Hank Reinhardt's Book of Knives: A Practical and Illustrated Guide to Knife Fighting

by Hank Reinhardt

  During the reign of Henri IV of France, a well-recorded duel occurred between the Sire La Garde and Sire Bazanez. As was the custom, the two principals met accompanied by their seconds. After the usual formalities, the four went at it, the principals engaging one another and the seconds doing the same. La Garde seems to have been the superior swordsman, as he soon landed a thrust on the forehead of Bazanez. The blade failed to penetrate the skull and the fight continued. La Garde then landed a thrust through the body and shortly thereafter, another. There was a momentary break and, when the action resumed, again La Garde sent the point of his sword through Bazanez’s body.

  At this point, Bazanez threw away his own sword and drew his dagger. “Look to it as you are a dead man!” he shouted and, dodging yet another thrust, leapt on his enemy. He stabbed him fourteen times in the neck and body. La Garde, while dying, managed to bite off half of Bazanez’s chin.

  Meanwhile, the seconds were finishing off their play. Mirabel, the brother of La Garde, landed a thrust through the body of Fermontez, the cousin of Bazanez. Fermontez managed to close with Mirabel, but was held and stabbed again, and so died. Mirabel offered to continue the fight with Bazanez, who declined on the grounds that he really needed to see a doctor, and rides away.

  It would seem that not once did a stab land in the right place.

  What all of this boils down to is that I feel the edge is superior in its ability to simply stop a fight and I think historical records lend credence to the idea. Consider the fact that most spears, at least those intended to be held in the hands, rather than thrown, have provisions to keep an opponent from running up the blade and shaft. A thrust in the body may kill your opponent, but that doesn’t help you if he lives long enough to see you dead.

  The thrust or stab is risky because it can kill and yet not stop. In most street encounters, killing is not desired, but stopping is. The cut will stop but not kill.

  Now, having said the edge is better than the point, let me bring up a very important consideration. Trying to predict how a man will react when injured is impossible. Some will fall down screaming from a very minor wound, while others will keep on coming despite the most awful and awesome of injuries. There is simply no way to tell beforehand how a specific person will behave.

  Any encounter involving a knife is serious. It’s no game. A game has a set of rules and a goal, which remain invariable. But an encounter with a knife, indeed any life-and-death combat situation, will be governed by the circumstances and the goals of the participants.

  Consider, for example, the commando raid where the killing of a sentry and doing it quietly are the prime goals. Compare this with a street encounter with a young tough out to impress himself and cut you up. What do you do?3

  ◊ ◊ ◊

  Finally, in the hopes of nailing the point home, consider the well-known Colonel Jim Bowie. During the fight at the Vidalia Sand Bar, he received two gunshots wounds and a thrust through the chest with a sword cane. He still killed his man.

  3Editor’s note: page 23 of original manuscript missing here.

  6

  USING THE KNIFE

  We’ve all seen the Hollywood knife fight: two men, facing each other with blades bared, circling, arms outstretched. Someone slashes and his opponent dodges. Then another slash, blocked by the other knife. Then suddenly the two close, each grabbing the other’s knife hand. Muscles straining, arm to arm, locked into an embrace of death!

  Whee! Romantic and inspiring. And pure and utter garbage.

  In real life, a knife encounter is usually too fast for the eye to follow. Two guys will be arguing, getting hotter and hotter. One suddenly appears to back down, usually saying something like, “I don’t want no trouble.” He turns his back, then spins back around. There’s a brief flash and the other guy is lying on the ground, bleeding and screaming. If he’s real brave, he’s only moaning a little.

  If you are ever so unlucky as to get close to a real knife fight, it would be useful to keep one fact in mind above all others: the real knife fighter does not wish to engage in a fight.

  He doesn’t care who is best with a knife. He only wants to cut you. He will then do anything he can to take you by surprise, attack, and finish you off before you can fight back.

  In those cases where both parties manage to get their knives out, one of two things has happened: one of the fighters is a complete turkey who gave his opponent a chance to fight back; or both fighters are pretty shrewd and not about to allow the other one any advantage that can be prevented.

  A book I once read about gunfighters in the Old West had a quote that summed things up perfectly. When questioned about attitudes, an old man who had been there replied, “Well, it’s like this. I don’t like that sonofabitch, and I’m gonna kill him the first good chance I get.”

  Times have changed, of course. But people haven’t.

  It’s difficult to write about the mental aspects of an armed encounter. I’ve met and discussed this with many men who have been in combat, from police shootouts to military action in Guadalcanal, Korea, and Vietnam. I grew up in an area where knifings were commonplace. I tended a bar in a neighborhood where killings were not uncommon. And I’ve had a few hairy encounters myself.

  It’s amazing how varied the attitudes of these people are. But there do seem to be connecting, underlying threads.

  One is the acceptance of fear. Fear that makes you sweat and your heart beat like a trip-hammer. Fear can kill you, of course, but if you accept it, you can use it to speed up reaction time, gain alertness, and excuse some savagery you would normally not even consider.

  The other element is the acceptance of pain, and the ability to subordinate pain to a larger, more important goal. I once talked to a Marine who had won the Congressional Medal of Honor in Korea. He lost a leg in the process. He confessed to me that the leg was shattered before the action started. He said that it hurt like hell, but he had no choice but to keep fighting because otherwise he’d be dead. He figured he could live without a leg . . .

  Here’s a bit of personal philosophy I developed pretty young in life. Over the years, I haven’t changed it at all. I prefer to leave people alone. I won’t bother them and all I ask is that they not bother me. There are a helluva lot of really tough people out there and if you bother them, they will hurt you. The pain and trouble really aren’t worth it.

  Now, if you’ve grasped, really grasped, what we’ve been talking about, I can go on to the technical fine points. If you haven’t, I’d suggest you would have been smarter to buy more insurance than to buy this book.

  It’s relatively simple to grip a folding knife. You hold it blade out like a sword and edge down like an ax. With larger knives, there are questions about where to hold your thumb, but with a pocket knife, it’s not a problem: you hold it the best way you can. Above all, you grip your knife tightly.

  People who are lucky enough to have no experience of knives often think a blade merely slides in and out of a target, and that very little shock is transmitted to the hand. That’s not so. Unless you maintain a tight grip at all times, you will learn one of the most unsettling lessons in combat—either a stab or a cut can tear the knife out of a hand that doesn’t hold it tightly.

  The icepick grip: the first thing it costs is reach.

  For some reason, a few instructors have decided the best way to hold a knife is in the “icepick” grip with the blade lying flat along the underside of the forearm. Now, think about this and you might decide it’s really not smart. The first thing it costs you is reach. When you try to close in on an opponent, and you’re holding your knife in that way and he isn’t, he will probably cut you first. That’s the second thing it costs you.

  The more stubborn advocates of this method of holding the knife will argue that you can conceal the knife until the last minute with this grip. All I can say is that it might work if your opponent is carrying a tin cup and wears dark glasses. Otherwise, you’re wishing for too much of a combination of s
tupidity and bad luck.

  It’s important to hold the knife with the edge down. How important? Well, it depends. How important is your life? Holding the blade with the edge up may look tough and macho, but looks are not what count here. Holding the blade up limits your maneuverability. It is much easier to turn the blade over and cut up than to turn it over so you can rip down.

  A lot of paperback writers remark how their characters hold the blade edge up, like a well-trained knife-fighter, but authors don’t have to worry about who their opponent is. Many of them don’t even bother to pick up a knife and see how it feels. They simply copy what they’ve read by other incompetent writers.

  Any serious social encounter with knives has one main goal: to stop the action. Beyond that, you have a little flexibility: to kill, or merely get away, or what have you. But first comes the cessation of hostilities.

  There are many ways to handle this. You can run, shoot, call the cops, or even try to organize a discussion group to talk the problem out. But I’m talking knives, so I’ll limit myself to that.

  This brings us back to a previous subject: wounds. All wounds are painful and pain is a great tool for stopping fights. So is the loss of use of various parts of the body. Therefore, it follows that although we wish to inflict any wound we can, the more painful it is, the better.

  A cut that lands on the lower forearm at right angles is painful and will inflict a certain amount of damage. But a right-angle cut will only go so deep before it encounters the bone. But if you change the angle, you can cut more flesh before you hit bone. If you hit it at the correct angle, the blade can skate along the bone, peeling a very large section of meat.

  If you hit at the correct angle, the blade can skate along the bone.

  I can assure you that people do not continue fighting with the flesh of the forearm peeled back from the wrist to the elbow.

  The same can be said for a cut to the ribs. Angle the cut and the blade cuts more flesh, therefore giving a great deal more pain. Loose flaps of skin are disconcerting to the man on whom they flap.

  This principle works also with the stab. A straight in and out puncture inflicts damage, but if you go in at one angle and out at another, you do more damage. Obviously you don’t want to hang around probing, since that gives him too much opportunity to cut you. But if you stab or thrust and, as you withdraw the blade, twist it, then lever up or down or sideways, you can do a lot more damage. And it doesn’t take any additional time, it can all be done in one fluid motion.

  I was at a bar one night when a fight broke out in the parking lot. Being, in those days, an always interested bystander, I wandered out to watch the action. The two guys had just started. One had managed to get his jacket wrapped around his left arm. The other guy had a very slight nick on his side and just a spot of blood. I suspected the first guy had tried to cut him, missed doing any damage, and backed off to slip off his jacket.

  I knew both of them, although not well. They were considered pretty hard cases. Bobby, the one with the jacket on his arm, had a reputation of being a real top-flight SOB. He’d cut his brother pretty badly in an argument at home, so upsetting his parents they’d kicked him out.

  He was bobbing and weaving while his opponent, whom I never knew by any name other than Junior, was standing more or less flat-footed, but always moving in. There were a few passes, none of which landed. Both combatants were serious and quiet.

  I noticed a strange thing. Bobby’s coat was looser and looser on his arm. Every time he moved the left arm, the coat was wrapped a little less tightly. I wondered if Junior noticed.

  When Bobby made his move, I saw that Junior had.

  Bobby’s move was to fake a cut and snap the coat out at Junior’s head, then move in with the knife. Junior was a real pro. He grabbed the coat and yanked. Bobby stumbled forward and got two quick swipes across his belly. He fell and started yelling to beat the band. Can’t say I blame him, either.

  Bobbing and weaving leads to a fake to the head and a cut to the leg.

  (Sometimes, by the way, things just don’t go right. Some girl told the cops who did it and Junior spent a year in jail. I never heard of him again. But Bobby spent three months in the hospital and six in jail. Later, he was shot to death robbing a liquor store.)

  Looking back and evaluating it on the basis of skill, there were a lot of good moves. Bobby played it cool, protecting his left arm and also preparing to use his coat to distract his opponent. He made one mistake. He should have braced for a yank or else let go of the coat.

  Junior, of course, played an even better game. He saw the coat being unwound (done very well, I should state), but never let on he was aware of it. He deliberately came in close enough that he could be hit with the coat and was ready to take care of the move.

  The whole fight took maybe one and a half or two minutes. But it was quick. Both combatants were thinking fast and moving well. One just thought a little faster than the other.

  And that’s one of the keys: alertness. You have to be constantly alert. No one knows all the tricks; new ones are being thought of all the time. So expect to see something new and unexpected. If you’re alert, you can avoid being killed by it.

  That brings us to the subject of distractions. You can’t afford to be distracted. At the same time, you have to be aware of everything that goes on. It’s very much like a juggling act in your mind.

  At the same time you have to avoid distractions, you should be searching for some way to distract your opponent. Junior distracted Bobby by letting him think his trick with the coat was going to work. If you can get an opponent’s attention on the wrong thing for just a moment, you have sufficient time to move in and back out.

  You must also remember the street is filled with weapons. There are common ones that everyone knows: sticks, bottles, rocks. But there are others that most people don’t think about. Take a bright light from a street light—if you can maneuver so that it’s in his eyes (and, incidentally, keep him from maneuvering so it’s in your eyes). A tree stump, the curb, or uneven pavement offer the opportunity to make your opponent stumble, if you can take advantage of it. Looked at from that point of view, you can make the whole area in which the fight takes place into a weapon.

  It’s more common to think of these elements as “tactical terrain advantage,” but I think you gain a psychological advantage by simply regarding them as a weapon. The term “weapon” has a less pedantic ring than “tactical terrain advantage,” and it’s nicely suggestive. Remember: your frame of mind is always your chief weapon.

  Stance is also important because, from there, you will move into your attacks as well as your defense. It should be remembered that when you’re out of range, your stance doesn’t matter. Hell, you can hold your knife in your teeth, if your opponent can’t reach you with his. Just be able to get the damned thing back in your hand when he starts to close in on you.

  With large knives, a lot of people advocate a modified fencing stance.

  All edged weapons are not equal. Though popular, this modified fencing stance is not best for knives.

  The theory here seems to be that since swords and knives are both edged weapons, why then, sauce for the goose tastes just as good on a gander. Well, I can tell you a goose can have a gamier taste and require a more pungent sauce.

  The difference between swords and knives is this: a sword is both an offensive and defensive weapon, whereas a knife is not. The attack is delivered with the sword and it is defended against by the sword.

  But a knife, regardless of size, is an offensive weapon. It has defensive capabilities, but they are highly limited and, because of length, do not include the practical capability of blocking another knife.

  Let me illustrate this with an experiment. Roll up two sections of newspaper. Have a friend take one of them and use it as if he were cutting and thrusting, while you try to block with the other. As long as he makes straightforward moves, you’ll be all right; in fact, if you’re an experienced fe
ncer, you may find yourself doing quite well.

  But the moment your opponent starts to fake and cut, or merely attack and let the blade drop or rise high, you’re lost. The two blades are simply too short to guarantee you’ll be able to make contact consistently enough to parry or block.

  The stance that gives the best protection while offering the greatest latitude in your attack is a modified boxing stance—that, of a left hand boxer with a right hand lead.

  A modified boxing stance gives better protection plus offers leeway for different attacks.

  Right leg and arm are slightly forward. The body is in a slight crouch. The left arm is back, and I would suggest you keep your left hand closed tightly in a fist. It’s threatening, can be used to punch with, and the fist can give speed and authority to a blocking movement.

  Keep both arms close to the body, elbows in. Stand face on to your opponent. This offers pretty good protection for the vital areas. Arms protect the sides, the forearms and hands guard the face, and the elbows give a reasonable amount of protection to the midsection and chest.

  From this position, you can also launch an attack in almost any direction. You can slash from either side, give a full fencer’s lunge, and even switch hands quickly and easily.

  It’s useful to teach yourself to switch the knife from one hand to the other. It can allow you to attack quickly from a totally unexpected quarter and it can let you set up distracting movements. If you switch hands and attack, and don’t finish the fight, you can fake a hand switch and attack with the primary. But switching hands is tricky and there are a lot of opportunities to screw up attempting it.