This knife-fighting video is extremely well-grounded. Some of it (like the low thrust they're teaching) only works with a long blade, though -- note how long that bayonet is they're using. That's not a Navy Mark 2, the immediate ancestor of the Kabar. Other techniques, like the double parry, are very solid even with shorter blades. The move to a quick hand cut followed by more deadly techniques is also very well-grounded, as is the inclusion of wrist-grabbing and other grappling as a way of controlling blades.
Those techniques are Great Masters of Europe fencing techniques, descended from the rapier fighting of the Spanish, Italian, and French masters and the Elizabethans who learned from them. They had long ago passed out of Olympic fencing. I had no idea they were still current as late as WWII.
That said, they're all subject to George Silver's critique of them: He thought that the average brawler from the docks would easily overcome the finest techniques, though they would work against someone else schooled in this form of fencing. You'd probably get a lot further rushing them than adopting a proper fighting stance and trying to out-fence them, and that's assuming (as the video does) that they might be equally armed and not possessed of a rifle and friends quickly called-for. I doubt this sort of fencing made much of a difference in the Pacific Theater of WWII, if indeed anyone ever attempted it at all.
Still, it's interesting to see the old ways so well preserved in an unexpected place.
10 comments:
When I was growing up in San Diego, our father worked at MCRD. They were still teaching that stuff in the 60's and early 70's, as well as hand to hand combat. A couple of our Dad's friends who were martial arts experts, taught the recruits, as well as local police and sheriff's departments. They'd also run classes on weekends for kids.
As far as the knife fighting and close quarters combat training, probably still being taught.
The USMC has a martial arts program now that is quite different in form. The Army has switched to one based on Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu as a way of cutting down on training injuries. I think they've even abandoned bayonet training as well; but the USMC still did that, at least, the last time I checked. In fact they executed a bayonet charge during the Iraq War.
Look at the way the low thrust they're demonstrating assumes the opponent will also be attacking with a long blade. You're to lunge outwards, going to ground with your left hand, so that your body would pass under the thrust -- and then your counter-thrust will go home in the bowels (which is fatal, but not quickly).
This is rapier fighting. It's not anything like what we teach today; and an assumption like that comes apart as soon as you're not in 1560 or 1660 or 1760; by 1860, your opponent probably has a gun.
Give me an E tool any day. Shovels are my level of finesse.
I knew an old 1st Marine Division vet who served on Guadalcanal. He used his Kabar on a few Japanese. He said at times the jungle was so dense and contact so quick there was simply no time or way to bring a rifle to bear.
So where do these techniques come from? Were the masters who developed them just thinking through it like a chess game? Did the techniques come from combat?
Why would a brawler win? Would it just be the difference in experience?
Interesting stuff.
I'm a little puzzled by the response of pivoting on your front foot and swinging the back foot around while thrusting at you opponent who just came at you (around 4:15). Seems like you wouldn't get much on the thrust, but I guess it's your opponents forward momentum that gives force to the thrust?
It is remarkably fencing like.
I suspect the question about the brawler is that he's simply more likely to overwhelm you while you're trying to make proper moves, if you're not quick or decisive enough.
To me, that equates to a difference in experience; the brawler has a lot more fights under his belt. Would the fencer do better than the brawler if the fencer had as many fights under his belt?
In other words, is it the technique, or is it a quality of the fighter?
In other words, is it the technique, or is it a quality of the fighter?
It's both, and it's a limitation of being reliant on technique rather than being determined to win the fight for survival. The fencer is going to be trapped into doing things the "right" way, and he's going to be predictable in what he does. Watch a fencing match; the two are plenty quick enough. And very predictable, except to the opponent, who's trapped by the same general techniques. The brawler is going to be much more random and unpredictable.
Eric Hines
In other words, is it the technique, or is it a quality of the fighter?
Silver, writing in 1599, is almost Aristotelian in his assignment of multiple causes for this. He has six causes, but several of them have multiple parts.
To summarize it in more contemporary language, mostly it's technique (this is where he expends a lot of time talking about multiple causes with many parts -- he thinks the fencing schools fail to teach what's really important); partly it's that he thought rapiers were too long and sometimes too heavy to be effective against the kind of expedient weapons that unskillful men would use (Raven's E-tool being a good example); but also partly it's because people who fight all the time have temperamental advantages over people who train to fight because they are hoping to avoid fighting.
Thanks for the responses, guys.
Post a Comment