Your Favorite Knife

[Andy_S]

Doc:

RE: Assumptions.

I did, indeed, assume you were talking about your combat experiences as you make frequent reference thereto. But I did not know, so on my first post re this issue, I finished with the phrase "Pray Tell." (ie kindly give us more information.)

Seems a polite way to conduct oneself in my book. If you don't wish to divulge the info, fine, but I don't think it is asking to much to ask the following. Did your four (or more) bladed encounters occur in:
Peacetime USA (which would be exceptional, but not tremendously exceptional)
Wartime Vietnam (which would be tremendously exceptional. As a US Marine in I Corps, you would have had access to firearms, grenades, air power and artillery on call, etc, and were facing an enemy well-armed with firearms)


SNIP
It is fully expected that Army Rangers, Navy Seals, and Marine Force Recon personnel will have to engage their enemies in hand to hand combat, both with and without combat knives, both directly and covertly as the unfolding and unexpected circumstances of their missions require. As such, they are all well trained to do so with speed and efficiency. Part of such training admittedly includes the silent neutralization of enemy combatants, both with and without the use of a knife. However, that being said, these soldiers are not simply assassins, or mere criminals and thugs as you strongly imply in your posts.
SNIP

Is it?

About five years ago I trained with two US Special Forces guys in a civilian BJJ club. One of them, who later went on to train Karzai's bodyguards - WAS a knife fighting man who trained under Kelly Worden. But when I questioned them on their in-service training, both said that they did NOT get much or any of this kind of training in the service.

A friend of mine is in a UK special forces unit presently engaged in Afghan;I visited his mess last summer. That unit has a mocking phrase for those who claim exotic or unusual skills that have limited or nil application to modern combat:
"Underwater knife-fighting experts."

Ken:

As noted above, I have personally interviewed a couple of people who have, indeed, had H2H and bladed experience in war. That does not change the fact that it remains very, very rare, for obvious reasons. I met a hell of a lot more who said that they were in H2H combat. Fortunately, I was in an interview situation, so instead of leaving it at that, I could probe a bit more deeply. Once I did that, it was obvious that what they meant was not H2H, but close-quarter battle.

As for the Turks in Korea: They were renowned for their use of the bayonet: They had a technique in which, instead of thrust, turn, pull, they thrust into the torso, then heaved the enemy over their shoulder, disembowelling him. Again, the Turks' preference for H2H was considered highly unusual among other UN Command forces.

The only modern theatre of war that I am aware of where the use of bladed weapons was - somewhat - common, is WWII in the Pacific. (See Sledge, "With the Old Breed" and the advice given to him in USMC boot camp).

[klonk]

[Steve James]

? Do the British Gurkha still exist?
When did Fairbairn and Sykes develop that long sticker?

[zenman]

I have to say that this whole issue of sneaking into enemy camps at night, grabbing the secret plans and silently knifing a Cong or two on the way out something I had always associated with Chuck Norris movies rather than actual military history.

I know a guy who spent four tours in Nam with the Korean Tiger Division. He said they were the meanest guys he's ever seen. According to him they would do as above but only leave one guy alive. He had scars.

[chud]

I was privileged to meet some of the men who were on the walk-out with Stillwell.

Dr Fish, your comment got me to googling, and I found this link:
http://cbi-theater-3.home.comcast.net/~cbi-theater-3/stilwellpages/stilwell_walkout.html

Very interesting reading. Some funny quotes:

Everything went along just great until Tim Sharp broke out the Indian rum. I was in no physical condition to drink much of anything except water, and not too much of that. So I drank too much Indian rum.

and this...

Poling a boxy, home-made raft on a sluggish river under the hot, Burmese sun, is the kind of work that could cause a man to give up soldiering.

The whole site is pretty interesting:
http://cbi-theater.home.comcast.net/~cbi-theater/menu/cbi_home.html

[Muad'dib]

Nice to know nothing has changed.

[strawdog]

Buddy,

A knife fight is when a knife is used in the fight. Period.

Okay, if you say so.

But...

Sneaking in on someone and killing them with a knife is in my opinion, not a knife fight. It's a knifing, not a fight when the other person doesn't get a chance to respond as in the assassination methods alluded to by DS and KF.

If someone punched you as you slept and caused you to be incapacitated enough to prevent a response, would you say you were in a fist fight? I don't think so.

If someone hit you with a stick over your head as you walked by and caused you to get knocked out, would you say you were in a stick fight? I don't think so.

Thus, if someone gets knifed while they were unaware and unable to respond doesn't mean they were in a knife fight. They were just knifed. The inability to respond to an action against him means he wasn't in a fight. The person with the knife is knifing and the person being attacked is simply being knifed. Period.

Regardless of your response, I feel that you don't have the knowledge to comment on knife fights. Basically, I think you're unskilled and not knowledgeable about such things. In short, you suck, STFU!

[Methods]

Hahahaha - classic strawdog...

I happen to agree with everything strawdog posted -

[Muad'dib]

Nack on topic, my favorite knife is a ka-bar. Second is a recon tanto. Third is my italian style stilleto thingy from cold steel. And I've never assassinated anyone or been in a knife fight.

[Andy_S]

Steve:

Do the British Gurkha still exist?
No such thing as a British Gurkha (bar their officers) but the Brigade of Gurkhas does, yes. They carry their kukhri largely as ceremonial heritage. As per above post, last use of it in combat was WWII in the Burma theatre.

When did Fairbairn and Sykes develop that long sticker?
You mean the commando dagger? WWII. The training of the commandos - particularly, sneaking up behind hapeless Jerry and slitting his throat - was widely publicized at the time. Bear in mind, the commandos were formed by Churchill, partly for propaganda purposes - this was Britain's "Darkest Hour" and anything that would raise morale on the home front while proving that we did some kind of ability to hit back at Hitler - was welcomed. However, if you interview any former commandos whose service spanned the 1940s and 1950s, you will be hard put to find instances of actual knife assassinations - such incidents were extraodrinarily rare. (Coincidentally, I HAVE interviewed eight of these men over the last year, some of whom fought in WWII and all of whom took part in commando raids on the North Korean coast. Sorry to disappoint, but there was no knifing in those operations, though one unfortunate Nork DID leave several teeth in a commando's rifle butt. But I digress.) Moreover, the UK designed a whole range of silenced weapons for use by SOE and other units whose tasking included assassination: This tells you a thing or two about the advantage of projectile weapons which can kill from a distance, versus hand-held weapons, which require the assassin to stalk and close with his victim - a much riskier thing to do. (FYI, some of those 1940-era silenced weapons even made it to Vietnam.) Fairbairn and Skyes' other WWII H2H implement, the 'Smatchet,' barely got off the drawing board.

But I grant you, the commando dagger is now an iconic weapon, and is part of the current Royal Marine Commando brand (as used on T-shirts, souvenirs, etc) This does not change the fact that today's commandos do their work today with firearms, artillery support, etc. In short, since the WWII commandos - whose fame was such that their name has now become a byword for special forces in general - there has been a glamorous fetish associated with daggers and special forces units, but that should not mislead us into exaggerating their tactical role. Best leave that to Messrs Norris, Stallone, Segal, etc. IIRC, there was even a throat slitting scene in the based-on-a-true-story "Blackhawk Down" - though said incident was not in the book - which just goes to show how strong the "knife-fightin' commando" lives on in the popular imagination.

As noted in my previous post above, active service special operations personnel laugh at such fantasies - to the point where the "underwater knife fighter" has entered their vernacular.

Zenman:

I live in South Korea and have also met a number of Korean Vietnam vets. I am familiar with these anecdotes. This is a sensitive issue over here...if you want to take this to PM, please do.

[Steve James]

Afaik, spec op forces in whatever branch of the US services, today, are trained to use knives. They're even taught some bjj, though I think one might be hard pressed to find someone to interview who had actually rolled in combat with an Iraqi or Afghan. Well, I'd be surprised; but, I'm also sure that someone has had that experience.

Anyway, re: assassination. There seems to be a disjunction between the moral issue of silently killing without warning and the idea that doing so is Ramboesque. Imo, there's no moral difference between killing with a knife and a gun. If by assassination, someone means killing without warning, then it happens all the time in war. And, for a few, it's their specific job. It's true that there are probably no cases of a sniper abandoning his rifle for a blade. But, I don't think that is what Doc and others were talking about. Spraying and praying is a completely different type of engagement, but if someone gets hit, the morality is the same. I have to agree that "assassination" by knife is uncommon; though there is plenty of assassinating (and attempts) going on as we speak.

At any rate, unfortunately, just imo, the psychological effects on the combatants are different. Ime, the guys who've done the most and dirtiest want to talk about it the least to the fewest. Yeah, I know that might be taken as just another one of those myths; but, I've never met a Rambo who thought he was one.

People were talking about fights and knife fights, and in my head I was wondering why anybody thought that war was a fight. If it were a fight, it'd be f--ing all right. The problem with Rambo is not his technique; it's that he lives to "fight" again every time, and mostly the bad guys die. It's all too true that the guys who sneak into the enemy headquarters with knives clenched between their teeth don't exist; they don't survive. Personally, I never ask how servicemen have survived. You get a chance to interview them; so, I'd be interested in their stories about the stupid things that they've seen people do who were awarded medals posthumously, but don't get to tell their stories.

[yusuf]

wow, we are equating duelling with use of the knife ... I am really shocked by the way use of blades seems to be romanticised... how many times has anyone ever presented a knife and offered the other person a chance to draw their own?

[D_Glenn]

Some people consider 'bending over to put on their socks' to be a fight.

.

[yusuf]

Some people consider 'bending over to put on their socks' to be a fight.

.

thats only because my gut is stuffed with pancakes at the moment

[strawdog]

wow, we are equating duelling with use of the knife

Who is the "we"?

Clarifying what someone means by knife fights is in no means equating dueling with the use of the knife. When someone claims they've had at least four knife fights with a different knife each time and much more in the subways of New York, I think it's reasonable to ask them to clarify what they mean when they say "knife fight". I never did get an answer to that question. Instead I got a bunch of emotional responses crying about how I insulted special forces operatives, a red herring response.

Andy gave a very reasonable and documented response here. It appears that from Andy's experience talking with veterans, current operatives in the military, and through reading; what DS and KF claim and say seems be extremely rare. Wow! EF has two extremely rare individuals in terms of their military experience with blades and they just happen to do kung fu. Amazing!

My own definition of knife fighting equates to dueling, as opposed to simply fighting with a knife in hand. To me a fight means that there is a minimum level of proportional armament and awareness. When the possibility of winning is completely one sided and possibly result in death then there is no fight. It is simply murder. When slaves were lead into the Roman arenas to "fight" lions would you really consider those fights or murder by big hungry cats? If you take a person into a cage and tie there hands behind their back and tell them to fight a professional boxer employing brass knuckles in both hands would you call that a fight? It's obvious right? It doesn't even meet the minimum level of proportional armament. It's not a fight.

A person can fight against somebody with a knife. That's possible. It's not a knife fight. He fought someone with a knife. A person can use a knife against an unarmed person. That's possible. It's not a knife fight either. He fought an unarmed person with a knife.

What if we have two individuals ready to meet force to force, one with a big rambo style bowie knife and the other a kitchen paring knife, now we have what I would call a knife fight regardless of the proportionality of the weapons involved.

Just as a fist fight means two people are engaged in mutual combat using their fist as bludgeoning objects, so it must be reasoned that a knife fight means two people engaged in mutual combat using their knives as slashing and thrusting objects.