Stewardess-jutsu?

Wing Chun Stewardess?

Yesterday I wrote about stewardesses seeking martial arts training. This is reasonable, because flight attendants are the last line of defense. In the case of the underwear bomber on Christmas Day, if he hadn’t been restrained by passengers and flight attendants he might have blown himself up and killed several hundred passengers on board.

I also asked the question, “What type of hand-to-hand training should stewardesses receive?”

Now is the time for honesty. A lot of people will say, “They should learn Hubu Bubu Eskrima (Which just so happens to be my style, coincidentally.).”

You know that I believe that the big stick is the best weapon. However, we must also consider the environment.

For instance, in rural Portugal, a staff is not only common, but there are open spaces that provide plenty of room to wield a staff. In that setting a staff is the best choice of weapon.

For a lumberjack, training with an axe and kicking with a heavy, spiked boot are both realistic and practical.

For the cramped confines of an airliner, the long stick (36 inches in length) is not the best choice.

For weapons, I lean toward a stun gun, which is portable and can be easily worn on one’s person. The stun gun also will incapacitate without injuring bystanders. My second choice would be a sap or a billy club. The sap would also have the advantage of being easily concealable and carried inconspicuously.

Assortment of Stun Guns. Note the "Stun Club"

What type of martial art should a stewardess be trained in? Here I would argue for building a style from the ground up, considering the special circumstances of an airliner. Space is really tight, so I would place less emphasis on kicks, other than perhaps straight, lowline kicks no higher than the groin.

It seems to me that the style should emphasize the upper body, with straight punches (like Wing Chun), elbows, headbutts, and knees to a lesser extent. The style should also include chokes and arm/wrist/fingerlocks.

An Interesting Combination of Brass Knuckles and a Stun Gun, an Awesome Combination with Straight Punches

REAL LIFE COMBAT: ATTACKED WITH PLANKS

Rampage in Chicago

What Went Down

An honor student in Chicago got caught up in a gang melee. He was hit in the head with a plank (which, as far as I can tell from the video, was a 2×4) and then struck and stomped to death when he fell. My “Real Life Combat” examples usually feature ordinary people who successfully defend themselves against thugs, but this episode shows the real, and often tragic, consequences of violence.

Lessons Learned

1. Avoidance Is Not a Strategy. The young man who was killed was doing everything right: He was not into gangs, and he was not looking for trouble. Is this your strategy, to avoid trouble and to stay where it’s “safe”? Violence found him, and could just as easily find you, with tragic consequences

When I taught in Fresno a group of students went on a rampage. A student in my class was blindsided, and now has to live with a bone fragment in his eye that could someday sever his optical nerve and blind him. You don’t have to do anything wrong to be targeted –sometimes victims are chosen as random.

1. Real People Are Attacked by Real Weapons. A plank is a real weapon. A plank is perfectly legal and is readily available. When violence goes down on the street, you are not going to be attacked by someone with a pair of hook swords, a spear with a red tassel, or a rattan stick. Someone will pick up a brick, a beer bottle, or a shovel and try to cave in your head with it. You should train accordingly.
2. The Big Stick Can Kill. If the young man had been attacked with rattan sticks or nunchaku, he’d still be alive today. You also must ask if a pair of nunchaku or a rattan stick can stop a 2×4 wielded by an enraged gang banger. The big stick is capable of causing lethal damage, a fact that can either work for you or against you.

Guro Mike Pana steered me to this video in the Philippines, where a fight goes down with one assailant wielding something like a 2 x 4, and the other a knife. He told me he has relatives who work as tanods and carry large sticks (lumber?) like these.

A Pistol Bayonet?

I found this the other day. Would it be useful for a home defense weapon?

Lewis Millet:War Hero, Patriot, and Bayonet Expert

Sgt. Millet

I’d like to thank Eskrimador Miguel Gutierrez for steering me to this hero. Miguel has posted another article on Sgt. Millet here.

Lewis L. Millett, 88, a career Army officer who was briefly and somewhat misleadingly court-martialed for desertion during World War II and went on to receive the Medal of Honor for leading a bayonet charge during the Korean War, died Nov. 14 at a veterans hospital in Loma Linda, Calif. He had congestive heart failure.

Col. Millett, who sported a red handlebar mustache, cut an audacious and unconventional path during his 35 years of military service. He led daring attacks in two wars and was instrumental in starting a reconnaissance commando school to train small units for covert operations in Vietnam.

He also was an Army deserter. He later said he had been so eager to “help fight fascism and Hitler” that he left an Air Corps gunnery school in mid-1941 — months before the U.S. entry into World War II — to enlist with the Canadian army and go overseas. He manned an antiaircraft gun during the London blitz before rejoining the U.S. Army, which had by that time declared war and apparently was not being overly meticulous in its background checks.

As an antitank gunner in Tunisia, he earned the Silver Star after he jumped into a burning ammunition-filled halftrack, drove it away from allied soldiers and leapt to safety just before the vehicle exploded. Not long after, he shot down a German Messerschmitt Me-109 fighter that was strafing Allied troops. Col. Millett, who was firing from machine guns mounted on a halftrack, hit the pilot through the windshield.

He had fought his way through Italy, participating in the campaigns at Salerno and Anzio, when his paperwork caught up with him. A superior officer told him that he was being court-martialed for his desertion to Canada and that his punishment was $52. He also received a battlefield promotion for fearlessness in combat.

Sgt. Millet

His letters back home were unfiltered epithets aimed at the chain of command. “Letters were censored in World War II, and the next thing I knew I was standing before the battery commander,” he told the journal Military History. “He told me that the War Department had ordered three times that I be court-martialed. They finally did it to prevent someone from really throwing the book at me later. Then a few weeks later they made me a second lieutenant! I must be the only Regular Army colonel who has ever been court-martialed and convicted of desertion.”

During the Korean War, he received the military’s highest awards for valor, including the Medal of Honor and the Distinguished Service Cross, for two bayonet charges he led as a company commander in February 1951.

“We had acquired some Chinese documents stating that Americans were afraid of hand-to-hand fighting and cold steel,” he told Military History. “When I read that, I thought, ‘I’ll show you, you sons of bitches!’ “

He was awarded the Medal of Honor for leading a charge up Hill 180 near Soam-Ni on Feb. 7. When one of his platoons was pinned down by heavy fire, he placed himself at the head of two other platoons and ordered the men to charge up the hill.

According to his Medal of Honor citation, he bayoneted several enemy soldiers and lobbed grenades in their direction while rallying his men to fight. Grenade fragments pierced Col. Millett’s shin, but he refused medical evacuation.

“Despite vicious opposing fire, the whirlwind hand-to-hand assault carried to the crest of the hill,” the Medal of Honor citation read. “His dauntless leadership and personal courage so inspired his men that they stormed into the hostile position and used their bayonets with such lethal effect that the enemy fled in wild disorder.”

Charles H. Cureton, director of Army museums at the U.S. Army Center of Military History, said that Col. Millett’s intimidating, close-combat bayonet charge was “very unusual. By the time you get to the Second World War, the range of lethality of weapons is such that a bayonet charge is very hazardous.”

Lewis Lee Millett was born Dec. 15, 1920, in Mechanic Falls, Maine, and grew up with his mother in South Dartmouth, Mass., after his parents divorced. After his Korean War service, he went through Ranger training at Fort Benning, Ga., and was assigned to the 101st Airborne Division as an intelligence officer. He later was sent to Vietnam as a military adviser to a controversial intelligence program called Phoenix, which killed thousands of suspected Viet Cong and their sympathizers in an effort to destroy the Viet Cong infrastructure in towns and villages.

He said he retired in 1973 because he was convinced that the United States had “quit” in Vietnam. He championed the return of U.S. prisoners of war from Vietnam and then worked as a deputy sheriff in Trenton, Tenn., before settling in the San Jacinto Mountains resort village of Idyllwild, Calif., across the street from an American Legion post.

Reflecting on his career, Col. Millett once told an interviewer: “I believe in freedom, I believe deeply in it. I’ve fought in three wars, and volunteered for all of them, because I believed as a free man, that it was my duty to help those under the attack of tyranny. Just as simple as that.”

Rest in peace.

A Tanod I Wouldn’t Mess With

Tanod from the Larayan Barangay

The Filipino equivalent of the neighborhood watch is a barangay tanod, sort of a citizen deputy chosen by his neighborhood to patrol the streets and aid in routine law enforcement. So if someone gets drunk and disorderly at a fiesta, typically the tanods are the first to intervene.

The tanods I have seen have had light rattan sticks. I’ve seen them pedaling around on bikes, or one doing security when President Macapagal-Arroyo visited Cebu City. I’m reminded of the times I’ve been someplace and “security” has been some decrepit rent-a-cop, and I’ve thought, “God help us if you’re all that’s standing between me and violent death.”

Tanod Training. Note the rattan stick at the hip.

But Guro Pana of Atienza Eskrima tells of seeing tanods, especially in the rougher neighborhoods, carry heavy planks, steel pipes, and baseball bats.

“ When I was a kid, I recall my dad driving through Manila in a pretty bad area and I saw the tanods from the car window pretty close to us. They walked around town and their weapons were very large: one had a long steel pipe, the other had a large wooden club, and the other had a baseball bat. I read your blog about the tanods carrying rattan sticks in the PI….this is more of a recent phenomenon due to the fact that SPORT Arnis is getting more prominent in the PI. Personally, I think these tanods should be carrying a much larger and heavier fighting stick. However, from what I know, large clubs are more common on the streets in the PI.”

My teacher, GM Maranga, works nights as a tanod, patrolling his barangay, which draws drug users from all over the city. The position used to be strictly volunteer, but now he receives modest pay. He carries a short stick, but I wouldn’t mess with him. My impression is that very few of the tanods I see have any sort of training at all, but I can tell you that GM Maranga hits very hard. Once at lessons he told me that he and his fellow tanods had taken a screwdriver off of a kid the night before.

Tanod Inspection. Note the rattan stick.

The question is, should the tanod serve as a model for American law enforcement? (Furthermore, I would say that the bulk of street-level law enforcement in the Philippines comes from tanods and private security, such as the armed guards at MacDonald’s. Many Filipino policemen don’t have cars or radios, so they spend most of their time at the station.)

We’ve seen how Americans have been the last line of defense in the underwear bomber’s case. What if law enforcement were centered at the neighborhood level? Too many neighborhoods suffer from problems with gangs, drugs, robberies, vandalism, and so on, and feel frustrated that law enforcement seems to have different priorities.

Decades of “just give them your wallet,” “don’t resist,” “leave law enforcement to the professionals,” etc., resulted in a more passive, victimized society, and culminated in disaster on September 11^th, when it finally dawned on passengers of flight 97 that surrendering wasn’t good enough, and they had to act for themselves. Maybe it’s it’s time that we as citizens become in one guy’s memorable words, “Not a herd, but a pack.”

The Swashbuckler

Errol Flynn demonstrates the explosive thrusting of fencing.

I return to a theme I’ve talked about before. Suppose I give you a sword and you wield it as “an extension of the hand,” moving and cutting as the weapon effortlessly magnifies your reach and power.

Only you’re dead, because I gave you a rapier. Rapiers don’t cut; they’re only a thrusting weapon. (By the way, if the FMA are native Filipino arts, then why is thrusting called “estokada”? Like Filipinos can’t say the word “saksak”?)

Herein lies the problem. Each weapon has its own unique characteristics. Rather than use the weapon to amplify yourself, your proper goal is to align yourself with the weapon’s strengths. I spoke of the big stick instilling a spirit of raw power. The rapier is not a power weapon. Think of it as a yard-long needle. Try to power your way through a rapier conflict, and you’ll end up dead. The muscular Arnold Schwarzenegger is no more effective with a rapier than is Pee Wee Herman.

Errol Flynn, Swashbuckler

The feeling of the rapier is that of a cat, light on your feet. Or like a cobra, coiled, but suddenly exploding to full extension. Holding a rapier isn’t based on a strong grip, but one that is relatively light and sensitive.

Why would you train with the rapier? The rapier is an effective means of learning explosive, direct-line movement. Bruce Lee’s lead punch was based on his study of a famous European fencer named Aldo Nadi. If you train with the knife, fencing is a great means of learning important attributes. In my training with GM Maranga, he avoids the counter, trap, pass, parry, knife drills you see so commonly in the FMA. His style is like fencing, suddenly bursting in and thrusting, then darting out. It’s just too easy to get cut when you’re trapping, parrying, checking, etc.

But the catch for those who want to take the stick and apply it lock, stock, and barrel to all unarmed self-defense, each weapon’s characteristics makes it applicable to some unarmed techniques, but not all. As I said, the rapier has great applications for lunging and straight punching, especially the lead punch, or for knife fighting, but it’s useless when it comes to elbows.

In like Flynn: Forward movement, extension, elusiveness

Are Bayonets Obsolete?

WWII Marines Training

Recently there has been a debate in the army whether or not to continue bayonet training.

As I see it, there are two reasons for bayonet training:

1. Developing a warrior mindset
2. Actual combat

Remember what I said about the big stick developing a mindset of crushing power? Each weapon has its own characteristics, and rather than try to make the weapon an extension of yourself, the proper goal is for you to become an extension of the weapon. A soldier with a bayonet takes on characteristics of aggression, relentless forward movement (a bayonet is not an evasive or retreating weapon), intimidation, and ferocity. Several have argued in favor of keeping the bayonet for just these reasons.

But believe it or not, the bayonet is still used in combat. Often you will encounter the sloppy thinker who argues that because guns exist in the world, that empty hand and armed self-defense are therefore useless. One counter to this lazy argument is that even on the modern battlefield, it still comes down to knives and bare hands. For example, the British successfully used a bayonet charge in the Falklands Islands war. One military officer pointed out that in house-to-house combat of the sort the US armed forces have seen in Iraq, that the ability to use bayonet techniques in a house-clearing scenario could be the difference between life and death, –not to mention the added intimidation factor.

In May 2004 British soldiers in the Iraqui city of Basra were ambushed on the road by a numerically superior force. When they found themselves running out of ammunition, the order was given to fix bayonets, and they charged 600 feet across open ground and into the teeth of a surprised bunch of terrorists. The British troops killed more than 20 terrorists without any significant casualties of their own!

By the way, when I first trained with the long stick, I was taught to hold the stick in staff grip, with both hands down, which is what the vast majority of those using the long stick do. However, GM Maranga opened my eyes to the advantages of rifle grip, in which you grip the stick like a rifle, with one hand palm up and the other palm down. This means that the transition to bayonet techniques is seamless. (I’m not going to pretend that Big Stick Combat applies to every weapon and unarmed situation, but in this case there is a clear transition.)

Bayonet techniques are not just applicable to rifles, but to weapons like the umbrella. You will be much effective thrusting with the umbrella rather than swinging it like a stick. A fireplace poker would also be effective with bayonet techniques.

The late GM Giron fought with a machete against a Japanese bayonet charge in WWII. I remember him saying that a counter to the bayonet was to force the point downward, because if the opponent’s blade got caught in the ground, that would give an edge in defeating him.

Army Combatives Bayonet Series

Read the army combatives manual on the bayonet and other weapons here.

Eddie Van Halen, Martial Artist

Eddie VanHalen with "Frankenstein"

I remember how shocked I was when I read in an interview how rock star Eddie Van Halen grabbed his guitars (guitars that he had built by hand) and threw them into the bed of his pickup truck. The writer noted how Eddie threw his uncovered guitars as casually as he might have tossed a shovel.

I was stunned when I read the interview because I have only one guitar that I treat with great care like a holy object. While many guitarists buy guitars with fancy walnut veneers and glossy finishes, then polish them constantly, Eddie’s guitars have cigarette burns and tape on them.

And here is the lesson for martial artists. Too many martial artists view their weapons not as tools, but as treasures. GM Vasquez of Modified Tapado points out how some Filipino martial artists have heirloom sticks that are passed down from generation to generation. But Tapado stylists view sticks as disposable, and when they break a stick in training (as often happens) they casually reach for another. A Tapado stick is a tree limb with the bark still on it. People who see Tapado training are surprised at the power of a weapon that looks like “an old man’s walking stick.”

But we martial artists are attracted to nice looking weapons, weapons that are shiny, new, and look intimidating. I plead guilty to owning a long stick made out of different colors and types of exotic hardwoods. It’s a beautiful stick polished to a high gloss. But what we should keep in mind is that a weapon is a tool designed to crush an opponent.

Eddie's Guitar Close Up: Not Pretty

We must not let our attraction to beauty make us neglect simple, functional weapons. We are better off using crude, inexpensive weapons designed to get the job done, and banging them up in practice. If we choose weapons that look good (rather than fight well) and are hesitant to use them roughly in practice out of fear of marring their beauty, we may come up short when our lives are on the line.

The Hidden Knife -SEAMOK

Amo Guro Michael Blackgrave, Note the Hidden Knife.

I’m really pleased to get to know the SEAMOK crew. I must admit that I was put off by their logo, with the vivid tattoo skull, but at its core the group strikes me as rock solid. Visit them on my links. By the way, SEAMOK is an acronym for Simple, Effective, Aggressive, Methods Of Kombate. We are on the same page.

I’d like to share with you a snippet of their knife thinking, from Amo Guro Michael Blackgrave:

“A lot of systems teach to go up the middle and get into the gut of the situation. I teach the opposite…I try to avoid a center-line engagement preferring to cut and flank..off angle and slash….De’Cadena (chaining) with slashes and a few pops to vital areas. This not only keeps me from getting caught up in an inside game tussle where I can and probably will receive serious injury, it also keeps me in play with freedom of vision and movement to scope for potential multiple opponents. It is much easier to engage when the freedom of movement isn’t impinged by being confined to tight quarters (the inside). This also allows me to slash and pop and get the hell out of Dodge!” Amo Guro Michael Blackgrave

I can’t tell you how many styles are hell bent to get right inside the opponent, eyebrow to eyebrow, and duke it out. They are oh-so-confident that they can wade right into the teeth of an opponent’s attack–with a knife!– and emerge unscathed. Reason cannot penetrate these people, because they are so convinced of their ability to trade shot for shot (of course, in their telling of it, they will completely dominate the opponent so that not even a single shot will land).

Let us just say for the sake of argument that I can go inside an opponent, chest to chest, and totally control him, so that he cannot knee me, elbow me, bite me, headbutt me, grapple me, spit on me, or kick me, all at contact range. What about his homies behind me?

Amo Guro Blackgrave’s strategy (and mine) is the logical strategy:

• Don’t go inside.

• Don’t trade shots.

• Given any sort of choice, hit and run.

• Hit and zone to the outside, while looking for his gangbanger buddies.

• If you don’t think he’ll be deterred by the sight of a knife, don’t let him see your knife until it’s too late.

WALKING TALL: Sheriff Buford Pusser

Sheriff Pusser

Several movies have been made about the real life sheriff Buford Pusser, who bravely fought crime and corruption in Tennessee. Pusser was a courageous man who fought to clean up his county, and was seriously injured in an ambush that killed his wife. An enduring symbol of Buford Pusser as a law enforcement officer and a man to be respected was a big stick, which he used to great effect to destroy illegal whiskey stills and as a weapon –sort of a PR-24 on steroids. Sheriff Pusser put the fear of God into criminals.

Can you imagine criminals cowering as Pusser storms into a bar with a 28 inch rattan stick? The idea is ridiculous, even if the short, thin stick were made out of heavier wood. I think we all instinctively understand that a long, heavy stick is the more powerful weapon.

Furthermore, Officer Pusser was a big, strong man who often faced death. He couldn’t afford fancy, complicated techniques, but wielded a big stick with incredible power. He didn’t have the luxury of choosing anything other than the most powerful, intimidating stick (backed up by a .357 magnum and an M-16!).

You don’t have to be a martial artist to understand that the big stick is a symbol of power and authority.

The title of the movies based on Officer Pusser’s life, “Walking Tall,” comes from a saying that he often used: “The measure of a man is how tall he walks.” Sheriff Pusser was not just a big, dumb jock who could beat people up, but embodied important virtues such as courage, integrity, and pride. It’s much easier to be fearless, uncompromising, and proud if you have the tools to defend yourself and to kick ass if necessary. It will be easier for you to walk taller and unafraid when you carry a big stick and know how to use it with crushing power.

Sheriff Pusser wielded his stick with two hands, as can be seen in a publicity photo. A short one-handed stick gripped by a single hand cannot deliver the power of a stick large enough to be gripped by both hands.

Sheriff Buford Pusser (Note 2-Handed Grip)

Although my teachers are Filipino grandmasters, I would also like to put to rest forever the ignorant stereotype that Asians are the supreme martial artists, and those of European ancestry are hopeless incompetents as warriors. Buford Pusser is just one example of proof to the contrary.

If you need real world self-defense skills, particularly if you ever have to face the sort of life-and-death situations that Sheriff Pusser faced, you can benefit from a power system using the long, heavy stick.