I don't imagine for a moment that Colonel Wintle would have wanted to be categorised as a rebel - he probably didn't even know he was an eccentric - but how else do you describe an army officer who during WW2 managed to get imprisoned by both sides, and when the war was over stood for parliament citing Guy Fawkes as his role model?
Lieutenant Colonel A. D. Wintle (1897 - 1966) was born in Mariupol, where his father was a British diplomat, and educated in France and Germany. Still a teenager, he joined the British army during the First World War. On his first day, within minutes of his arrival at the front, there was a heavy bombardment and the people he'd just been introduced to were blown to bits. Unharmed, physically at least, Wintle got through the ordeal by standing to attention and saluting.
Severely injured in a later engagement, young Wintle was sent home to a convalescent hospital. He attempted to escape, so as to return to the action, but although he was cunningly dressed as a nurse, he later admitted that "the monocle was a giveaway."
Although now minus one kneecap, several fingers, and most of his eyesight, he finally managed to wangle his way back to the fighting using dodgy documents, and ended up with the Military Cross after single-handedly (if you'll pardon the expression) capturing 35 enemy soldiers.
The war ran out far too early for Wintle's liking. On 19th June 1919 he noted in his journal "Great War peace signed at last," and on the following day he entered the ranks of the immortal diarists by writing "I declare private war on Germany."
During the inter-war years, Wintle became a cavalry officer. There's a story that following one of his many injuries he was told that a 16-year-old Dragoon was dying in the same hospital. Incensed by such ill-discipline, Wintle dragged himself over to the boy's bunk and ordered him, at full parade-ground volume, to get better at once, on the grounds that it was unthinkable for a Dragoon to die in bed. The lad was duly terrified into recovery.
When WW2 started, and France surrendered to Germany, Wintle decided to steal an RAF plane, fly solo to France, and stop the French air force from falling into German hands, either by destroying it or by persuading the French pilots to fly to Britain. This wasn't perhaps the most thought-through scheme, and Wintle was arrested on this side of the Channel. There's some disagreement about whether, when he was stopped from taking a plane, he threatened to shoot a Commodore (who he might have been impersonating at the time, but let's not get into that) or to shoot himself. Either way, he was imprisoned in the Tower of London.
By his own account this proved a pleasant interlude, consisting largely of formal dinners, fine cigars, and vast quantities of alcohol. He was tried by the army, which was never going to be that bothered about one of their own threatening to shoot an RAF officer - even though it's said that when he was accused of telling the Commodore that his kind needed shooting, Wintle not only cheerfully agreed with the accusation but also produced a list of other "traitors" (military high-ups and politicians) who should be shot because they weren't keen enough on fighting the Germans.
Before long, he was back in action. Captured as an undercover agent in France, he escaped from a Vichy PoW camp and made his way back to Britain. After the war, the Vichy commander told the TV programme This Is Your Life that the colonel's endless haranguing of the guards for their cowardice caused the whole lot to defect to the Resistance.
In peacetime, retired on a disability pension, he briefly became famous for debagging a solicitor, who he believed had conned his aunt out of a fortune which should have gone to Wintle and his sister. Tricking the man into an ambush at a flat in Hove, he ripped off the lawyer's trousers and took photographs of him wearing a dunce's cap. Wintle got six months in Wormwood Scrubs for that, but he was unrepentant: "One must expect some casualties," he told the court. Pursuing the solicitor through various courts, to the point of his own bankruptcy, he eventually became the first non-lawyer to win a unanimous verdict in the House of Lords.
He wrote novels and memoirs (under a pseudonym because, he said, it was "a disgrace" for a cavalry officer to be literate), and letters to The Times. A classic example read: "Sir, I have just written you a long letter. On reading it over, I have thrown it into the waste paper basket. Hoping this will meet with your approval, I am, Sir, Your obedient Servant, AD Wintle."
Wintle believed it was unforgivable for an English gentleman to leave the house without an umbrella, so he carried one with him everywhere - some said he even took it to bed. However, it was equally unforgivable for an English gentleman ever to open his umbrella, so, no matter the weather, he held it in his hand, tightly furled.
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Sources:
www.history.co.uk/article/the-last-englishman-the-unbelievable-wartime-exploits-of-ad-wintle
Brewer's rogues, villains & eccentics by William Donaldson (Cassell, 2002)
www.bigredbook.info/alfred_daniel_wintle.html
https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,807405,00.html
https://tinyurl.com/y29u6a3p
https://headstuff.org/culture/history/terrible-people-from-history/alfred-daniel-wintle-english-rascal-hero/
This is my favorite Rebel Britannia so far!