Britain's One-Man Army
When Adrian Carton de Wiart arrived in Poland in 1919 he had already travelled the world as a British soldier and fought with most of it. He wore a black patch over the hole where his left eye had once been and his left sleeve was empty, the hand having been blown off. Under his immaculate khaki uniform were numerous other bullet holes collected during his military adventures.
De Wiart's basic fighting technique was to catch enemy bullets with parts of his body and then toss them back while screaming "Is that the best you can do!" This may have been why he was chosen to lead the British Military Mission to Poland. Within months of independence, Poland was at war with most of its neighbours. The British government sent De Wiart to help, presumably with the idea that he could stroll around Poland's borders absorbing any incoming enemy fire.
Nobody is quite sure how De Wiart got into the British Army in the first place. He was half Belgian and half Irish, but he was at university in England when the Boer War broke out. Giving a false name and lying about his age, he was in South Africa before anybody, including his parents, knew anything about it. He almost immediately demonstrated his ability to attract bullets by getting shot through the lung.
Most people who experience near-fatal gunshot wounds transfer to professions where the chances of it happening again are minimal. Not De Wiart. When World War I started, he headed to East Africa because he had heard there were opportunities for people willing to ride camels directly at heavily armed Islamic fundamentalists. In one encounter, he was shot in the eye, then through the ear, and then in the same eye again. It was only after being shot in the eye twice that he agreed to take a break and wear an eye patch.
Tiring of sunshine and deserts, De Wiart transferred to the front line in Europe. He fought in some of the bloodiest battles of World War I. Over the course of the next two years he had his hand blown off and was shot in the back of the head, the ankle, the hip, the leg and the ear. Germany surrendered in 1918 largely because almost all of their steel and lead was embedded in various parts of De Wiart's body. Summing up his World War I experiences, he later wrote: “Frankly I enjoyed the war…”
One of de Wiart’s first jobs in Poland was to attempt to arrange a peace treaty with Ukrainian nationalists. He is said to have become ‘annoyed’ with the Ukrainians after they machine gunned the train he was travelling on and he petitioned the British government to send the Poles weapons. When Britain refused, he borrowed a train and began smuggling guns in from Hungary. Poland started to like him.
A short time later, as the Soviet Army closed in on Warsaw, De Wiart made sure he was close to the action. When his train was attacked by a detachment of Russian cavalry, he climbed out of the window and fought them off. It may have been the revolver he was firing with his one remaining hand, or it may have been the fact that the Russians recognized De Wiart and decided they would be safer taking on the Polish Army instead.
De Wiart made many friends in Poland and remained here for 20 years. He spent much of this time living in a hunting lodge deep in the Pripyat Marshes, where he is said to have shot tens of thousands of assorted wildfowl. De Wiart’s house was just a few miles from the Russian border. When he wasn’t slaughtering the local wild life, I imagine he sat on his balcony staring to the east and muttering: “Just try it.”
He left Poland for the last time in 1939 when the German army snuck up behind him. Any normal 60-year-old man might have retired at this point. Not De Wiart. He saw action throughout World War II, including invading Norway and being shot down over the Mediterranean. He later became a close friend of Chinese warlord Chiang Kai-shek, broke his back, recovered, and then married a woman 25 years younger than him.
Jamie Stokes