snuck into his headquarters, dressed as civilians and machine gunned him while riding a donkey cart. This is ingloriousned him while riding a donkey cart, which this is inglorious. This is a donkey based drive by shooting. And I would say it's the first technical,

but Nestor Mock, no, but beat them by a couple of decades. Uh, finally, Churchill went too far though, during a larger raid on the Island of Brock, uh, or Brack. I don't know.

I don't speak Yugoslav or Czech. It's probably Czech. A lot of people in the comment section would be mad about that. Sorry, guys. They ran into some serious defenses. Three hilltops with Duggan defenders, each supporting each other and protected by mines,

wire, and artillery support. Not that that stopped him from attacking it, obviously. It just meant that this is gonna go badly. Attacking at night, Churchill led his joint group of commandos, royal marines, and partisan fighters against .622.

He led them from the front, of course, playing his pipes while all of the others screamed, Commando! Again, so they didn't accidentally shoot one another. And it worked! Like, again, this laying his pipes while all of the other screamed commando again. So they didn't accidentally shoot one another and it, it worked like again, this shit works because you don't expect it. People are terrified or confused and they took the hill overrunning the defenders,

but the charge up the hill and the immediate fighting afterwards reduced the size of the attackers to a small group of only six commandos, two of whom were wounded. Uh, now During the attack, most had burned through their ammo and have been down to pistols while Churchill was down to he said his last magazine was carbine but he had also fired out of that magazine as well.

So, a couple rounds there. The Germans counterattack. The man's a drop a mortar round right in the middle of the defenders, wounding or killing everyone but Churchill. Now, Churchill... You think he's calling out to them like, Commando? Commando! Just like shaking them.

Commando! Commando! We've just turned him into a brain-damaged Pokemon. We're so... We're bad people. Now, Churchill realized that he was well and truly fucked.

He was the last man standing and he was out of ammo. So he put down his weapon. Just where he'd like to be. This is where I figured it would be the scene from Game of Thrones where he's unsheathing his sword while a whole bunch of Germans charge him or whatever.

I still haven't seen it. You've made me watch the last episode and that's about it. Save yourself the trouble. I didn't make you watch anything. You watched it at my house because I was watching it as it came out. I had no options. Now, at this point, Churchill realized I'm fucked. He sets down his empty rifle, unslings his bagpipes from the aforementioned three point bagpipe sling

and starts playing he played will ye no come back again it's like the Titanic exactly he's like yep it's been an honor gentlemen at this point he was waiting for the Germans to just come and kill him

what finally stopped him from playing was a German grenade blindly thrown over the defense's landing right next to him launching more shrapnel into his head they were trying to stop that shit they're like oh god stop the peg piping and yeah he got more shrapnel in his fucking head just right next to the wine glass i keep my grenade right next to my wine glass, Ragnall. It knocked him unconscious. When German soldiers went into the position, they kicked

him to see if he was still alive and it woke him up. Now, there's a reason why he assumed that he was fucking doomed. That's because he was operating as an irregular commando. Hitler had ordered all of these men to be murdered. Turned over to the Gestapo, where they would

then be shot. I think it was called the Commando Order. It's kind of like what you'd expect, why you see people carry cyanide pills. Because they know, long story short, at the end of the day, we're going to be executed. It's just going to be awful getting to that point. You might as well just kill yourself if you're captured.

Bring a toaster and a tub with you? Whatever. That seems a lot harder and very situational. I'd pull it off. Ha ha! They didn't expect I'd lead them back to this bathroom. Oh, the water seems to be down. Didn't pay my bill this month.

Now, this is where where this order was not universally put into place um a lot of the old school german officers though the prussian types so to speak yes thought it was very dishonorable to execute captured soldiers and now this is not us diving into clean Wehrmacht theory. This happened very piecemeal. It's not a monolith here. There's one German captain named Thuner was one of those types. He told Churchill, quote, you are a soldier as I am. When the Gestapo showed up to take them prisoner, Thuner told Churchill, quote, I refuse to allow these civilian butchers that deal with you i shall have nothing uh having received this order so he just pretended he didn't get the

commando order and it's kind of incredible when you think about it in the grand scheme of things the nazis also hated their own cops like how much of a bastard do you have to be for nazi soldiers to be like the Gestapo have gone too far. You know what I mean? Yeah. I imagine he told him, like, suck my ass. Like, I'm a Nazi, but I'm not Gestapo, you monsters. Another more plausible reason as to why not to shoot him was,

remember what his name is jack churchill right when he was captured the germans thought he was related to winston churchill the british prime minister so like we can't kill this guy he's worth something uh and he wouldn't be the first relative of one of the heads of state to take part in this war like st Stalin famously let his son get captured and murdered by the Germans. There's some evidence to suggest that he tried some rescue operation or whatever. But like, you know,

it happened. I believe more... I'm not going to say a head of state, but I know Roosevelt's son was an officer. Was it FDR's son or Teddy's son? Wasn't it Teddy's? I don't know. It probably wouldn't surprise me. That's for fucking sure. I don't think

FDR had a son. I think the polio kind of held him back. Yeah, it definitely puts a damper on things. But he wasn't. There was no relation between Jack and Winston Churchill. Now, there is no for sure evidence of this,

as in like no written document saying, we believe this man is Winston Churchill's cousin or whatever. But when Churchill was packed up and sent to a POW camp, it was a common thing, as we both know, that soldiers talk, rumors spread. So by the time he got to the POW camp, that soldiers talk, rumors spread. So by the time he got to the POW camp, everybody assumed he was Winston Churchill's family member.

During one of the flights towards a POW camp where he's packed into a plane, which wasn't common, POW planes were not common for the Germans. So that also leads evidence to believe they thought he was Winston Churchill's nephew or whatever. Or cousin or, I don't know, third guy once removed of some kind. But this is where Churchill

proved that he was going to be a real bastard to keep as a POW. He managed to smuggle some matches and paper onto a plane and then set it on fire. I thought he was going to turn into like MacGruber. it's kind of weird because like and he somehow came up with like an aa gun inside the plane like how the fuck what was he planning here like worst case scenario this fire rages out of control he crashes the goddamn plane

with you inside commando and jumps out tucks and rolls screaming through the air commando commando commando flap um commando uh yeah and then when he got caught uh it was obvious it was in front of him he's like oh i was just having a smoke and reading the newspaper

this raging fire next to him yeah that's my that's just my lighter this caused an emergency landing, and he was eventually thrown in solitary confinement in the Saxon House and Concentration Camp, which sounds awful. It does. Now, once he was released from solitary confinement

for being a shithead, there was more evidence to believe that they thought that he was Winston Churchill's family. He was tossed into Special Camp A, which was a POW camp designated for very important POWs, which he was not. It was just a commando that should have been executed. Jesus. But the camp... The luck on this guy.

The camp did not hold him very long. He and an RAF officer tunneled out in 1944. It's not surprising. No, of course. And actually, the RAF officer was one of the guys who took part in the Great Escape. Really? Yes. What?

Yeah, he was one of the few guys who didn't get shot for it. Do you think the RAF guys keep telling Churchill, like, Hey, shut up. Every time you shovel, you just say comm every time every time you commando commando under his breath i'm gonna say it when he leaves i'm gonna say it again um yeah and for a couple days the two wandered through the woods at night stealing vegetables and jumping on freight trains in order to put some distance between them and the camp. But unfortunately, they strayed too far to the city or too close to the city of Rostock,

125 miles away from the camp and got caught. That's a good run. Yeah. At this point, he was shipped off to a different camp, this one in Austria, where he was one. That sounds awful. It was a VIP camp again because like, oh, Winston Churchill's family is being a naughty boy. You got to throw him in the... Do you think he was playing. That sounds awful. It was a VIP camp again, because like, oh, Winston Churchill's family's being a naughty boy.

You got to throw him in the... Do you think he was playing along with it? Like, yeah. I think he was smart enough to not point out the fact that they were wrong, which is just as smart as he is. Aren't you Winston Churchill's cousin? Yeah, sure, buddy. Whatever you say.

Aren't you this guy? Commando. Commando, commando, commando. Yeah, aren't you this guy? Commando. Commando, Commando, Commando. Yeah, the hand grenade fragments really scrambled him there at the end. He's speaking a broken, lost language.

He only speaks in bagpipe whistles in Commando. Yeah, TBI. Same. I mean, that's why I play bagpipes. Now, um... Yeah. Or like post-fight MMA fighter. The narrator's note, he does I play bagpipes now um or like he does not play bagpipes um

now he was sent to Austria to a VIP camp where he and 139 other prominent POWs and other persons were part of a mass transfer of POWs in the final weeks of the war that was personally ordered name by name by Adolf Hitler.

Oh. Now... VIP. Yeah. So everybody in Germany thought this guy was fucking Winston Churchill's family. Everyone. Because there's no reason that Adolf Hitler would name him amongst all of these other people.

Some of these other people. Like some of these other people are like field marshals. Um, yeah. Like, uh, uh, the people from the, the plot to kill Hitler's family,

shit like that. Like, right. Very important people. These is bargaining chips. And then there's one random fucking Lieutenant Colonel. Could you imagine like the hole he's digging for himself at one point he's

have to prove he's Churchill's family so he's just gonna drink an entire bottle of gin and murder a nearby Indian person now something that Winston Churchill enjoyed doing now this is in the final weeks of the war shit has hit the fan and what it comes down to is it seems like germany really thought they'd be able to use these people as bargaining chips like for

negotiations and concessions despite the fact that at this point unconditional surrender is the only surrender that the allies would have accepted um a lot of these guys like i said were called sippenhoft or prisoners of collective guilt so like I said, were called Sippenhoft or prisoners of collective guilt. So like if your dad was a German general that pissed off Hitler and got thrown in prison, you'd also get thrown in prison because Nazi reasons.

I think he'd look at my dad and go, hmm, you're brown. You're certainly a few shades darker than what we were used to. But what did you say your last name was? Hitler. Yeah. Oh, shit. We're family.

Whatever you say, buddy. Now, like I said, these POWs were marched off into Austria, and they were escorted by none other than the SS Death's Head Unit, which

is not a good sign. If I was to be confident in my ability to survive something like, huh, these guys are wearing skulls and crossbones on their uniform, huh? What's your unit called? Oh, the Totenshof Band. That's not good. I don't know German, but the symbols don't look good. It's like that. I don't know German, but

the symbols don't look good. It's like that skit where they're like, you think we might be the bad guys? I mean, we had skulls on our hats. Yeah. And they also had like these guys were to execute all of these people if any of this shit

was to go sideways. But things didn't go sideways. They just kind of stopped. Because to go sideways. But things didn't go sideways. They just kind of stopped. Because it's Churchill. Well, Churchill didn't have a lot. This guy has great luck. He does. He's tripping over his own dick

into surviving the end of the war. Like, I would have died back at Burma. Yeah, I definitely would have died of like diphtheria or some shit. I would have contracted some tropical disease and died. I also would have been murdered by the water buffalo

trying to make a friend out of it now at this point of the war remember the battle of Berlin's going on it's in its final stages so all communications from the government have stopped so you know the communications between the SS POW guards and

Berlin stopped so they didn't get orders of what exactly what the fuck to do next so they stopped at the Austrian town of Niedorf or Niedorf I don't know where one of the guards got very very drunk and

Jack Churchill picked his pocket because of course he did this is also something he's apparently good at well he's picking the pocket whatever the commando whatever the commando word for whatever the German word for commando is so he can blend in

yikes commando this revealed orders that that the SS guards had been given explicit orders to execute every military officer, which meant him, but also a guy named Boguslaw von Bonin, who had been thrown in prison for disobeying Hitler.

And he was a general, so he had a lot of people who had pole and whatever in the dying government of the Nazis. So he decided to call in a favor for the commando of the Bolzano headquarters in, uh, in Italy, which was not very far away. Bonin told his friend what was going on and the guards were going to kill

him. And his friend sent, uh, soldiers from the Wehrmacht, uh, North into Austria. And I believe it's North and South Tyrol regions. Oh,

not important, but to secure and's North and South Tyrol regions. Not important. But to secure and defend these POWs from the SS. Now, we've talked about this in a previous episode while you were gone in Castle Eider, but this is the end of the war.

I'm really sad that I missed that one. Yeah, I'm sad you missed a lot. This is the end of the war. Everybody knows what's happening. Everybody knows they're fucked, and everybody's simply trying to protect their own asses. So there was a lot of fracturing between the SS and the Wehrmacht.

As you would see later on, as the Wehrmacht officers, like in our Clean Wehrmacht episode, blamed the SS for every bad thing that ever happened. So like... Solid. So like they're attempting to save their own ass and there's a very good... Everybody knows how important these prisoners

are. Not only within Germany, but without Germany. Like, you know, you have Winston Churchill's cousin there, right? Supposedly. So everybody wants to get on the good graces of somebody. And that's why he deploys Wehrmacht forces north to secure and defend these POWs. It's not

out of the goodness of his heart, though admittedly, he probably doesn't want his friend to be executed. But, you know, also, if the war was going in any other direction, he probably wouldn't care that his friend was getting executed, because if he cared, he's next. It was a very important time to be

on somebody's good side. The SS and regular soldiers had something of a standoff um i don't want to call it a mexican standoff because they're nazis uh a nazi standoff i don't know uh before the ss was finally ordered to stand down releasing the prisoners right then and there though many stood around and waited uh because the vermont did promise to protect them and they had a legitimate worry that at this point there's gestapo and ss guys wandering through austria executing people they think are defeatists executing people they think are deserters definitely executing pows it's like i'm gonna stay with these Nazis to protect me from my other Nazis could you imagine going off the I think idea

what do you mean that sucks hey I think this of you fuck yeah like you get caught just getting milk from this you look like a deserter

how do you respond to that I had a draft deferment just getting milk from this. They're like, you look like a deserter. Uh, uh, like, how do you respond to that? I think I had a draft deferment because, um, I just, I don't know. What's a good one.

Uh, conscience is subjector. Oh no, that would definitely get you killed. Uh, command. There's, there's no good way to escape the SS desk squads.

It turns out. Not Churchill, though. He didn't feel like sitting around and waiting with the Wehrmacht. So he turned and started walking south into Italy, covering 93 miles over the course of eight days with a sprained ankle, apparently. Sprained ankles do suck. He ran into an American armored unit outside the city of Verona

and Churchill was all by himself and hadn't shaved or cut his hair or really bathed in quite a long time so he had a really really hard time trying to like convince these random Americans that like no no no

the screaming insane person that came out of the woods, I'm a lieutenant colonel in the British Army. Commando, commando, commando, commando, commando. You have to go find a ranger that speaks fluent commando or something. Yeah, that's definitely not an army unit. When he finally got a chance to get briefed on the goings on of the war in Europe, because he didn't really know everything that was going on. Could you imagine fucking Loder Kasabian

trying to talk to this guy? Yeah, sure, buddy. I'm sure you're a colonel. What unit did you see her in? Commando! Commando! Commando! Whatever, dude.

Ah, yes, he speaks TBI. Perfect. Just stay the fuck away from me. You smell like shit. Actually, I'd be a tanker in World War II. I me you smell like shit actually i'd be a tank in world war ii i would also smell like shit we bond over it yeah now uh when he finally learned what was going on in europe he got really bummed out he had missed out on years of war which remember he really enjoyed um he then told his friends, there are still blank. Aren't there? Now,

the word I censored there is a racial slur for Japanese people. Let's start to the letter. And I'll let you, I'll let you fill in the blank. Uh, I got on your own, in your mind. If you say it out loud,

you're canceled. Um, but so he's trying to go to the Pacific. Yes. Uh, he, uh, was an old timey racist, but also he really wanted to get down on some more

against the Japanese. Churchill recovered this time from his various injuries to his head and also his sprained ankle. Are they really recovered, though? Visibly. Maybe the ankle, yes. He does have some scars on his head

from the day he dies. And also his brain looks like an NFLfl linebackers at this point uh he was sent back to burma to take part in what was becoming the biggest fight against what was left of the imperial japanese military but by the time he got there the u.s dropped the bombs on hiroshima and nagasaki and the war was over oh he was He was fucking mad. He remarked to a friend, quote, if it hasn't been for those goddamn yanks, we could have kept the war going for another

10 years. He would have loved the G1. He would have been all about the global war on terror. He doesn't even care why. Absolutely. But now in his 40s and the war gone, it seemed like his time killing strangers across the globe in the name of adventure was over but it wasn't at age 40 he qualified as a paratrooper and was

sent to the palestinian mandate which was rapidly turning into a violent mess as the international community fucks over the palestinian population and everybody starts killing one another. I know airborne guys' knees and back suck now. I can't imagine airborne guys back then. As his knees and cartilage explode and ACLs rupture in every direction, he's up probably like, yes! This is awesome!

I live for this! During his time at the Palestinian mandate, he kept doing what he normally did. Incredibly irresponsible, but heroic shit. One day, a Jewish medical convoy was ambushed near where he was stationed. As he had just

walked off a parade field, he was unarmed and wearing a dress uniform, which consisted of a kilt, a bonnet, knee-high red and white socks, and white spats. He grabbed some soldiers nearby who did have rifles and jumped into a barely armored car,

running directly into the ambush zone into oncoming fire, where he got out of the car, armed only with a walking stick, calmly trod over to the kill zone to make contact with the trapped medical convoy. He offered to guide them out of the ambush, but was refused.

He told them that, like, I can take you little by little out of here. I only have these two cars or whatever. Was it a Toyota Hilux or something? You know, if it was a Toyota Hilux, he could have saved everybody. This podcast is brought to you by Toyota-thon. And the people in the medical convoy were also kind of mad

that he wasn't actively attempting to assault through the ambush. But he pointed that he only had 12 men, very few guns, and there was hundreds of Palestinian fighters shooting at them. So he's like, I'm trying to save your life. The people in the convoy refused, assuming that the Haganah or the Jewish Defense Force would come and save

them. They didn't. 77 of the 79 people inside the convoy were murdered in what would become known as the Hasada Medical Convoy Massacre. Oh, God. Now, there's some argument whether this is a military convoy or not. And there were some

armed Haganah fighters inside the convoy, but the vast majority of people were unarmed medical staff, so I think we can all agree that's bad. Jesus. In another turn of events where that convoy came from, he went back to a hospital on top

of mount scopus and helped evacuate 700 people mostly hospital staff and patients from the university and hospital again while wearing a bright kilt and armed with a stick he never fired a single shot while in the palestinian mandate and saved over a thousand people. Wow. While he may have been a crazy shrieking sword wielding maniac during war, none of that seemed to follow him

during his peacetime life. He went to Australia, taught land air warfare, which I guess we would just consider, I don't know, SAS school now. And he learned how to surf.

With Australians? Yeah. He learned how to surf and eventually make his own surfboards. And again, became way too good at it. He went back to the UK and became the first person to serve the tidal bore of the Severn River. It's weird. I didn't know you could surf on a river, but apparently this tidal bore creates waves that are like fucking six feet tall. Yeah, I come from where there's ocean, so I don't know anything

about that. Yeah, I assumed to surf you had to be I don't know, where I am. Doesn't Michigan have some pretty good surfing in the... No. Not that I've ever heard of. Lake Superior has massive waves, but

they're like waves that swallow barges. I would not want to surf them. Also, the water is deathly cold. But yeah, apparently the tidal board of the Severn River is crazy huge, and he was the first person to ever surf it on a handmade surfboard that he made himself. Was it like a fucking door? I made this myself.

I took the doorknob out and filled it full of resin. I just kicked this door down. With surfing and stretched out bagpipes. Fucking Rosen Jack's door from Titanic. Though he was still a weird dude. When he rode the train home, he would open his window and chuck his briefcase out

without saying anything to anyone. The reason for this is because he had learned that the train passed right by his house and if he timed it just right, he could huck his briefcase onto his back

lawn. Could you imagine a random guy walking by? Just takes a briefcase to the dome. That's like some real fucking TV. The train whipping by you, sir. Commando! Yeah. Oh, I think that shit gone. And, you know,

someone asked him why the fuck he did that. He said he didn't feel like carrying it all the way home from the train station. Which makes me wonder what the fuck he was carrying his briefcase that made it just so heavy. Fucking concealed carry claymore? Yeah, it just folds out like a baton.

Now, he was in the army all the way up until 1959, but had enough of it. Was he in Korea? No. Oh, I thought he'd want to go to that. He was over it. It seemed like his time in the Palestinian mandate really made him see how bad war was

or at least his active part in wanton violence because after his turn in Palestine, he voluntarily worked a desk job to finish out his career and retire. He absolutely could have gone to Korea if he wanted to and admittedly by then he was fucking like 60 years old just every time he was

typing he finished a fucking like memo commando he signs it commando Colonel Churchill that is not your and like also the British military deeply respected him but at the same time didn't want people to take him as like an example because he never got promoted again

oh geez he stayed colonel forever that is awesome now he lived his life quietly making remote control warships which were on brand incredibly high quality and high demand from

other people who into this weird hobby uh but he stayed at home quietly with his wife who he married uh back when he had first got out of the military and died in 1996 at the age of 89 how do you keep up with this guy you don't sometimes like a man is born that is just so much embodies what exactly he is that it can never be outdone you know i mean like yeah like i i consider like what we did all the time this friendship was fucking awesome we did bars gym that's pretty much it. If you ever did like, hey, let's go fucking parkour my neighbor's roof,

I'm bailing on you. You want to go scream commando and do front flips off our neighbor's roof? No, I'm good. So Nick, we have a segment on the show called Questions from the Legion, and we will make this one quick as this episode has grown long if you'd like to ask us a question from the legion

you can donate a dollar or more to the show slide into our dms our discord our email or patreon and ask us a question or if you send joe a pigeon with a letter on it. Load it into a bag pipe and fire it out one of the other pipes in my general towards the Pacific Ocean. You'll get it. Now this week's question from Legion actually builds off last week's question from the Legion. Last week we were talking about of all of the people we've ever

talked about, who would you want to be your squad leader? This one is what fictional character would you want to be your squad leader? Fuck. I'm saying Goku. What? I'm going with motherfucking. I thought it was people that we talked about. First of all.

These are fictional characters. They can be fucking anybody. I'm going with Goku. Well, I'm going to go ahead and keep up with Star Wars. I have to pick Captain Rex. Why Captain Rex? I'm unfamiliar with him. He's a great clone commander.

Are you serious? Like I said, I'm not a Star. He's a great clone commander. Are you serious? Like I said, I'm not a Star Wars guy, so I don't know. Is this... Does he work with Captain Kirk? Oh, fuck. I did it on purpose. I know the difference. He worked with Jedi's closely. See, I know I want Goku

to be my leader because obviously he's killed God or whatever. Do you think he'd push you in the gym really hard? You know he would. He'd have a time chamber for the whole squad to work out in. We'd all eat together. And if you die, he'll find a way to bring you back to life.

Oh, he does have that good feast going on after the gym. Yeah, I'm still going with Captain Rex. If you get shot in the face or whatever, Staff Sergeant Goku is going to go find the Dragon Balls and bring you back to life. You're only dead temporarily. You might die a lot, especially if you're... You also got those Lima beans that he's got.

Yeah, yeah. After you Ruckmart 30 fucking miles, eat a Sensu bean, you're good to go, baby. Yeah, no, I got to go with Captain Rex. You might be able to teach me how to fly. No, I don't. If Krillin can learn, I can learn. Fuck that little guy alright

that little bald bitch who just dies constantly aren't you going bald yes and I would like to think one day I'm going to wake up and I'm just going to have a full head of hair again but you know what Nick the hair never came the hair isn't coming

maybe the sensu beans will bring it yeah Goku would find a way he'd bring me back to life there's still two more wishes right for the dragon balls so like maybe spot me ahead of hair bro look at all the hair you got spot me some of the hair um when you go super sane there's just a piece missing you know because i was always deeply curious and i'm sure there's some kind of media that shows me what would happen because like all the way back I'm being old now the Saiyan saga of Dragon Ball Z has Nappa who is bald what happens when he goes Super Saiyan

does his eyebrows just turn blonde the world will never know Akira Toriyama answer my questions if you can so Nick again. Thank you for being on the solidly dudes rock episode of lions led by donkeys. And this means the next episode will be depressing because this one has been too fun. I felt that I felt the presence coming on that one.

And everybody else. Thank you again for supporting the show. And until next time. Commando. Yes.