And a damn fine moustache, too

Let me introduce you to the most badass man in the long, proud history of the Canadian military.

Although he doesn’t show up in many history textbooks, it’s an absolute disgrace that more people aren’t familiar with Filip Konowal. He was fierce, he was proud, he was humble. He’s one of the thousands of nameless Canadians who’ve made the choice to go to a foreign land with a rifle on their back to defend their values, their freedoms and their homeland. Except Filip Konowal wasn’t just a footnote in history. He was a bullet-dodgin’, ass-kickin’, Kraut-bayonettin’ man’s man.

In a culture obsessed with over-the-top acts of machismo, Filip Konowal was the ultimate badass. He was a real-life Rambo, a one-man, invincible killing machine. His manliness makes Maddox’s Alphabet of Manliness look like The Notebook. Without further ado, the life and times of Filip Konowal, Victoria Cross recipient:

Filip Konowal was a Ukrainian immigrant to Canada. He joined the war effort during WWI because, well, he had to – Ukrainians were designated as enemy aliens by the Canadian government, meaning he could have been sent to a wartime concentration camp otherwise (bet they glossed over that fact in Grade 8 History class, huh?) He fought in all the major battles in the war and earned the rank of Corporal, when finally one day during 1917’s Battle of Hill 70, Filip Konowal flipped.

He went into God Mode.

Filip was sick of waiting in the trenches. He was knee-deep in mud and grime, surrounded by death and disease, waiting for his turn to die. If Filip was going out, he was going out in a blaze of glory. If Filip Konowal’s life were a video game, this would be where he unlocked the cheat codes. Actually, most of the stuff Filip Konowal did would be impossible in a war video game.

Day 1

He hopped out of his trenches and just started running. Apparently, his general tried to shoot him because he thought Filip was deserting. Problem was, he was running forwards – towards the German lines. Now, for anyone familiar with the dynamics of World War I trench warfare, this is essentially suicide.  With bullets whizzing by, the crazed Ukrainian makes it across No Man’s Land, finally reaching enemy lines.

And that’s when the Krauts started getting their asses kicked.

In the first crater he encounters, he kills three German soldiers… with his bayonet. He kills another seven soldiers single-handedly. The man’s on an absolute rampage.  He reaches a German machine gun which had been causing chaos for the Canadian lines. He kills the entire machine gun crew.

Oh, he’s not done.

He lifts up the machine gun and carries the whole thing back to Canadian lines.

Having already single-handedly killed over a dozen dirty Huns and carried an entire WWI-era machine gun on his back across No Man’s Land, he wasn’t done. Oh, Filip Konowal was just getting started.

He could have just stayed in his trench, and probably earned himself every award for heroics in the Commonwealth. But he wasn’t nearly done. He was Filip Goddamn Konowal.

Day 2

The next morning, he runs back behind enemy lines. He finds another German machine gun, and yet again, he kills the crew. This time he couldn’t carry the gun back to his lines, so he did the next best thing and destroyed the gun with explosives, saving countless of his own men. In two days of work, he killed at least 16 German soldiers. In the whole war, he killed at least 52. No wonder the Canadian army was the most feared by German generals – we must have seemed like insane, Rambo-esque killing machines.

And then, Filip Konowal’s heroics were over. He was shot in the face by a German sniper.

…

What, did you think he died? Have you read any of this? We’re talking about FILIP KONOWAL, the biggest badass in Canadian military history. Of course he lived! Getting shot in the face by a sniper rifle? Pshh, only a flesh wound!

Post-war

His work done, he was forced to return to  Canada. He received his Victoria Cross personally from King George, who said that Filip’s exploits were among the most heroic he’d seen in the history of the British commonwealth. Despite all of this, he was an incredibly humble man. He took the only job he could get in the Depression, working as a janitor on Parliament Hill.

That’s right – perhaps Canada’s greatest war hero, reduced to emptying the wastebaskets of the bureaucrats who’d sent him to war in the first place.  When asked about it, he said “I mopped up overseas with a rifle, and here I must mop up with a mop”.

He became an honoured member of the Royal Canadian Legion. When he was filling out his Legion paperwork and was asked to state why he was discharged, he charmingly wrote “War was finish.” Finally, Filip Konowal still had a bit of fight left in him – in 1939 when World War II broke out he tried to enlist to fight overseas again, despite being far too old.

He died in 1959.

I hope everyone had a chance to honour all of Canada’s veterans and current soldiers in their own ways today. May we never forget.

[Cobbled together from Wikipedia and this excellent page]