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

by Hank Reinhardt

  Earlier I stated that the practiced knife fighter is not interested in seeing who is the best man, but only in cutting you. It doesn’t matter if you’re unarmed or not.

  I never met anyone who was good with a knife who did not regard each and every adversary with a great deal of fear and respect. No matter who he fought, he regarded that opponent as the toughest and most deadly person he was ever likely to meet. Any and all attacks would be made with a great deal of caution and restraint. He would always be alert for any trick that might be attempted.

  Facing a man who regards you as a totally unknown danger and threat to his existence doesn’t leave you much room. He isn’t about to extend himself in a wild lunge so that you can grab his knife arm, yank forward, and smash your hand against his elbow. He won’t attack you with an overhand stab so you can cross block and then slip into an armlock. He will attack you just as if you had a knife, too. Feints, hand cuts, moving in and out. Cutting and weakening you until he can move in and make a kill safely.

  I can offer no ways that give you a relatively high chance of success when forced to face a knife unarmed. There are things you can try, but how well they work is problematic. But any attack is better than giving up and waiting like a sheep to die, standing around and bleating.

  The eyes are a highly vulnerable and sensitive area. Any attack in this area is likely to produce a certain degree of panic, particularly if it is quick and vicious. This is a last-ditch, desperation move because the moment you initiate it you are completely vulnerable.

  That said, the move itself is simple. You leap in, grab the head with your hands on either side and dig your thumbs in at the eyes. You’ll probably get cut, but it only takes a second to dig in at the cornea and blind a man permanently. If I’m going to die, I’d like to at least leave my killer something to remember me by.

  Wrist grabbing is a very chancy thing. Until a few years ago, I would have said it’s impossible, but then something happened in a practice session that changed my mind. But I still wouldn’t want to rely on it.

  Grab a wrist and chance getting cut.

  Grab just back of the guard and potentially disarm him.

  A close friend, John Roberts, was on his way to Vietnam and spent a few days with me. I questioned him about the hand-to-hand training he’d received as a Green Beret and one thing led to another, so we made up some practice knives and headed to the yard. I was doing rather well (John may try to bomb me if he reads this), when suddenly I slipped on the grass and fell. John, having all the honorable instincts of a rattlesnake, instantly jumped in and tried to do me in.

  I was reacting with a mild case of panic and trying to ward off his attack with my left arm when suddenly I brushed his knife arm. My hand slid down his arm and I found myself gripping his wrist. Not one to pass up an advantage, I yanked and he fell forward onto my “knife.”

  So it’s possible. But again, I have no wish to rely on it. However, if it does happen that you do manage to grab the knife arm, clutch the hand, not just the wrist. With only the wrist being held, the knife can be levered down and used to cut your hand. Or it can be switched to the other hand. The best place to grip the hand is just back of the guard. This gives you some leverage and—who knows?—it might even be possible to you to get it away from him.

  Just grabbing the knife is no real solution to your problem. Obviously, you need to do something more—biting, kicking, punching, anything. The body is full of vulnerable spots, so make the most of them.

  This is no self-defense book, so I’m not going to talk about pressure points. A medical text on anatomy will tell you what you want to know if you take the time to study it. You do need to learn where they are, how to attack them, and what happens when you do.

  But keep one important thing in mind if you ever face a knife attack while you’re unarmed: you have almost no odds of surviving.

  A friend of mine beat those odds, once, and beat them damned well. His name was Don4 and he was about three years older than me. He was one of the toughest people I’ve ever run across. In Korea, he was highly decorated and badly wounded.

  We had been to the local movie when the fight broke out. I ran to see what was happening and saw a guy trying to cut Don, who kept backing up and avoiding him. I knew Don didn’t have a knife with him because I’d just borrowed it to open some boxes. I started to move in and help, but Don waved me back. The guy with the knife wasn’t real good. He kept making the sort of wild slashes you see in movies.

  As he made one, Don slipped to the side and lashed out with his foot, taking the boy’s legs from under him. The kid hit the ground and Don was standing over him. He stomped him in the mouth with the heel of his boot and then pivoted. The kid on the ground lost all of his front teeth and you could hear his jaw pop. I damn near lost my supper.

  Don later confessed that he felt real lucky.

  You can’t count on luck, however. Quick thinking is a must. Quick thinking, combined with a bit of lying and deception is nothing short of deadly, especially when combined with experience.

  I watched a fight that broke out one night between a couple of over-age high school students who didn’t know each other. They exchanged a couple of punches. Then one broke away, ran to his car and grabbed a piece of pipe he had there. He started at the other, who backed off, looking for something.

  Somebody in the crowd yelled, “Bust his goddamn head, Bobby.”

  The other boy stopped, held up his hand and said, “Whoa, wait a minute. What’s your last name?”

  The other glared and secured his grip on the pipe before answering, “Strickland. Bobby Strickland.”

  “Strickland! Bobby Strickland? Well, I’ll be goddamned. Man, you’re my cousin.”

  “Boy, you’re crazy, you ain’t no damn kin to me.”

  “Hell yes, I am. I’m your cousin. Hell, I ain’t gonna fight my own cousin. My momma would tear me up if she found out. Hell, let’s just call it quits.”

  With that, he simply walked forward with his right hand outstretched with an offer to shake. The other guy hesitated and that was all it took. The boy got closer, promptly kicked him where it hurt, thumbed his knife and slashed Bobby across the chest.

  He ran like hell and everyone could hear him laughing.

  Two of my favorite stories concern the same boy. Let’s call him Harvey (his real name was just as bad). He was a really mean and nasty guy. He had quite a reputation as a street fighter and I believe it is probably well deserved. Harvey had never taken a bath in his life and you could smell him a mile away. Many a night I’ve been talking with some guys and someone would sniff and say, “Here comes Harvey,” and sure enough, there he would be. He won his fights by getting in close. Sooner or later the other guy would have to breathe and when he did, he’d gag on the stench.

  Harvey was pretty big, about six-foot-two and two hundred thirty-five pounds. He wore his hair in a crewcut about two inches long. It stood straight up.

  He and some other boy got into it one night at a drive-in. I don’t know who the other guy was, but Harvey wouldn’t make a move. Finally the boy said, “Harvey, you’re a goddamn coward. You wouldn’t hit me with a stick.”

  “Yeah hell I would.”

  The boy walked over to a trash pile, picked up a two-by-four and walked over to Harvey. Proferring the stick, he said, “Here, goddamn it. Hit me with it.”

  Moving really well, Harvey snatched the stick and slammed it down on the fool’s head. The boy fell like a poleaxed steer, blood gushing from his scalp.

  Harvey looked down and said, “I told him I’d hit ’im with it.”

  ◊ ◊ ◊

  The other story about Harvey also concerns Smokey Stover, whom we’ve met before. It happened at a drive-in movie. Smokey was an inch taller, but a good seventy-five pounds lighter. As should be expected, out popped the knife. Harvey wanted no part of that, but he didn’t back down, either.

  “Hey, man, I ain’t got no knife. If I had a knife, I’d fight you but I
ain’t got one.”

  There was a crowd gathered and when he said that, at least twenty people held out knives, butt-first and yelled, “Here, take mine.”

  Harvey paid no attention. He didn’t want to see them. He just kept backing up and saying that if he had a knife he’d fight.

  Smokey was unimpressed. He just kept coming.

  When Harvey made his move, it was as fast as I’ve ever seen a man move. He just turned and ran. Just flat got it down the road.

  You see, Harvey understood fighting.

  Even so, Harvey’s dead. Years after he ran from Smokey, he shot a man and got life in prison. While he was there, somebody chopped him with an ax. It was no real loss to the world.

  ◊ ◊ ◊

  So where does all this leave us?

  Knife fighting is neither glamorous nor heroic. It is a quick and dirty affair that leaves everyone feeling soiled.

  A man who deliberately tries to get into a knife fight is a damn fool. To risk your life, that of a stranger, and the well-being of friends and relatives for some childish, macho self-image is the height of stupidity.

  However, it is equally stupid in this day and age to go around unprepared and denying such things happen. They happen, and I’m a firm believer in trying to make sure they don’t happen to me.

  4The same Don as mentioned previously in Chapter 5.

  INTERLUDE

  HANK’S STUDENTS

  Editor’s Note: We asked Hank’s pupils to contribute to this volume by talking about aspects of knives and knife fighting they had learned from Hank. Retired Michigan State Trooper Mike Stamm’s contribution serves as the foreword to this volume.

  Following this section, one of Hank’s long-time students and close associates, Greg Phillips, with the editorial help of Jerry Proctor, has added to and updated the material Hank had completed. Greg worked with Hank for forty years studying the history and performance of edged weapons, modern, medieval and ancient, and he passes on to you many of the things Hank taught to him about knives, their history and their usage.

  Interlude Contributors

  Massad Ayoob

  Richard Garrison

  Henderson Hatfield Heatherly III

  Michael D. Janich

  Nils Onsager

  John Maddox Roberts

  Whit Williams

  Photo of Hank taken by Greg Phillips.

  REMEMBERING HANK REINHARDT

  MASSAD AYOOB

  Of all the knife-related courses I’ve taken over the years, none are more memorable than the one I took in Georgia many years ago with the great Hank Reinhardt.

  Massad Ayoob and Hank Reinhardt.

  Photo by Richard Garrison.

  There are historians of the edged weapons, from sword to dagger. There are master practitioners of fighting with the blade. There are experts in the craft and the metallurgy of these tools. And there are those who have actually used them to fight. To get that expertise together would normally take a large, round table of separate masters.

  Or, you could just meet Hank Reinhardt.

  He had devoted his life to the blade. Hank not only made his living at it, he compiled the exhaustive research that he left behind to guide the rest of us, and those who would follow later. He could design . . . and build . . . and teach . . . and do. And, perhaps more important, he could inspire.

  Others could talk about espada y daga, but Hank could do it, and more importantly, he could teach it. He understood human dynamics as deeply as he did the physics of the cutting edge. Watching him demonstrate was like being in a vampire movie, where the creature of the night is in front of you, and suddenly disappears, and then reappears behind you in an instant, letting you feel that your throat is about to be opened.

  He showed us what could truly be done with a blade in each hand . . . when to strike, and when to fall back and force the opponent to commit himself into your already-prepared defense. Hank showed us—and the world—the awesome practical value of the kukri knife, which he did so much to resurrect and popularize outside the culture that had spawned it.

  Above all, he did it without ego or concern for himself. Hank taught what he did because it was important to him to continue the core value of protecting the innocent from evil.

  And he lived what he taught. The day came when he flew back into Atlanta from a long knife-buying trip in Europe for Atlanta Cutlery. He didn’t have his customary Star PD .45 with him under the circumstances, of course, but back then pocket knives were allowed on commercial aircraft, and he had a little folding Puma in the pocket of his jeans. Having cleaned out his refrigerator before leaving on the long trip, Hank stopped at a grocery store on his drive home from the airport.

  As he made his way back to his car with his purchases, two young punks vectored in on him in the parking lot. Hank was a slim, older guy with grey hair and eyeglasses, and apparently fit their profile of a mugging victim . . . a classic example of what I’ve come to call “sudden and acute failure of the victim selection process.”

  They closed into rapid contact with him and one snarled, “Give it up, old man!”

  There was a soft “click” sound as the Puma’s blade sprang open in Hank’s right hand. His left had already grabbed the talker’s belt in an iron grip, pulling him in tight to Reinhardt, who brought the razor-sharp Puma into light contact with the mugger’s lower abdomen. Only then did the assailant see the confident, anticipatory grin on Hank Reinhardt’s face.

  The second suspect went ashen and backed away in slow motion, hands raised, an expression of confused horror on his face. The one Hank had grabbed squeaked plaintively, “No problem, old man!”

  In a voice somewhere between a growl and a purr, and without losing the grin, Hank replied. “No problem at all. Ah’m gonna gut ya lak a chicken.”

  The would-be mugger didn’t move anything but his bowels.

  After a moment, Reinhardt decided it wasn’t worth the paperwork, and shoved the reeking mugger away. He watched them both run . . . and then put his Puma back in his pocket, picked up his grocery bags, and went home.

  We lost Hank Reinhardt too soon, but thankfully, much of his legacy remains. I miss him still, and I am glad that so much of what he learned, rediscovered, and created, has been preserved for us who remain, and for the generations to follow.

  RICHARD GARRISON

  I was still in high school when first I met Hank. It was at an early Society for Creative Anachronism event in Atlanta. I was just an observer, but nevertheless recognized Hank as someone of knowledge and I asked him about contemporary knife fighting. He asked if I had a knife and I did. I took it out, opened it and handed it over hilt first.

  Hank, in a flash, reversed the knife, grabbed my shirt, pulled me in and graphically showed that I could be a dead man at that point. “The first thing,” he said, “is never to give a perfectly good knife up.” That was one of my first, good practical lessons that followed me through my life. Others had, undoubtedly, have learned it earlier in their life than I. But, as slow as I am, I think I am a good learner.

  A few years later, I met Hank again in SF fandom. Besides science fiction, comics, the characters therein, we talked knives, swords, axes, guns . . . and, of course, ice tea. Like a good romance, one thing led to another and pretty soon we were shooting handguns and rifles, slashing at each other and learning about leverage and body mechanics.

  My parents did a good job with me, but Hank sort of gave this Yankee a gander at some things I didn’t pick up . . . as I wrote above, I am slow, but still a good learner.

  The foremost thing I learned was the art of deception. Other attributes are good, but deception is the force multiplier to speed, leverage, timing, and strength. He understood reaction and timing like few others. He also knew how to make a person with ill-will think he had the upper-hand . . . until it was too late.

  I also learned Hank’s version of being courteous to all you meet, but have a plan to kill them.

  And one of the more i
mportant lessons revolved around testosterone filled exhibitions. When you get into a friendly shooting or axe-throwing competition . . . and you win . . . shrug your shoulders like the champion you are and don’t try to duplicate the feat, as you can only become lucky so often. Of course, a smart remark might be appropriate.

  A few years later, I went from a printing and publishing background into police work. Thirty-plus years later in federal, state and local service, I still draw upon many of his strategies and tactics when I teach today. His teachings about deception were absolutely priceless when I worked undercover and later became one of the foundations for the firearms, defensive tactics, and control techniques I teach to this day.

  I learned that if you were in a true-enough knife fight, you will get cut. And that pain is a series of electric nerve transmissions and you can mitigate their effects.

  Hank taught me about human reaction. I learned that action beats reaction, but you can manipulate the outcome. He would have understood and marveled at Colonel John Boyd’s OODA loop. For the uninitiated, that is an acronym for Observe-Orient-Decide-Act—an incredible, simple observation on reaction and timing. If you don’t know of it, read Certain to Win and Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War.

  I learned iced tea was only proper with lime.

  I learned that I was no card player, much to his disgust, as once he learned I didn’t partake, a victim had been removed from the pool.

  I learned that televisions can be replaced in the early dead of night and usually before Janet got home.

  I learned what grief can do to a man. It can drive you to the horizon of life and, once crossed, that which you know and trust begins to be indistinct. Stray too far beyond the offing, you could lose all that it’s dear to you.