eccentric brit in WWII
Mar. 14th, 2009 07:30 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rmdso, i hadn't realized the brits had a guy in WWII who went into battle with a claymore.
not a 'claymore mine'. fuck that. the guy carried a fucking claymore sword. and a longbow. he is the only british soldier in WWII known to have killed an enemy soldier with a longbow.
wikipedia article on Fighting Jack Churchill
and the dude surfed.
found via cracked.com's list of 5 real life soldiers who make rambo look like a pussy.
not a 'claymore mine'. fuck that. the guy carried a fucking claymore sword. and a longbow. he is the only british soldier in WWII known to have killed an enemy soldier with a longbow.
wikipedia article on Fighting Jack Churchill
and the dude surfed.
found via cracked.com's list of 5 real life soldiers who make rambo look like a pussy.
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no subject
Date: 2009-03-14 12:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-14 01:40 pm (UTC)CAPSLOCK DOES NOT EVEN BEGIN TO COVER THAT SITUATION
As the ramps fell on the first landing craft, Churchill leapt forward from his position playing The March of the Cameron Men on bagpipes,[2] throwing a grenade and began running towards the bay.
...
only Churchill and six others managed to reach the objective. A mortar shell killed or wounded everyone but Churchill, who played "Will Ye No Come Back Again?" on his pipes as the Germans advanced. He was knocked unconscious by grenades and was flown to Berlin for interrogation after being captured
no subject
Date: 2009-03-14 01:57 pm (UTC)I did try to take a sword with me, though.
no subject
Date: 2009-03-14 02:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-14 02:42 pm (UTC)a Scot, of course, but the rest are pretty damn cool
Loved the writing
Date: 2009-03-14 04:29 pm (UTC)Like this bit about Hayah:
"Supposedly, they had the location right, and he actually got hit by a cloud of shrapnel that tore his coat up, but didn't actually hurt him, because he's the fucking White Death, damn it."
And:
"In To Hell and Back, Audie Murphy plays Audie Murphy, a badass war hero who proves his worth on the battlefield with his awesome badassery. The movie was the highest-grossing film Universal made, a record it held for 20 years until the making of Jaws. That's right, they actually needed a movie about a giant, man-eating, shark to top Audie Murphy's awesomeness."
no subject
Date: 2009-03-14 05:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-14 05:47 pm (UTC)It is only because of a shred of social awareness that I'm not going to launch into a huge discussion of the White Death's mittens, here.
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Date: 2009-03-14 06:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-14 06:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-14 06:38 pm (UTC)His mittens are, if you know what to look for, not knitted, but made via an old technique called naalbinding, which results in a very heavy, dense, WARM mitten. It's also quite inflexible, but -- again if you look -- this mitten has two notches, one for the thumb and one for the trigger finger. This means he can shoot with them on.
Usually, the Finnish army wore very thin handspun gloves underneath the naalbinded mittens, with fingerless mitts over those. The gloves were thin enough to let them do most of their rifle work, and if they did have to take them off, the mitts meant that their hands would get cold much more slowly. With the naalbinded mittens over them, the snipers' hands would stay basically toasty warm, which put them at a HUGE advantage over the russians who had to do all their rifle maintenance with frozen fingers.
no subject
Date: 2009-03-14 06:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-14 06:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-14 07:00 pm (UTC)yeah, but not until later, so no Apocalypse Now moments.
no subject
Date: 2009-03-14 07:30 pm (UTC)awesome.
it's a shame you didn't succeed. that would've been EVEN AWESOMER.
no subject
Date: 2009-03-14 09:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-15 01:12 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-15 01:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-17 02:59 am (UTC)