#1.Adrian Carton de Wiart
The son of a Belgian who worked for the British Imperial office, Adrian Carton de Wiart had already seen much of the world at a very young age. He had also decided he wanted to fight as much of it as possible. He ended up joining the British Army during the Boer War, where he soon developed a reputation as a fierce and reckless warrior -- and was promptly shot through the lung.
Via Wikipedia
Eye patches are the HOV lane to Badass.Not letting a mere life-threatening wound stop him, de Wiart recuperated just in time to sign up again when World War I broke out. Deployed to Africa, he was part of Allied action in Somalia, where during one particularly heated battle he received wounds in the ear and elbow and a blinding blow to his left eye in what to everyone else was a bloody encounter but that he described as "exhilarating fun."
"A rip-roaring good time!"Still not one for a desk job, de Wiart, now donning a badass eye patch, felt it was time for a bigger challenge. So he headed for the front lines in France where he was -- everybody together now -- wounded multiple times, each time bouncing right back into action like it was nothing. Once, while leading his men over a trench, de Wiart was hit in the hand. Wanting to get back into action faster than the doctors would have allowed, he is said to have bitten off his own goddamn fingers to help them with the decision on whether to amputate or not. True or not, de Wiart certainly thought nothing of the loss of his hand, comparing it to having a tooth pulled.
And that was just the beginning. The rest of de Wiart's life reads out like the man was written by Quentin Tarantino. He rose up the ranks, became Winston Churchill's main man and went on to become the UK liaison officer in Poland during their struggle against the Soviet Union.
The man rolled with the big boys.His pirate-like visage and larger-than-life warrior antics fit the Polish fighting mentality like a glove, and he happily remained there until the Nazis invaded and England called again. After several James Bond movies' worth of adventures, de Wiart was finally captured by Italian troops in 1941 during a mission in Libya. While this may sound anticlimactic, it must be said that he was in his sixties and presumably pretty tired from having just swam a mile to the shore because his plane had dropped into the ocean.
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The sharks didn't bother him. Not after he turned the first one into a tasteful handbag.A high-profile prisoner, de Wiart was treated well from the beginning. This, of course, didn't stop him from trying to escape through a tunnel with another high-ranking officer as soon as the guards looked the other way. Keep in mind, he was one-eyed, one-handed and in his sixties.
Perhaps the ultimate testament to de Wiart's unique brand of badassness is his autobiography, where he merrily reminisces about his wounds and generally treats the whole "losing body parts while fighting for your life " thing as jolly good fun. Its title? Happy Odyssey.
Amazon.com
Good times were had by all. Except the millions who died.
