Freddie Spencer Chapman

Freddie Spencer Chapman is little known even in his native England, which is remarkable given how that country lionizes intrepid explorers and resourceful military heroes. Chapman was both. He explored Greenland in the early 1930s and made the first ascent of 7,326-meter Jomolhari in Tibet before spending the majority of WWII behind enemy lines in the jungles of Japanese-occupied Malaya. There, the keen amateur botanist collected seeds, pressed plants, and waged a spirited campaign of sabotage that was so effective the Japanese thought it the work of two hundred men.

Inevitably, Chapman draws comparison to another enterprising British soldier-scholar, T.E. Lawrence (of Arabia). “For sheer courage and endurance, physical and mental, the two men stand together as examples of what toughness the body will find, if the spirit within it is tough,” Field Marshal Earl Wavell wrote in the foreword to The Jungle Is Neutral, Chapman’s book about his wartime experience. Those years in the jungle tested Chapman’s resilience and extraordinary resolve, but adventure lovers