World War II Chronicle: November 21, 1941

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Page five reports that a Royal Air Force squadron is commanded by a one-armed pilot. Flight Lt. James Archibald Findlay MacLachlan’s left arm was hit by a Messerschmidt cannon round over Malta.

We will discuss MacLachlan more in a forthcoming post, but it is remarkable that he is not the RAF’s only amputee ace. Squadron Leader Douglas Bader lost both of his legs in a 1931 crash and learned to fly with prosthetics. Bader shot down 22 enemy warplanes before being shot down himself on August 9 over France. The Germans captured Bader but hold him in high regard. Hermann Göring personally arranged safe passage for the English to air drop new artificial legs since his were destroyed. He still makes multiple attempts to escape captivity and is moved to Colditz Castle where he spends the remainder of the war with other escape-prone prisoners like David Stirling, the founder of the British Special Air Service.

Charles Fernley Fawcett, a former American art student, is currently on track to become the world’s most interesting man. At 15 he had an affair with his best friend’s mother. “If that’s child molestation,” he declared, “I would wish this curse on every young boy.” Afterwards he left the United States aboard a tramp steamer, got trumpet lessons from Louis Armstrong, grappled with a professional wrestler, fought for a living in Eastern Europe. He joined the Polish army, but had to leave when the Germans rolled through. He tried unsuccessfully to become a French soldier, then worked in the ambulance corps and with the French resistance.

His acting abilities helped free a group of British POWs when Fawcett pretended to be a German ambulance driver. When he told the men that they had been liberated one said “You’re a Yank.”

“Never,” said Fawcett in his southern drawl, “confuse a Virginian with a Yankee.”

In 1942 Fawcett joins the Royal Air Force to fly Hurricanes, but catches tuberculosis and can no longer fly. After he is rehabilitated he returns to the ambulance corps, then joins the French Foreign Legion and manages to smuggle six Jewish women out of concentration camps and hooks them up with American visas, permitting them to leave France. He fought communists in Greece, became an actor, was a romantic interest of famed actress Hedy Lamarr, rescued people during the Hungarian Revolution and in the Belgian Congo, and fought with the mujahideen against the Soviets in Afghanistan…

Sports section begins on page 54

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Evening star. (Washington, D.C.), 21 November 1941. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.
https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045462/1941-11-21/ed-1/