Colonel Badass / Real Life

• The little-advertised fact about Vladimir Putin is that he is a colonel of the reserve. And he's a black belt in judo.
• Otto Skorzeny. Played in Team Evil, but remained badass until his death.
  • His badassitude is even greater in Harry Turtledove's Worldwar books, merrily going up against a superior alien foe. During one battle, when a Race landcruiser is blasting everything and everyone in the vicinity, he waltzes up to it and throws a satchel charge in-between the turret and the chassis. He also ends up liberating Mussolini right from under the lizards' snouts. And yes, the lizards speak his name as a curse.
  • Possibly averted and based on good publicity; most of Skorzeny's missions were failures, and the famous rescue of Mussolini's was largely someone else's plan which Skorzeny got credit for (and apparently got in the way rather than helping during the actual operation).
• George Washington was a colonel during his time fighting for the British during the French and Indian War, and his badass exploits earned him enough distinction to be appointed Commander in Chief of the Continental Army during the Revolution, which in turn helped get him elected as the first President of the United States.
• Washington's protege Alexander Hamilton became a colonel during the revolution. His contemporaries (including his mistress) referred to him as Colonel Hamilton throughout his civilian career. He didn't do many badass things during the war, but his life included such highlights as founding America's first bank, building the treasury department, creating the Coast Guard, and helping suppress the Whiskey Rebellion.
• Lt. Col. Jack Churchill. The man who fought the Nazis with a bow, arrows, and a claymore. The Germans eventually captured him by killing his entire commando squad with mortar fire; when they finally moved in, they found him sitting there, alone, playing the bagpipes. He got sent to two different concentration camps:Sachsenhausen and Dachau, and escaping both times. When he returned to Britain ready to go back to the battlefield, the war ended, and that pissed him off.
• Lt. Col. Benjamin O. Davis Jr. Son of the first Black general in the U.S. Armed Forces, he led a WWII fighter plane group known as the Tuskegee Airmen. The baddest fighter pilots in damn near any war. Oh, and he was the first Black general in the U.S. Air Force. Coming from military roots, his dad was the first US black general, period — and he started as a private.
• Special Forces Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Netanyahu^note yes, that Netanyahu's brother of the Israeli Defense Forces, who, among other things, led the ground team during the Entebbe Airport Raid to rescue the hostages of an Air France flight. He died in the attempt (and was the only military Israeli fatality of the raid) and is a national hero in Israel.
• Colonel Avi Peled commander of the Golani Infantry brigade, who after having a building collapse on top of him and 20 of his soldiers after a tank shell hit it by accident, took over the evacuation process of all of his injured soldiers despite being wounded himself, was the last one evacuated to a hospital, and then returned to the battlefield the very next day.
• Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg was a decorated war hero before he masterminded the July 20, 1944 plot. Also a Handicapped Badass, though this handicap is thought to have been one factor in the plot's ultimate failure.
• The famous Special Operations division Delta Force was founded by Colonel Charles Beckwith. He was badass enough to take a .50 cal round through the torso and survive with only basic medical aid (as the doctors couldn't waste time on someone who was "clearly" going to die).
• Lt. Colonel James Doolittle of the famous Doolittle Raids.
• Colonel Frederick Drew Gregory, USAF, retired. The first Black man to pilot the space shuttle, and the first to command a space shuttle mission. This makes him The Captain, an Ace Pilot, and a Colonel Badass, all in one.
• Chesty Puller of the US Marine Corps and namesake of the Corps' bulldog mascot. He's also the most decorated Marine in the history of the Corps, with a long history that has achieved Memetic Mutation level amongst Marines.
• Lieutenant Colonel Harry Smith, Australian Army. Known for his real-life Conservation of Ninjutsu at the Battle of Long Tan in the Vietnam War.
• Ken Reusser, a USMC fighter pilot in three different wars (World War II, Korea, and Vietnam), who retired from the Marine Corps as a colonel. Probably one of the most badass feats he performed was downing a Japanese reconnaissance aircraft that was reporting on US positions for Kamikaze attacks, flying about 1000 feet above the theoretical ceiling of its pursuers. Him and his wingman both had their guns malfunction, so they used the props of their F4U Corsairs to chew up the Japanese aircraft's tail to take it down.
• Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Edward Lawrence, A.K.A. Lawrence of Arabia.
• Colonel David Hackworth (retired, deceased), also known as the most decorated US Army Officer of the 20th century. He was awarded 110 separate medals, of which the following were for heroism: eight Purple Hearts, two Distinguished Service Crosses, ten Silver Stars, seven Bronze Stars, the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Air Medal, and the Valorous Unit Award. He served in 12 separate wars, from the end of World War II right through to conflict in Yugoslavia. His initial request to be deployed in the Vietnam War was turned down because he had too much combat experience.
• Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain commanded the 20th Maine during The American Civil War and was in charge of the Union left flank at the Battle of Gettysburg, day two. He is best known for calling "BAYONETS!" and ordering a charge downhill into the Confederate lines when his men ran out of ammo. It worked. The Union won. Later promoted to Brigadier General in recognition of his competence and badassery—which he persisted in nevertheless.
• Aided by his father, a former Wisconsin governor and current Wisconsin court judge, Arthur MacArthur managed to secure himself an officer's commission in the Union Army in 1862 at the age of 17. He quickly proved he deserved it, as he went on to see action at Chickamauga, Stones River, Chattanooga, the Atlanta Campaign, and Franklin. During the Chattanooga Campaign, MacArthur inspired his regiment by seizing and planting the regimental flag on the crest of Missionary Ridge at a particularly critical moment, shouting "On Wisconsin." For these actions, he was awarded the Medal of Honor and a promotion to Colonel at the age of 19, earning himself the nickname "the boy Colonel". He went on to survive being severely wounded by a rebel officer's pistol at the battle of Franklin, and would spend a total of 47 years in the army, retiring in 1909 at the rank of Lt. General. Yet despite all this, he was largely overshadowed by his son Douglas, who commanded U.S. Army forces in the Pacific during World War 2.
• Colonel John S. Mosby of the Confederate Army earned the nickname "The Gray Ghost" for his ability to conduct daring cavalry raids deep behind Union lines and then simply melt away into the civilian population. Even as the war dragged on and much of Northern Virginia fell into Union hands, that area would still be known as "Mosby's Confederacy" as he would continue to conduct operations there with near-complete impunity. Despite being seriously wounded twice, Mosby survived the war and lived until 1916 at the age of 82.
• Colonel Hiram Berdan joined the Union Army in 1861. A highly skilled marksman and engineer before the war, Berdan immediately went to work recruiting the best shooters he could find for a new elite sniper unit, the 1st United States Sharpshooters (nicknamed Berdan's sharpshooters). Forced to pass rigorous marksmanship tests to gain entry, Berdan's sharpshooters were given distinctive green uniforms and equipped with high tech (for the time) rifles, such as the Colt Revolving Rifle and the Sharps rifle, often equipped with telescopic sights. Berdan's sharpshooters quickly became feared and respected as one of the most elite units in the Union army throughout the war.
• Confederate Colonel John B Gordon, who joined the army with no prior military experience, earned himself a promotion to General for his actions at the 1862 Battle of Antietam, where he continued to lead his men after suffering two shots to his leg, one shot to the arm, and one in the shoulder before finally going down when a bullet passed through his cheek and exited out his jaw. Not only did Gordon survive all these wounds, but he was back in action just a few months later. Despite all these injuries and an additional head wound in 1864, Gordon managed to serve on for the entire duration of the war.
• Colonel John T. Wilder. Wilder joined the Union Army as a Captain in 1861 and saw his first major action when commanding a small garrison at Munfordville, Kentucky during the Confederate invasion of the state. When faced with an attack from a much larger Confederate Army, Wilder initially rejected their surrender demands, telling Confederate General James Chalmers "I think we'll fight for a while." The following day, Wilder's garrison repulsed the Confederate attack, inflicting 283 casualties with a loss of 37. Eventually forced to surrender to overwhelming numbers, Wilder was released in a prisoner exchange and went on to form the "Lightning Brigade", an elite unit of mounted infantry armed with state of the art 7-shot Spencer repeating rifles, which would go on to achieve great success and glory during the Chickamauga campaign.
• Colonels Leonard Wood and Theodore Roosevelt of the 1st U.S. Volunteer Cavalry ("Rough Riders"). Badasses both.
• Colonel Rick Rescorla - Served in Africa with the British Army, joined the US army in the mid-1960s and served in Vietnam, one of the hero's of the Battle of Ia Drang. He led the evacuations of both World Trade Center attacks and was killed on 9/11 going back in with three subordinates to attempt to save the last 2 missing employees of Morgan Stanley, for whom he was the Head of Security at the World Trade Center. He succeeded in getting the other 2700 employees safely out, singing "Men of Harlech" over a megaphone in the process.
• Lt. Colonel John Frost was the British Army's go-to guy for impossible airborne missions. After proving himself by stealing a German radar station from occupied France, Frost went on to perform similarly daring missions in North Africa and Sicily. However, his Moment of Awesome came during the Battle of Arnhem as part of Operation Market Garden where he was tasked with securing the Arnhem Bridge. Although ultimately doomed by the poorly conceived operation, John Frost and a small force of some 400 lightly armed paratroopers managed to penetrate German lines and seize the north end of the bridge where he held out against a German SS Panzer division for 4 days until finally being forced to surrender due to lack of ammunition. Lt. Col. Frost was later depicted in a movie and Arnhem Bridge was renamed in his honor. He finished his military career as a Field-Marshal and commander-in-chief of British armed forces.
• Lieutenant Commander Patrick Dalzel-Job. His rank equates closer to Major, but nevertheless his Naval Intelligence Commando unit (British Navy SEALs) stormed German targets four days after D-Day and disabled a German destroyer at port (with its whole crew compliment) and then captured the town of Bremen. His boss was Ian Fleming, and many consider him one of the models for James Bond.
• Titus Cornelius was a former Black slave who fought in the American Revolution for the British. Although the British did not allow Blacks to be officers, let alone reach the rank of Colonel, he nevertheless was known and referred to as Colonel Tye. His guerilla-tactics were legendarily effective, even so far as helping hold off George Washington troops in their first siege of New York. Most historians agree that had he been white (and, y'know, not fought for the British) he'd have been far more famous today. There is a rumor that his name inspired a certain other Colonel Badass from Battlestar Galactica.
• Lloyd L. Burke received the Medal of Honor in the Korean war for his actions at Hill 200. He was on his way home when he heard his platoon was pinned down so he went back to them. After assessing the situation he stormed a Chinese trench with a pistol and a hand grenade. After using those up, he got out and grabbed a Browning 1919, ignored the shrapnel that shredded his hand, wrapped his jacket around the hot barrel, wrapped the ammunition belt around his body, lifted the 31-pound machine gun (normally used on a tripod), and proceeded to storm the trench again. He was only a Lieutenant at the time, but he achieved the rank of Colonel before he retired, so he counts.
• Many of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk's claims to badassitude occurred when he was a Colonel in the reserves, in particular defending the key pass whose loss would have probably made the Gallipoli campaign in World War I succeed. Even after the Ottoman Empire ultimately lost, he continued being a badass as a soldier and then the founder of modern Turkey, until he died.
• Colonel David Randolph Scott, seventh man on the moon and the only Air Force pilot to actually pilot a moon landing (the rest of the Apollo commanders were Navy men).
  • Also survived the near-loss of Gemini 8 with Neil Armstrong due to steel nerves and badass piloting. On the other hand, he got in trouble for trying to profit off Apollo 15 by selling souvenirs.
• Lieutenant Colonel John U. D. Page, an artillery officer who served in the Korean War and received the Medal of Honor for his actions. In just 12 days of combat service, he singlehandedly took out an enemy MG nest, commanded tanks while also acting as a tank machine gunner , performed an aerial attack with hand grenades in an unarmed observation plane, and saved an ambushed logistics regiment from their Chinese attackers. In this last action, he was eventually killed, but not before taking at least 16 enemy soldiers with him.
• Colonel Buzz Aldrin (USAF), the second man to land on the Moon (but not the highest-ranked officer to ever walk on the Moon - that's Alan Shepard or Charles Duke), and effective silencer of Moon landing hoax advocates. Other Colonels who've landed on the Moon include David Scott and James Irwin - the rest are divided between Navy Captains and civilians.
• Lt. Colonel Anatoly Lebed'. 29 years of service, first as a paratrooper in Afghanistan, then entered an officers school, flew a helicopter there, first as a tech, then as a pilot until his retirement. But as he couldn't imagine himself as anyone but soldier, when Chechen war started he literally reenlisted himself (flying into Chechnya on his own with his own gear), was accepted, then served again as a paratrooper officer and got a reputation as Father to His Men there. Then he got blown on a mine, had his foot amputated, but returned to duty in just one year on a prosthesis. Then, to up the ante, when his patrol got ambushed, he reportedly covered a wounded soldier with his body, suffering a shrapnel wound, proceeding to completely ignore it until his unit got back to safety. The guy's also an accomplished engineer, designing and building a lot of his unit^note The legendary 45'th ORP SpN VDV, which is as close to Russian Army admitting the unit being the part of the feared GRU Spetsnaz as it gets equipment and gear, like the combat buggies and such. Like Lawrence of Arabia, Lebed' died far from the battlefield, in a high-speed motorcycle crash in 2012.
• Lt. Colonel Herbert Jones VC OBE. During the Falklands War, his battalion was stalled under heavy small-arms fire from entrenched positions and being further pinned by increasing artillery fire. Realizing that he couldn't afford to lose momentum, Lt. Colonel H. Jones charged the fortified enemy position under concentrated fire, getting knocked back once, but continuing until he died feet from the enemy. His men later charged, galvanized by his sacrifice. The enemy surrendered due to the heroics he displayed personally and simultaneously inspired in his men.
• Charles Lindbergh, a colonel in the Army Air Force, the first man to fly solo across the Atlantic, and combat veteran of World War II (even though at that point he was a civilian).
• Colonel Dave Belote, base commander of Nellis AFB and five-time Jeopardy! champion.
• Lieutenant Colonel Danny McKnight of the 75th Ranger Regiment. He was deployed to Somalia and participated in the infamous Battle of Mogadishu, in which seventeen American Soldiers died and hundreds of Somali militia were killed. LTC McKnight was famous for not taking cover when he got shot at, figuring that if he got killed, God wanted him in heaven. Also in the movie.
• Claire Lee Chennault, commander of the Flying Tigers held the rank of Colonel in the US Army Air Force, then the Chinese Air Force, and then again in the USAAF before he was promoted to Brigadier General in 1942.
• Colonel Peter Julien Ortiz, USMC. Though he didn't get promoted to Colonel until after WW2, Ortiz had an enormous amount of combat experience and badassitude, too much to list here so this entry will be restricted to one notable incident. He was operating with an OSS team in France over a year before the Normandy invasion and would openly wear his USMC uniform in rural areas and in towns, a fact which cheered the French but drew the attention of the occupying German forces. One particular incident involves some German soldiers at a café in a French town boasting about what they were going to do to him when they found him. Ortiz strolled into the cafe, wearing a freaking cape, whereby he threw the cape back to reveal his US Marine uniform and a .45 pistol in each hand. He took out the enemy soldiers and was long gone by the time any reinforcements showed up.
• Lt.Col. Alfred Wintle. Talked a dying soldier out of a scarlet fever-induced coma, was arrested for trying to steal a plane and signed his own arrest warrant, was captured by Vichy French whereupon he informed his captors it was his duty to escape...and did.
• Subverted with Muammar Gaddafi. Though state media made him out to be this, as is common of a dictatorship, in practice he went down rather quickly once the rebels got their hands on him.
  • Admittedly, by then he was 69 years old. However, he didn't really do anything particularly badass even when he was younger. In fact, he lost pretty much every war he participated in...
  • Also, his rank was a self-granted promotion after he led a coup and installed himself as dictator...the highest rank he had legitimately held in the Libyan Army before the coup was Captain.
• In an aversion, "colonel" was for a long time simply the "constitutional monarch" (so to speak) of a given regiment (originally meaning mercenary unit on permanent contract to The Government from the Latin regimentum). He, or she on rare occasions, might indeed be a badass, but their badassery and their colonelcy were unrelated. That is because, in several armies, a regiment was a ceremonial and administrative unit rather than a tactical unit, and the highest rank to go into battle specifically as a member of a given regiment was Lt Colonel. General officers in the British army often retained colonelcies for much of their career, but this was a ceremonial position. For instance, General Killalot might also be Colonel of the Duke of Earl's own fusiliers, but his only relation would be to pay for the band or the silverware or whatnot.
• US Air Force Colonel John Stapp, hands down. In the interest of science, he strapped himself to a rocket sled and ended up subjecting himself to a force 46.2 times the force of gravity and lived. At the time, it was believed that 18 G was fatal. Basically, his work showed that as long as the human body is properly restrained, it can take a lot more Gs than first expected. He also felt that it was possible to go higher if the person was facing backwards (the 46.2G run was forwards). He ended up applying his rocket sled research to cars and lobbying to make seat belts mandatory in all vehicles, saving countless lives.
• Colonel Colin Mitchell, who ignored direct orders and restored British prestige by recapturing the city of Aden in 1968, in the counter-insurgency war prior to Aden's independence from the British Empire. Communist rebels had previously disregarded British forces as weak and ineffectual. Most of this perception was down to flawed orders from an out-of-touch government keen to avoid conflict and appease the natives. "Mad Mitch" Mitchell's aggressive action changed all this and his show of force scared the rebels and insurgents into relative quiet.
• Yugoslav partisan Colonel Sava Kovačević had a reputation for great personal courage. Highlights include single-handedly capturing an Italian tankette without using any anti-tank weapon, leading an infantry assault that destroyed another three Italian tankettes by leaping onto them and attaching explosives and making daring raids behind enemy lines. His career was cut short when he was gunned down during the partisan breakthrough from German encirclement at the Sutjeska River, June 1943.
• The late, great, Marine Col. John Glenn, who was an ace pilot before becoming the first American in orbit and much later, the oldest man in space.
• While commanding the 8th Fighter Wing in Vietnam, Col. Robin Olds gained far more fame for his hard-charging leadership style and innovative tactics than he had as a double ace with 12 aerial victories in World War II (he shot down another 4 MiGs in Vietnam). Olds later retired as a Brigadier General, but is still best remembered for his command of the 8th Wing...and for the mustache he sported during that time.
• Although Cândido Mariano da Silva Rondon ultimately reached the rank of marshal in the Brazilian Army, he carried out his most badass achievements while still a colonel. To wit:
  • He led the construction of over 5,000 km of telegraph lines through southern and western Brazil, including what was then The Wild West, but also many areas that no "civilized" Brazilian had been before (or at least, had not returned from).
  • He established peaceful relations with tribes such as the Nambikwara and Bororo (following the motto "Die if necessary, but never kill"), and remained a lifelong advocate for protecting natives' rights and cultures.
  • Along with Theodore Roosevelt, he led an expedition down the then-unknown "River of Doubt" (Rio da Dúvida) in 1914. Although the expedition had been poorly planned from the standpoint of equipment and logistics, Rondon's wilderness expertise—and his decision to have another officer come upriver from the Amazon as far as possible, just in case—ended up making the difference between life and death for most of the men.
• Agustín de Iturbide of México. Nicknamed El Dragón de Hierro, or the Iron Dragoon, he never lost a battle in four years of the Mexican War of Independence, often defeated greater forces than his own, once repelled the entry of 500 foot soldiers with just 34 of his dragoons, and with just his dragoons by his side dealt defeat to the greatest enemy general, José María Morelos, thought to be almost invincible at the time. As a royalist dragoon, he climbed the ranks but was most attached to his rank of Colonel of the Celaya Regiment. He would go on to liberate México almost single-handedly, acquiring the ranks of General, Admiral, and Generalissimo along the way, and even being elected as Emperor, but always wore his Colonel uniform, even to his crowning.
• Some Civil War historians credit the early success of the South in the American Civil War to superior leadership. In support of this trope, the North managed to collect every single pre-war general bar one (Joseph E. Johnston), leaving the South almost no one higher than Colonel including their eventual supreme commander, Robert E. Lee.
• Kentucky has a program for honoring civilians with the title of Colonel, and yes that is how Harland Sander's of KFC fame got the title. Many of the Kentucky Colonel titles are given to military veterans as well as a recognition for their service. Frontiersman Daniel Boone is another historic holder of a Kentucky Colonel title, and probably the most famous Kentucky Colonel besides the fried chicken guy. However, the badassery of the title of Colonel has lost some of its luster in present day Kentucky with the state having awarded at least 85,000 titles to various citizens, with the joke being Colonels are a dime a dozen in the state.