It was May 1940, and the German officer’s unit was attacking toward a village called l’Epinette, near Bethune, France. Five of his soldiers took cover behind a farmyard wall, sheltered from the fire of British rearguards covering the retreat of the British Expeditionary Force to the English Channel. Without warning, one German crumpled, the feathered tip of an arrow sticking out of his chest. From a small farm building on their flank, rifle-fire tore into the others. While he may have known that his enemy was soldiers of the Manchester Regiment, the German leader could not have known that they were led by the formidable Captain “Mad” Jack Churchill. It was Churchill’s own arrow that skewered the luckless German, while his men’s rifles accounted for the rest. However deadly, bows and arrows were surely anachronisms in modern war. They were formidable soldiers and always had been, precisely the sort of men Jack Churchill was cut out to lead.
But then, so was the bowman.
John Malcolm Thorpe Fleming Churchill—known as “Jack Churchill” to his friends, and later “Mad Jack Churchill” or “Fighting Jack”—was a professional soldier, son of an old Oxfordshire family. Born in Hong Kong, Churchill graduated from the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst in 1926 and was commissioned in the Manchesters, a storied regiment with battle honors dating back to the 18th century. The regiment had been raised as the 63rd and 96th Regiments of Foot and had shed their blood for Britain all across the world. Forty-two battalions of Manchesters served in World War I alone.
Jack Churchill’s younger brother, Tom, also became a Manchesters officer, and in time would rise to major general, retiring in 1962. His younger brother, called Buster, opted for the Royal Navy’s Fleet Air Arm and died for his country off Malta during the fierce fighting of Operation Pedestal.
