The Solidier Who Simply Refused to Die
AKA the "unkillable" soldier
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Love action heroes? John Wick, Rambo, James Bond? Then, here’s your guy.
The only difference: He’s real, and he’s tougher than all of the above.
The guy you’re going to get to know today survived 6 wars, including the two largest in history, and lived to fish peacefully in his old age.
And the craziest part? He thought all of this was perfectly normal. Not a problem.
Man, even Marvel superheroes are children on a playground compared to this guy.
How It All Began
The man we’re talking about today is Adrian Carton de Wiart.
That’s him in 1904 ⬇️
Born to Belgian and Irish parents in 1880, Carton de Wiart’s life reads like an impossible work of fiction.
Cool sidenote: Winston Churchill himself described him as “a model of chivalry and adventure,” but even that feels like an understatement.
Young Adrian wasn’t destined for a military career.
Born into privilege, he was studying law at Oxford when the Second Boer War broke out in 1899.
Like many young men of his era, he felt the call to adventure. Unlike most of them, he dropped out of university, lied about his age and identity (using his mother’s maiden name), and sailed to South Africa to fight.
This would mark the beginning of an almost unbelievable military career spanning six decades and 6 wars, the Second Boer War, First World War, Polish–Soviet War, Polish–Ukrainian War, Polish–Lithuanian War,
and the Second World War.
It was during the First World War that Carton de Wiart began building his reputation as the soldier who couldn’t be killed.
Seriously. Unkillable!
Wounded And Sent Home
His first stop was Africa. In a time of colonial conflict.
During his first war action in the Second Boer War, Carton de Wiart was shot in the stomach and groin. Shortly after, he was sent home.
But, of course, this didn’t last long.
In September 1901, he was back in South Africa to fight again. Now as a newly-appointed lieutenant the 4th Dragoon Guards.
Turns out, this was all just the beginning…
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Back At It Again
In 1914, while fighting in WWI in Somaliland (modern-day Somalia), Adrian Carton de Wiart was shot twice in the face, losing his left eye and a piece of his ear.
Read that again.
Most people would call it quits right there, maybe take up gardening or something.
Not Adrian. Noooo!
He slapped on an eye patch and kept fighting like some kind of superhero pirate.
But wait, it gets “better”.
During the Battle of the Somme 1916, his left hand got mangled badly, and when the doctors were like, “We can’t amputate those fingers right now,” this absolute madman BIT THEM OFF HIMSELF.
Remember, this is a true story!
Not a Hollywood movie.
Later, when the doctors finally decided to amputate the whole hand, his reaction was basically, “Good riddance, that thing was getting annoying anyway.”
By the end of WWI, this man had been shot through his head, ankle, leg, hip, and ear.
And he crashed planes like they were bumper cars. We’ll come back to that in a minute.
Oh, and he casually won the Victoria Cross — basically the biggest deal in British military honors — and then barely mentioned it in his memoirs because apparently, it wasn’t interesting enough to talk about.
The “Retirement” Years
Just Kidding. He was only getting started. Mid-life crisis who?
Most sixty-year-olds are thinking about retirement communities and golf.
Carton de Wiart? Nope. When WWII broke out, he was like, “Round two, let’s go!”
While on a flight to Yugoslavia in 1941, he crashed another plane (of course), this time into the Mediterranean.
And keep in mind, this is a one-handed, one-eyed, sixty-year-old man we’re talking about.
He swam to shore (because of course he did), only to get captured and sent to an Italian POW camp.
Now, most folks would probably think, “Well, I’ve had a good run.”
But Adrian “I Don’t Know What Quit Means” Carton de Wiart spent seven months digging a tunnel with his fellow prisoners. Seven months!
When he escaped, he spent eight days on the run, surviving on stolen vegetables like a ninja warrior gardener, before being caught again.
He was eventually released as part of a prisoner exchange and, unsurprisingly, went right back to serving as Churchill’s representative to China.
“I Enjoyed the War”
So, let’s quickly recap… because a lot happened here.
Wikipedia summed the story up perfectly:
“He served in the Boer War, First World War, and Second World War. He was shot in the face, head, stomach, ankle, leg, hip, and ear; was blinded in his left eye; survived two plane crashes; tunnelled out of a prisoner-of-war camp; and tore off his own fingers when a doctor declined to amputate them.
Describing his experiences in the First World War, he wrote, “Frankly, I had enjoyed the war.”
Come On!
The Chillest Retirement Ever
After all this — and I mean ALL of this — the man finally retired to Ireland.
He spent his final years fishing… which seems pretty weird now, considering all we’ve just heard about.
But well, he deserved it, I guess.
During retirement, he wrote a memoir called “Happy Odyssey,” which has got to be the most understated title in literary history.
Happy Odyssey… Really? It’s like calling World War II “A Bit of a Scuffle.”
Adrian Carton de Wiart passed away in 1963 at the age of 83.
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Why This Man Matters
Adrian Carton de Wiart wasn’t some glory-seeking adrenaline junkie.
He just seemed to have this absolutely unshakeable sense of duty… and an apparently very casual relationship with mortal danger.
This guy was living through stuff that would make an action movie director say, “Nah, too unrealistic.”
In his memoir, he wrote about force being the only real power in the world. Coming from a dude who bit off his own fingers because they were inconveniencing him? Yup. Agreed.
The next time you’re having a rough day, remember Adrian Carton de Wiart, a one-eyed, one-handed 60-year-old man who once swam through the Mediterranean after a plane crash, and his reaction was probably just “Bit wet today, innit?”
They really don’t make ’em like this anymore. Probably never did. He’s a one-off.
A maybe a tiny bit crazy.
But damn, what a story.
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