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Volume I The Start

In the footsteps of heroes

William Hill Wolfe CD CWO / RSM ( Ret.)

Volume I The Start

“In

the footsteps of heroes”

by William hill wolfe CD ( .) .) Cwo / rsm rsm Ret

Volume I The Start

“In

the footsteps of heroes”

by William hill wolfe CD ( .) .) Cwo / rsm rsm Ret

Wh wolfe WARNING: The workouts and other health-related activities described in the programs presented by W. H. Wolfe are prescribed for use as an adjunct to improve strengthening, conditioning, health, fitness and, above above all, self-protection/self-defense. These programs may not be appropriate for everyone. Individuals who suffer from any disease or are recovering from an injury of any sort should consult their physician regarding the advisability of undertaking any of the activities suggested in these programs. The author has been painstaking in his research and the presentation of the material in these programs. He is neither responsible, nor liable, for any harm or injury resulting from this program or the use of the exercises or exercise device described herein. William H. Wolfe, C.D. ©2000 All rights reserved. This manual, or part thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission from William H. Wolfe.

RSM Wolfe’s Unarmed Combat Series Volume I Wolfe’s Combatives History Training in the footsteps of Heroes

First printing as Modern Defendo / Wolfe’s Combatics History October 1999 Revised printing June 2010 Revised printing February 2012

Printed in Canada Published by WH Wolfe

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Copyright 2010 - 2012© William Hill Wolfe

COPYRIGHT

A WORD ABOUT COPYRIGHT The information presented in this, or any W. H. Wolfe based training manual, publication, seminar, video, or training course is the sole property of the author. Copying this material in any form whatsoever is strictly prohibited without written consent from the copyright holder. If you wish to use any materials such as lecture or workshop handouts, course manuals, diagrams and text or concepts developed or taught by William H. Wolfe or his certified instructors, please use the following guidelines to avoid legal action: 1. Credit the author, W. H. Wolfe and any referenced source completely and professionally. Paraphrasing without proper referencing is considered plagiarism. Whether intentional or not, this is theft of intellectual property and the plagiarist may be prosecuted under copyright law (depending upon the form & amount of the plagiary). Any type of impersonation of another’s ideas is entirely unethical and heavily frowned upon in professional circles. 2. Professional referencing usually takes one of two forms: either the original author is indicated by name in the body of text and a complete reference is included in the list of source material at the end; or a number is inserted in the main text beside the borrowed material, with that number corresponding to the reference in the list of credits. There are many accepted methods of cited works. The following are standard: the author’s name; title of book, article, course, video, etc; title of journal or magazine (if appropriate); publisher or producer (if appropriate); date of publication / communication (if oral); page number (if appropriate). 3. If you wish to make significant use of any copyrighted material e.g. duplicate a page for a client, written permission must be sought from the author. 4. Any W. H. Wolfe materials or concepts may not be sold, published or made part of any program for which a fee is charged without the written permission of the copyright holder.

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Contents Forward

1

Acknowledgements

2

Dedication

3-4

Preface

5-6

The system

7-8

Legendary (Chapter One ) “The Legend Starts”

9 - 31

Epilogue (Chapter Two ) “We Train in the Footsteps of Heroes”

32 - 34

The Camouflage ( Chapter Three ) “Smoke and Mirrors”

35 - 43

The Martial Art Opinion ( Chapter Four ) “New Age”

44 - 46

History In The Making ( Chapter Five ) “Living History”

47 - 49

Where Are We Now ( Chapter Six ) “Beyond”

50 - 52

Bumps In The Road ( Chapter Seven ) “Bad Apples & Sour Grapes”

53 - 61

Relax and Breathe Again ( Chapter Eight ) “Moving On”

62 - 64

The end... ( Chapter Nine ) “The Beginning”

65 - 66

Lineage Diagram Defendu - Defendo - Modern Defendo - Wolfe’s Combatives

67 - 68

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Enjoy reading

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forward

FORWARD AND FOREWARNING This book series is not a manual or textbook, though they could be used for either. They are more like a guidebook – to modern realistic self protection and the historical contributions of some extraordinary martial art pioneers and WWII veterans. They show you the dark alleyways, the bright meeting-places, the bohemian nooks of violence and the pulsing thoroughness of fighting it. And they show you more than a few short cuts and tricks, guiding you toward the self protection you want to learn. Like a guidebook, this series’ goal is to help you get skilled whether you’re young or old. It is a helpful series, like an old battle-scarred veteran helping those below him understand soldiering but it’s also an irreverent series, with that same old veteran making faces at the new ultimate warriors. It is a serious series but it has its humorous side. It will tell you how to be polite one moment and in the next how to fight like a gangster. It preaches self protection with a smile, a strut and maybe just a bit of attitude. This series wants you to become a highly skilled assertive confident person and it will stop at nothing, or almost nothing, to accomplish this. Of course, no book series can teach you self protection. Only by practicing – and especially living and breathing it – can you learn. So why read them? Because as you will see, this series makes learning Wolfe’s Combatives more fun. And if learning Wolfe’s Combatives isn’t going to be fun, why bother?

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The idea for this series was born two decades ago in the hectic world of my police days. An instructor and colleague of mine at the Police Academy Doug Farenhotz now a retired S/Sgt of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police overheard me complaining about the standard of police self defense and tactical training. So he challenged me to put my skills and knowledge to work rather than my mouth. In those busy days I went about using Doug’s research data and my expertise with the idea of polishing and molding the style and teaching technique that eventually came to be known as Modern Defendo and today we call Wolfe’s Combatives. I sat down with the late Harold Starin, my mentor, and asked for his expertise on the subject. My brother Dennis and I put the skills to the test on the mats and I took them to the street to see if they worked. It was not until 1998 when I meet John Parker that the actual correlations of the police skills met the civilian self defense applications and the programs of Hard Target, Combat Tech and S.T.A.R. were finalized to teach our private students. We formed the now disbanded International Defendo Federation to spread the word and represent the System I created. So I thank them for their encouragement and help. Many friends and students have offered me encouragement along the way like Lt Colonel (Dr) Bob Dingeman, Matthias Granic, S/Sgt Frank Bowen, all the Parker ladies, the students and staff at National. The hundreds of Modern Defendo now Wolfe’s Combatives instructors and students around the world who are keeping the system alive and Jamie Brown, Don Young and the folks at Frantic Films and History TV who encouraged me to explore my artistic side and offered me a chance to showcase the System on International TV. To the WWII veterans and my military comrades; General Waters, General Barr, Colonel Read, Colonel Vance, Col d’Artois, Colonel Blackwell (RSM), Captain Starin, Captain Planet (RSM), Lt Story, RSM Nailer, RSM Buxton, RSM Bullock, CSM Crawford, CSM Parsons, S/Sgt Glass, and many more who taught me the skills and who gave this series its sense of purpose. We train in the footstep of those heroes. A special thanks to Akos Polt, Daniel Cavrak, Brendan Zentner and others who got beat up in the photos. To Irene Franklin and Cameron Toshi for all the proofreading. I am sure some errors no doubt slipped by and for the record I should state that they are in fact mine. Special thanks to the late Peter Robins who contacted me about the Canadian Army training and for the copy of his book on Fairbairn ‘The legend of W.E. Fairbairn Gentleman and Warrior: Shanghai Years’ where some of the old Fairbairn pictures in this manual are taken from. Captain Collin Stevens an old army buddy, who is a military historian and authority on this subject and all things Commando, for his advice and access to his vast collection. Finally to my wife Ashley for the layout graphics and modern feel of this series. Without all her hard work it would have been a much more boring series.

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Dedication

This series of books stand for all those mentors who taught me martial arts, to soldier and police. For my family and especially my daughter Lauren who has put up with her Dad all her life and still wonders what the hell I’m doing. For my incredible wife Ashley who wanders the world with me in this quest for knowledge and trains harder than any four people I know. For my Regiment, ‘the Bayonets’ of the Canadian Infantry Corps’ that I served alongside and had the privilege to lead, proved a long time ago this stuff works in battle. And to the naysayers and backstabbers I’ve met along the way; no matter what uniform they wore; military, police, martial arts or civies I say:

‘ Illegitimi

non

carborundum

’

‘I never let you bastards grind me down! ‘

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Dedicated to the Heroes whose

w o l l o f e w s p e t s t o o F mm

To the men who took the time to mentor me … In this picture is Lt. Larry Story is kneeing Johnny Crawford in the groin … Johnny Crawford, my Sergeant Major. Men like these gave me inspiration and through a lot of pain and sweat the courage to persevere

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preface

As you read and study the pages of information in this book you’ll wonder why more people do not study WWII Combatives training or study its history. Why has it become so neglected a pursuit in an increasingly more violent society? Well in these pages I am not going to try and answer that question for you because you’re not one of those people or you would not have bought this book. So I will let this book explain the history of this system and let my other volumes speak to you about my realistic and often simplistic self protection techniques accompanied by the necessary mental and tactical mindset. As I have told students from the beginning I did not invent this training; I just modernized it and therefore feel it is important you fully understand where it comes from. Some of you may well object to my simple historical outlook or what I am suggesting that you adopt as self defense skill and knowledge. Defending yourself against violence is not for the faint of heart. So those people in our society that would resort to violence to hurt or molest innocent victims do not care about the rules. If you submit to being their victim, either physically or psychologically, you’d wish you hadn’t and if you saw someone else being attacked you’d wish you could have helped. This simple historical retrospect will show you that your great grandfather had the same worries and maybe fears and therefore self defense training is not new. If you are trained to deal with modern violence in all its forms you will stand a much better chance. This means we need to understand all parts of violence and that any attacker, while committing the act of assault is psychologically disturbed and you will have to hurt them just like ‘in the good old days’. So my aim in this series of books is to teach you how to do just that. The skills outlined in my second volume offers a basic level and sets a foundation that is more than adequate to deal with most street assailants. The additional volumes of my work can help you adapt to learning more physical skills rounding out your combative resume and of course I have a volume called the “Uncommon Warrior Philosophy”. It will give you an indepth look at the mental and spiritual aspects you will want to develop and my volume “360 Defense” will spell out the tactics.

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It will always come down to you, learning is your responsibility as is your security. Remember there is no magic to self defense in today’s world any more than there was in your grandfather’s time. To be able to train yourself, then or now, to acquit yourself without injury if attacked, requires a lot of luck; forget skill, and that’s achieved by a very few. A lot of knowledge is a dangerous thing and was never truer with regards to practical self defense, so we’ll keep it simple by understanding our history in this volume and build knowledge and skill in later volumes to give you a better foundation. When you train hard but wisely as with all knowledge when applied, can be both creative and destructive. I am not a big fan of aggression; it will eventually destroy the person who misuses it. The skill and knowledge of the Wolfe’s Combatives System, used correctly, can stimulate physical abilities and a more in-depth knowledge of ‘self’ with disciplined work. We must bear in mind nothing happens overnight and this is so very true of skill and tactical knowledge. So lay your historical foundation and take ownership and this volume will help to give you pride in the systems roots. It is impossible to include every historical point but I hope to give you a true sense of this legendary lineage. With some experience and research you should have little difficulty learning more about our roots. ‘We train in the footsteps of heroes’ On A per son a l Not e I w ro t e t his ser ies of book s as a r esult of my per sonal desir e t o t each self def and mar t ial ar t s m ense y w ay . As a r et ir e d policemen and so ldier I w ant ed t o k eep up my mar t ial sk ills an d t act ical k now led g e r at her t han just sit at home g et t in g old, f at and let t in g sk ills f a de so I decided t o shar e it . T he k no w led g e in t hese bo ok s I hav e t au g ht t o some of t he most elit e polic e and milit ar y per sonnel on t his plane st ar t ed my mar t ial t . I ar t st udies in 1962 w it h box in g , Judo , Ju jit su and Def end u at t he Y MCA and f or m or e t han f our and half decades I hav e nev er st opped lear nin g or apply in g my k now led g e. T hese book s r epr esent a cer t ain pat h of how I f eel mar t ial ar t s/ self def ense sh ould be t au g ht . M y at t it ude is a r ef lec t ion of many k ey y ear s of mast er in g t he mar ti al ar t s, milit ar y an d police ex per t ise t hat has become m y lif e’s w or k . One of t he k ey g oals of t his se r ies is t o t each co ur a g e; t his means dev elopin g asser t iv e conf idenc e and t he mind an d body of an ‘uncom mon w ar ri or ’. T h set and lev el of t ra is mindinin g is not f or ev e r y one but it mi g ht just be w hat y ou’r e look in g f or … If : Disc

ipline . Dut y . Hon or . V a lor . Int eg r it y . Loy a lt y Mean any th in g t o y ou? Becaus e t o a lot of people t o day t hey do not ; t hey ’r e just empt y w or ds!

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The system

The training within the pages of these books is a reflection of my martial art expertise and more than 39 + years of operational military and police service. It is my system and the foundation is based on Self Defense validated by those years of ultimate warfare I experienced. The initial aspects of the system were first founded in 1918 by a highly qualified martial arts practitioner and legend William Fairbairn in Shanghai China. It was further expanded on by one of his senior students Dermot Pat O’Neil himself a 6th dan black belt under Kano the founder of Judo. It is basically the old Canadian Army system of close combat combining; Judo, Jujitsu, boxing, wrestling, kung Fu, sword fighting, stick fighting and many more skills I learned at the hands of Harold Starin and Johnny Crawford both masters in their own right and veterans of WWII’s most famous commando units and they were students of the a/n men. I have used this skill and knowledge in both my military and police service in fact this knowledge has saved my life on more than a few occasions. It is by far one of the most effective martial systems; mentally, tactically, physically and spiritually I have mastered. The system, as I teach it, offers practical and effective training programs that I have divided into different volumes within this series for ease of learning. Each volume’s level builds on to and attaches to the other seamlessly. In the military we called these levels of training ‘B.R.I.C.K.’s’ just as a series of bricks come together to make a wall, this series comes together to form a complete comprehensive system. The name of my system is Wolfe’s Combatives which has become well known around the world by my teaching it and keeping its history alive. I am the last of the old school breed; ‘the master military instructor’ still teaching this system this way. You will receive the original course of instruction I developed for the Canadian military and police service but presented my “way”. The current Canadian Forces Close Combat Training Manual B-GL-382-004/FP-001 is based on the historical foundation of this system as is all Canadian Police ‘use of force’ training. In 1985 I was tasked as a police officer to modernize our training system and its value as a result of the ‘P.O.P.A.T. STUDY’ a comprehensive investigation into assaults on police officers. This study and subsequent others resulted in both the complete Canadian Police ‘use of force’ training being modernized and as a Chief Warrant Officer in the Canadian Forces I took it upon myself to update the Canadian Forces Close Combat System to reflect the modern reality of a three tiered ‘war fighting ‘system.

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Scope and design of The system

My goal in this series is to make it fun and a bit of an adventure. I also want your personal training to be an event that you can enter leaving your troubles at the door, feel safe and change into your uniform leaving the days stress behind. I want the training and knowledge to provide healthy adult roleplaying with the purpose of developing: • • • •

Fit functional bodies Centered healthy mind/body connection Assertive and confident indomitable spirit The understanding of fear and conquering it

I offer each student an understanding of the uncommon warrior path especially in the volume titled “The Uncommon Warrior’s Philosophy”. It will answer all the questions I have been asked about soldiering, policing, fear and the mental aspect because this knowledge is the cement that holds together the physical and tactical training. What’s written and demonstrated in this series of books represents a road less traveled today but we all could learn to stand a little taller on our roads where everyone seems fearful and unfulfilled. I believe we all should train to master a practical discipline for our mind & body; soul tested training worth its weight in gold. This I hope I have shared as best as I can within these pages.

What do I look For in students Whether a new or old student to martial arts or self defense training I look for honesty and a fun spirit; a wee gleam of the ‘devil’ in their eyes for adventure perhaps! I expect students to train and not be afraid to push themselves in a self disciplined manner. I expect proper courtesy and respect for their training partners and loyalty. I expect them to honor the System and its forbears and respect my teachings. I expect them to ask questions and enjoy each training session. I expect them to be ambassadors and sales people for this system and never to bring it into disrepute by their conduct or bad behavior. Finally I expect them to keep me honest as their teacher by training as often as they can.

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legendary

The legend starts

Legendary is a word that would hardly describe the men and the story I am about to tell you... This volume is about incredible men; real life action heroes; spies, commandoes and a pioneering training system that seem to appear from nowhere in a great time of need and then disappear as fast as it came. It’s also a personal story of men who mentored me and of their mentors. The society we live in has long since forgotten who established this legend. They weren’t a secret cult back in their day but today many exponents of their legend have created cult like organizations surrounded in mystery; secret ‘Black Op Societies’ etc. that I’m sure the legends themselves would scoff at. So now bear with me as I tell you a story of elite police officers, Commandos & Rangers and Secret Agents and how I came to be involved. It all started in the Far East, China to be exact, in a city called Shanghai. This is where our legend begins in around 1907. Shanghai is a melting pot of Chinese culture and western based influences. It’s a major seaport and trade center and in the center of the city itself you can find the western zone, a city within a city. This very small exclusive seven square miles is home to the cities western population, and an important business center where you can see an almost eerie setting. Western style architecture with a Chinese influence, western clothes, western cars, western office buildings and even a western styled Police Force known as the Shanghai Municipal Police or SMP for short. It was 4,739 strong at its peak. The SMP’s job is to ensure the safety of this city within a city. To ensure its safety the SMP was staffed with western constables with a few Chinese and Far Eastern cultures thrown in. Its command staff was for the most part British. This surreal setting was dominated by the great western powers and was a hub of business and military activity. It was the great age of the British Empire and its colonial rule. WWI was over and Russia was now Communist and many former Russians were fleeing and or hiding here. It was a city of great intrigue.

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the legend starts Shanghai’s night clubs and social networks were only for foreigners. This city within a city was a melting pot, and as the story goes, a time and place in history to be if you where an adventurer looking for mystery and political intrigue. I first heard about old Shanghai from my grandfather Captain Hill Wilson, a merchant sea Captain, who sailed into the Far Eastern ports before WWI. Our house was full of chests, tables and carvings my grandfather had brought back with him from Shanghai, the perks of being the ship’s Captain. Granddad would fill my ears with his stories. He would laughingly tell me of having to bail members of his crew out of jail for getting into drunken fights with the western military garrison soldiers from the Argyle Highlanders for teasing them about wearing a kilt in China. He showed me the pictures he took, of this city within a city, and how unusual it was in those days compared with the rest of China’s poverty. He told me, “don’t let the pictures fool you” he would say, “It may look like good old England but Shanghai was a tough sea port and if you weren’t careful you could easily lose your life”. Granddad told me the level of violence was worse than Chicago in the 1920’s. Of course I had no idea what he was talking about until many years later. But his stories kept me captivated for hours until Nan would call us for tea. When I reflect back on my grandfather telling me those stories, I can still remember the gleam in his eyes and the sense of adventure in his voice.

n o s i l W d a d d n a r G

I wanted to go there, after all who wouldn’t. So my grandfather gave me two things to prepare me for my later adventures; a wooden sword he had brought back from Shanghai and an old training manual on Jujitsu called the Scientific Art of Fighting by Assistant Commissioner William Fairbairn of the Shanghai Municipal Police. My grandfather told me Mr. Fairbairn knows his stuff. I still have the sword and the book, both more than a little dog eared around the edges, after all these years. So bear with me now while I tell you of those men who created a legend. Men you have never heard of, never seen a movie about, or written about in books on the ‘best sellers list’. So grab a cup of coffee and join me in remembering men who where the ‘Jed i Warriors’ of their day.

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The legend starts

1900 - 1939 As I mentioned, the book my grandfather gave me, was written by William Fairbairn. Who was he? Well, to guys like me, retired soldiers and police SWAT types, he was the ‘father of all modern close combat training’. He founded the first police mixed martial arts training system in 1918 with his book ‘Scientific Fighting’. He laid the foundation for all modern police use of force and officer W E survival methods still in use today. His SWAT tactics are still used n r i a b r i by every police force around the world and even elite military units, a f like the SAS, use his tactics and shooting methods. He was involved in over 600 street battles in Shanghai and lived to teach others in what to do. He was known as the ‘Shanghai Buster’ to the WWII Commando’s and Rangers he taught. He taught WWII Spies in both the SOE and OSS. The instructors he trained in closed combat taught over 6 million allied soldiers, marines, sailors and airmen and his system became the most combat tested fighting system of all time. My training in this fighting system saved my life on three separate occasions and I personally know countless other men and women who will tell you the same thing. .

.

Now before we go any further I was not trained by Fairbairn but by one of his instructors, a man named Harold Starin. Remember that old book my grandfather gave me? I read it from cover to cover from 1959 till I meet Harold in 1962. In 62 I was living with my parents in a little railway town in British Columbia Canada called Revelstoke and every Saturday I would go to the small local theater to watch the Matinees for about 10 cents. Most often they played cowboy movies but on two Saturdays in a row they played two movies that put me on a lifelong course of studying the martial arts and all things military. The first movie was called ‘Blood On the Sun’ staring James Cagney. In this movie I saw Jujitsu for the first time and instantly remembered the book Granddad had given me. I ran home after the movie to find the Jujitsu techniques in the book, I had seen in the movie, demonstrated by James Cagney none the less. I flagged what looked like the moves and studied the pages over and over. Next Saturday I went to the movies again and this time they were playing ’13 Rue Madeline’ again starring James Cagney. He was training OSS agents (WWII US Spies) and in one scene he is demonstrating unarmed combat just like I had read about in the book. This sent me on a mission to find someone or somewhere to teach me how to do this and found the local Judo club fittingly located in the local Army Reserve Amory. The club had all of 10 students mostly kids. The instructor was a brown belt named Pat and for $2 a month I was in.

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the legend starts I thought it was so cool. We trained out of the small Rocky Mountain Rangers Armoury in the center of town, 2 nights a week. It was fantastic and the first time I stood on the mats, I knew this was for me. After a few weeks we had a guest instructor come to the club, yup you guessed it, Harold Starin and he was wearing a black belt. Wow, we were absolutely dumbfounded because back then a black belt was a very rare n i r a t S d l o r a t H thing and really meant something. Harold was an impressive p a C man, not very tall but built like a bull dog. He spoke with an East London English Accent and was an extremely skilled Judo player. Pat told us he was traveling around selling life insurance and would from time to time stop in to teach classes. He also told us he’d been a Commando in the war. Wow, I could hardly cover my excitement and the next class he taught I had my old book in my bag and showed it to him. He flipped through the pages telling me ‘It’s seen some usage’ then he told me he knew Fairbairn and had been trained by him during the war. Wow again I was stunned! Eventually we moved to Vancouver and I joined the YMCA Judo club where Harold was one of the main instructors and a lifelong mentoring began. Harold passed away in 1989 and he taught me a lot; Judo/Jujitsu, Defendu, boxing, fencing (he was a master fencer with the foil and saber) and even how to sail and scuba dive. Harold was quite an assertively confident man. He always dressed, as he would say ‘How a gentleman should’ in a three piece suit, hat and shined shoes. Harold was born in London England in 1918 and grew up on the East side. He took up boxing and later Judo earning his brown belt before the start of the Second World T h e o n l War (and continued his studies after the war). At the outbreak y k n o w n p i o c f H a o r d of the war he joined the Royal Marines as an Infantryman. l When Britain formed the Commandoes he took the course with the Royal Marines at the Commando School in Scotland. In the early part of the training they noted his fighting background and after completing the commando course he was sent on a 12 week unarmed combat instructor’s course. At Archinraith House Scotland, he was taught by Fairbairn to teach his new system of ‘gutter fighting’ as he called it. Harold was then assigned to Royal Marine Commando and took part in the early commando raids before being posted to 42 Royal Marine Commandos where he attained the rank of Sergeant. The 42 was eventually sent to the Far East and Burma, where in the latter part of the war, Harold was assigned to SOE Far East. Harold never bragged or spoke openly about his war time experiences. It was through friends that I came to know about his exploits and the commando raids as well as his experiences in Burma with the SOE. .

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The legend starts Harold was tough as nails, to put it mildly, and he encouraged me to join the Army cadets which I did, the Seaforth Highlander’s 72 Cadets and later the Reserve Regiment and finally when I was old enough the regular army. I served under Harold in the Seaforths in Recce Platoon and it was Harold who taught me some of the most important soldiering skills of my military career. This included a lot of old school commando skills and even some pretty valuable tricks from SOE. Recce platoon was pretty much his baby and although we were reserve army it seemed we were always coming into the Seaforth Armories 4-5 nights and weekends for Harold's special skills training. It still to this day is some of the best special operations skills I have ever learned and try to pass on. Just before Harold was taken by cancer, he was still selling life insurance and his office was in the town I was assigned to as a police officer. One night as he is leaving his office dressed in his ‘London Fog’ rain coat, hat and no doubt carrying a briefcase, he is approach by three well known local thugs who demand his money. In a split second it was over; one was on the ground with a broken knee, another’s wrist was broken, apparently he made the mistake of grabbing Harold’s coat front and the third was on the ground having difficulty breathing. Harold had apparently slapped him across the throat with a knife hand strike. I was a block away finishing a coffee break when the fight call came in and I rushed to the scene. Picture Harold standing there, calm as can be, not even breathing heavy, with the thugs on the ground. As I approach Harold he says in his typical fashion, “William it comes back to you”. At 71yrs old Harold dispatched these three tough bad guys in seconds. This was the nature of the WWII training he had received from Fairbairn and taught to young soldiers like myself. It was not unusual for men like Harold, who had undergone this particular style of combatives training, that they could still perform even if they had not used it since the war. It was a method of ‘hard wiring’ that’s not used anymore in today’s military or police training and it’s really too bad. Too effective and too brutal I was told by those in power back in my days in uniform.

So who was this man who taught ? Harold

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the legend starts He was Assistant Commissioner William Ewart Fairbairn and by the end of WWII LT Col. William Fairbairn of SOE/OSS/Commando fame. Fairbairn joined the Shanghai municipal police force (SMP) in 1908 and served till retirement in 1939 as the Assistant Commissioner. Before joining the SMP he had served in the Royal Marine light Infantry (1900-1907) where he saw service in the Far East and Korea. During his Marine service he became an expert on the rifle, bayonet and sword. He was a trained western boxer and wrestler and by all accounts a fitness enthusiast. He had a reputation as a fighter, tall and strong, but at first glance he did not look the part. He was a quiet fellow, not very intimidating, short sighted and wore round glasses, yet was a deadly marksman with a pistol. One incident early on in his police career with the SMP set his quest to become the world’s foremost close combat expert and pioneer. Like many who seek martial arts knowledge there was a critical incident; he was attacked while on patrol and beaten up, not in just a wee punch up, he was set upon by a gang of Chinese gangster who put him in the hospital for months. During his convalescence Fairbairn swore this would never happen again and once fit enough he started to study as many fighting systems both western and eastern as he could. Of great interest to many current martial artists, his studies included Judo and Ju jitsu under Okada Sensei the former Emperor of Japan’s teacher. He studied several styles of n r i a b r i Chinese Boxing under Tsaiching Ting, former a e f a i m l l i W Instructor to the Chinese Imperial Court and i s n e s a d a k O body guard to the Dowager Empress; in 1932 he was awarded his second dan in Judo at the Kodokan in Tokyo by Dr. Jigoro Kano the founder of Judo. He was asked to present a demonstration at the Kodokan of the modern weapons disarms for gun and rifle which were by all accounts well received. His Defendu system became the standard for most police training of the day, and as I said, is to this day still setting the standard by which all training is i e s n e judged. It is based on a mixed martial arts ap s a d a k a o proach, unique in its day, but more important, it’s n i h C i a h g n a a system that is tempered by Fairbairn’s more h S b u l than 600 street battles and the lessons learned from u c t i s j i u J them that shapes the training concepts and tactics. He was the first modern instructor to talk about the importance of mental training in combat and how the fear reaction affects you making difficult moves impossible to do. In 1918 through the 1920’s he pioneered a scenario based training that was designed to create the mind/body connection where one could manage the emotions and act rationally in these types of situations thus allowing the training to take over. -

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The legend starts From the 1920’s through the 1930’s Fairbairn wrote hundreds of articles in the weapons and police training magazines of the day. He published his first book ‘Scientific Self Defence’ in 1918 and it was re-released in 1928. He wrote his book on Defendu in 1926. His Shooting to Live – Combat Hand Gun Pistol Point Shooting was a more police based work than would be his later books; ‘All in Fighting – 1942’ (released in the US as Get Tough – 1942), ‘Self Defence for Women and Girls – 1942 was meant to teach English women to fight off invading German soldiers and his later ‘Hands Off! (Self Defence for Women and Girls). There was even a comic book written about Fairbairn and his training of Commandos and Spies during the war. Not too many people have comic books written about them and this attests to his importance, not only as a trainer, but also his systems effect on the enemy as propaganda and as a morale booster for the home front. But I am getting ahead of myself we’re not finished yet in Shanghai and the pre-war years. During the period of time from 1925 to approximately 1938 Fairbairn made many trips outside of China to teach and lecture on Defendu and his ‘Shooting to kill Program’. He was invited by many Police Departments to lecture on his methods, like the New York Police with whom he spent a few months on exchange. He came to know J. Edgar Hoover, the legendary Director of the FBI. The FBI adopted many of his training concepts early on especially his pistol shooting and the use of the Tommy gun. He did demonstrations, at the British Army Small Arms Instructor’s School on pistol shooting, which by all accounts wowed them and he received an official certification as an instructor from the Small Arms School. It would be safe to say Fairbairn was well known in the police circles of the time and well respected for his skills and knowledge.

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the legend starts By all accounts the SMP worked as a prudent and professional Police Force of the day. They went to great lengths to ensure they did a professional job. This started with the training of police recruits on a proper standardized academic and athletic format. Fairbairn introduced shooting review boards after every police involved shooting because every police officer in the SMP was issued bullets with their police number on the cartridge for the purpose of identification. Unjustified shootings were dealt with and stats where kept to improve training. The SMP used the first tactical shooting range called ‘The Mystery House’ where for the first time in police training history scenarios of shot/don’t shot skills where tested. Fairbairn formed, trained and lead the famous SMP Reserve Unit. In its day it was considered basically a ‘Riot Squad’ but it was actually the precursor to the modern day SWAT Team. Yes, it dealt with riots and by all accounts there where many and they where bloody. In fact, the Reserve Unit was formed after one such incident where a large number of Chinese were killed costing the SMP Commissioner of Police his job. Through Fairbairn’s efforts the Reserve Unit was also trained to deal with armed encounters, “the mystery House” hostage takings, kidnappings and VIP protection. The t he f unit had a dedicated sniper team and was well drilled i st k l r i l H ou se 1 92 0 in the tactics we are still using today. Every Unit member ’ s was above average in fitness, Defendu trained and an expert marksman in automatic pistol (Fairbairn preferred the 45), shotgun and the famous Tommy gun. The Unit had weapons modified and specialty equipment made and designed by Fairbairn for the tactical threats they and his team faced. These included bullet proof shields, body armor and even their own armored SWAT vehicle called the ‘Red Maria’. These were also the concepts Fairbairn shared with police agencies around the world in particular the United States, where they were facing an upsurge in gangster violence with the likes of Al C apone. Fairbairn surrounded himself with a fine team and many of these men would become experts in their own right. Many would follow him back to England and become part of the WWII legend. Two key figures I should mention here are Eric Sykes and Dermont ‘Pat’ O’Neil. Eric Sykes was born into a wealthy English family in 1883 (died 12 May 1945). He arrived in Shanghai some time in 1907 and was a businessman and representative of the Remington and Colt Firearms Company. Through this connection he and Fairbairn became close friends in 1919. By all accounts Sykes was a crack shot with a rifle and his position as a representative of a firearms company opened many doors for him. He became a student of Sensei Okada’s school in Shanghai in the 1920’s. He volunteered for the SMP as a Reserve member in fact an inspector and instructor in the Reserve Unit’s Sniper Team. He and Fairbairn co-authored the book on ‘Shooting to Kill’ I mentioned earlier. Both men reportedly left Shanghai on the same ship in 1939. There will be more on Mr. Sykes later.

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The legend starts Dermont ‘Pat’ O’Neil was born in County Cork I reland and not much is known of his early life in Ireland (died 11 August 1985). He travelled to Shanghai in 1925 and joined the SMP most likely in response to an advertisement for constable positions with the SMP in an Irish newspaper. So at 20 he became a Constable with the SMP and would serve with the Force until 1938 and made the rank of Detective Sergeant. He is also considered Fairbairn’s protégé. Pat O’Neil was a member and instructor for the Reserve Unit and by all accounts he loved to fight and was involved in many a street battle with the SMP. He was also a primary instructor for the USMC Detachment in Shanghai and was instrumental in teaching Defendu to members of this unit like Sgt Kelly who would go on to teach the USMC and the Raider Battalions in WWII. O’Neil was considered a F SSF 1 94 2 Ra re P weapons expert with firearms, knives and sticks and he made good i t c u e r use of his time in China studying martial arts. He joined Sensei Okada’s Jujitsu School and quickly proved his skill. He studied various Chinese Boxing systems Tachi Chaun with Hsing Yi and Pa Kua and he studied Sikh Stick Fighting Gatka as there where many Sikh members of the SMP. When he left the SMP in 1938 he took up the position as body guard for the British Legation to Japan and moved to Tokyo. He spoke fluent Japanese and three dialects of Chinese. He made good use of his time in Japan studying martial arts till 1942. He studied Judo under Uchijima Sensei at the Kodokan and was graded to 6th dan in Judo at the Kokodan. Both Kano and Uchijima considered him to have superior grappling skills especially in newasa (ground fighting). Pat O’Neil made several trips to Japan from Shanghai to study under Uchijima and to attend Shiais (tournaments) where he excelled at randori (free style fighting) and remained a keen exponent of Judo till his death. He also studied Japanese Kempo. He left Japan just before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and went to Australia. We’ll return to Pat O’Neil later.

l i ’ e O N t a . P t p a C

During the latter part of the 1930’s China and the city of Shanghai was an extremely dangerous place to be because of the Japanese threat and the annexation of Manchuria. History now shows us just how brutal an occupation it was and how dangerous it was in Shanghai. With the onset of WWII most of the European members of the SMP where put in Japanese POW camps and by 1943 there was not much left of the SMP. Those who saw what was coming got out and I am sure Fairbairn, who had some very close links with the Japanese community of Shanghai, new that all too well, especially after Japan’s brutal attack on Nanking the Chinese National Government Capitol in 1937. This attack left some 300,000 dead and a reported 100,000 women raped by the Japanese Forces. Shanghai was not spared. It was bombed and occupied by the Japanese before Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. This time and the events in China have been forgotten by most of the western world. My grandfather made his last port of call to Shanghai in 1938.

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1939 - 1945 As I told you Fairbairn retired from the SMP in 1939 and made his way back to England at the age of 54 accompanied by Eric Sykes. I am sure neither man knew what fate had in store for them. At the onset of WWII things went badly for England. The German war machine seemed to be unstoppable; Poland had fallen and the rest of Europe’s defenses collapsed under the ‘Blilzkrieg’ and Germany’s use of Airborne troops and ‘fifth columnist spearheaded lighting fast attacks. The British Expeditionary Force did its heroic evacuation from the beaches at Dunkirk and the Nordic countries were being invaded with the exception of Neutral Sweden and Finland already fighting the Russian invasion (The forgotten War Russo-Finnish War 1939-1940 in the west) had started before WWII had actually gotten under way.

I I W W

Churchill, England’s New Prime Minister readied the British Isles for invasion. The German Air Force was making life pretty uncomfortable and compounding the morale problem as the news on the fighting front was not getting any better. As history now tells us Churchill took huge steps to punch back at the Germans. In these early stages of the war the hitting back was left up to the British Air Force but the British Intelligence Agencies such as SIS (Special Intelligence Service) took on a new aggressive role. Soon they would develop a fighting arm, in a manner of speaking, called SOE (Special Operations Executive). An even more aggressive Force would come into being called ‘The Special Companies’ and would later become famous world-wide as a new breed of warriors called ‘Commandoes’. The name Commando (meaning command way) was apparently picked by Churchill himself from his Boer War service and referred to the Dutch Boer War units called ‘commandoes’ which were very effective against the British in South Africa (Boer War 1899-1902). In time the US Army would form the US Army Rangers based on the Commandoes and the first Battalions were trained at the Commando School in Scotland.

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The legend starts But in the beginning these new organizations and Commando units needed to be trained. This was a new kind of warfare. SIS being an old time British Intelligence organization quickly recruited the skilled people that would be needed. Both Fairbairn and Sykes, now in England, were well known to the SIS from their Shanghai intelligence operations. Rumors still exist today that either Fairbairn or Sykes were members of SIS during their Shanghai days but no one has ever found conclusive evidence of this to my knowledge. SIS recruited both Fairbairn and Sykes and they are given short term war commissions as Captains. As the need for experienced instructors was critical, Fairbairn went about recruiting many of his SMP students living in Britain who had s been part of his Reserve Unit. Both Fairbairn and Sykes hit the ground running and e k y S W c i r brought their skill and expertise to this new kind of training to SIS, then to the SOE E and training the spies that would be parachuted into occupied Europe and the Commandoes. In the early stages they criss-crossed the country teaching everyone. Some of the most famous old film footage is of Fairbairn teaching the ‘Home Guard’ basically old men who were considered unfit for regular military service. These types of films were shown in the Theaters across the UK to build up the morale and have been largely dismissed by modern day martial artists. However the Home Guard units that Fairbairn and his colleagues taught in practicality had a serious military purpose. They were trained as ‘Stay Behind parties’ and were taught sabotage, how to kill the enemy and gather intelligence. Remember the big fear was that Germany was about to invade England. .

Locations like Lochailort House in Scotland would become famous for SOE and Commando training. In the early stages the first group of commando trainees got to know Fairbairn and his staff very well. Both he and Sykes set an incredible pace training men, in most cases 30 years younger than themselves, to fight in this new ‘dirty war fighting’. Remember back then very few people had ever heard of martial arts and the brutality of the training was shockingly real compared with today’s army standards.

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the legend starts The first priority was to teach them to have the assertive confidence to ‘Kill’ and the level and conduct of training did just that. I have been told by military experts today that the training period of unarmed combat training back then was too short to be affective. Yet when the US Army, a few years back, tested some of the surviving members of WWII OSS and Rangers they found their abilities, even though they were well into their eighties, still had an edge; mentally and physically they could still perform their skills. I witnessed this when I did the History Channel TV Show ‘Devil’s Brigade’ with the veterans of the First Special Service Force. The military value of close combat training that Fairbairn brought to the education of the WWII elite has been lost. That value is what Harold and my other military instructors gave me and I will tell you more about that later as well. Fairbairn was no stranger to controversy and not all of his concepts and training met with approval from the ‘higher command’. But he steadfastly stood firm, after all even today how many men can say they were involved in 600 plus life and death street battles. In my limited experience, of 39 years of operational military and police training, I know I am not easily moved to adapt to new concepts. I stick with what has saved my life. As I am sure that just like me Fairbairn found it hard to accept direction from people however well intentioned who had never been there or done it. For example it is a little hard to be told what to do by someone who has never been shot at while you have. One thing I learned early on in my military service is the WWII and Korean veterans who were my squad leaders, Platoon Sergeants, Company Sergeant Majors and Officers had a ‘battle-wise’ way of doing things that often flies in the face of the book and their stubbornness to change reflected in their concern for us soldiers learning the right stuff. Those who had not walked in their shoes saw it as arrogance and despised and feared them for it at the same time. I respected them for it and in hindsight as I told you having that knowledge and skill saved my life. I am sure Fairbairn was every bit as tough and fierce as my instructors, even if he did not look or act the part, and I am sure that fact alone made him even more intimidating.

PPCLI Battleschool Instructing Sentry removal

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The legend starts The Fairbairn’s and Sykes WWII unarmed combat instructor’s courses were 12 week courses The first prerequisites for candidates were men who had been fighters, veterans of the Spanish war, prewar martial arts students (Harold being one of those). Those who were sent went through a grueling 12 week program of training to learn all that was expected of a WWII close combat instructor and then how to teach those skills. These men were a new breed of instructor warriors. They were taught a heavily modified course much different than the police style reflected in Fairbairn’s book Defendu. Or even ‘Get Tough’. Fairbairn liked to refer to it as ‘gutter fighting’ and his instructors gained what today would be considered a ‘cult like status’ within military circles. Harold told me it was a tough program both physically and mentally demanding and what he taught me in 27 years of study with him I have tried to keep alive. When Harold first taught me to ‘fence’ with a sword I thought he was nuts but it was part of the course and it greatly improved my speed and balance for knife fighting. I learnt striking, grappling front, ground and rear techniques, knife fighting, silent killing, rifle and bayonet including the bayonet charging defenses, what we would call today arrest and control tactics and how to tie up POW’s. For the most part it was simple applications of force repeated over and over until you had them hard wired. You were then taught to improvise and adapt them through scenario based training and then free style fighting. We had full contact fighting often with no protection as Harold would say, “The enemy won’t be wearing gloves and you won’t have safety gear so get over the fear of being hurt. If you can’t do it here you won’t on the battlefield.” We were never allowed to give up and if you tapped out Harold was all over you saying, “You will survive, you’ll never give up”. There were no rules and anyone who fought fair generally got the tip of Harold’s ‘ammo boots’ or a slap in the back of the head. Harold was one of the first veterans to teach me to use the knife in combat and it was harsh. Harold used his FS knife many times in Burma and he taught me how to assassinate a human being a far cry from the level of knife training I see today. When I taught these aspects to the soldiers in the ‘Devil’s Brigade’ for History TV they were surprised and shocked. Modern day Rangers and Green Berets had never been taught this. Later a 5 day course I did for the US Special Forces as a result of the TV show, ‘intimidated the SF soldiers’ their words not mine. In fact the base safety officer shut the program down and we moved it off Post to finish it. Such was the level of WWII combatives training I learned as a private infantryman in the Canadian Army which seems about a hundred years ago now.

My RSM years p assing on the training to my soldiers

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the legend starts One of the famous tools of the Commandoes to come out of WWII was the Commando Dagger better known as the ‘FS Fighting Knife’ – FS standing for Fairbairn and Sykes who reportedly designed it. Although from what Harold and other Commando veterans told me this was most likely not the case. As the story goes Fairbairn and Sykes took their design which was based on a knife they used in Shanghai called the ‘Shanghai Mauler’ (later designed and released by Col Rex Applegate after his death). Wilkinson Sword who was tasked with making the knife thought it too costly and time consuming to build a fighting knife from nothing so they compromised on the FS design making use of a current mold for a fencing foil handle and a double edged dagger. The first issue FS knives had the waved guard and the latter version a straight guard. It came in a leather scabbard which was usually sewn onto the right side of the battledress pants. The knives became the pride of the Commandoes and the first Ranger units. There is an old ‘war story’ that the FS knife made Hitler so mad that he ordered the execution of any British soldier caught with one. Another item that became famous was the Commando ‘green beret’ still worn today by many Special Forces Units around the world. The other weapon Fairbairn taught the Commandoes to use was the famous Tommy gun a weapon well received by the Commandoes themselves. Fairbairn’s time with SIS/SOE and the Commandoes was short lived as he would soon be transferred to a new Top Secret SOE STC Camp X in Canada. Training in Great Britain was left in the capable hands of Captain Sykes and his team of highly trained experts.

Shanghai Mauler

FS Knife

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1942 STs

Camp x Canada

Now Major Fairbairn arrived at the Top Secret SOE STS (Special Training Station) Camp X in rural Ontario Canada. Camp X was a melting pot of nationalities being trained as agents by some of the best instructors the SOE had. Add to this mix Fairbairn’s expertise now training agents in his deadly skills. One of the alleged trainees is a young British Naval officer named Ian Fleming who would after the war write the ‘James Bond Series of books’ using his time at Camp X as a basis for his main character James Bond. Camp X obtained the reputation as being the best STC of the war and trained hundreds of agents who took on hundreds of missions throughout the war years. Much of what went on at Camp X is still classified and the surviving secret agents rarely talk about their training or what they did. As a Regimental Sergeant Major in the Canadian Army I got to know many of these men who were always welcome guests in my Mess. The stories of their mis e e d g r sions were in fact the stuff of a James Bond legend and I have been privileged to o e G w M o S k C s y e know them and share a drink or two. Camp X also had the distinction of be l e w e R ing the training center where three future Directors of the CIA would be trained. Although Camp X was the primary facility in Canada a second SOE STS was setup in British Columbia near the small town of Vernon and was known as Camp Y. It’s job was to train Chinese agents for the Far East operations many of whom would be sent to Burma and China as part of Force 136. I had several of these incredible gentlemen as my guests in my Sgt's mess and as RSM got to know them well. Fairbairn’s time at Camp X was not long and in a matter of months he would be transferred once again to help train the US OSS (Office of Strategic Services). Fairbairn would be replaced at Camp X by CSM George de Reweleyskow. x p m a C

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the legend starts Area B OSS Training Center

F a r i b a r i n A r e a B U SA

Area B was located in the same area where today you find the US President’s retreat ‘Camp David’ but in 1942 it was simply referred to as Area B. The OSS was pretty much a new Military based Intelligence organization and headed by the colorful Major General ‘Wild’ Bill Donavan (1883-1959) himself a highly decorated WWI officer and Medal of Honour winner. He commanded the famous fighting 69th of New York in WWI and he was a successful Wall Street lawyer and friend of President Roosevelt. Donavan himself knew of Fairbairn and had personally asked for him to be transferred to help train OSS Agents. Donavan was not the kind of guy to let US Agents be trained by another power. In this task Fairbairn was assisted in the early stages by Captain (later LCol.) Rex Applegate (1914-1998) US Army Military Police. Applegate had been in England under Donavan’s orders to learn everything he could about SOE and Commando training and became an expert in unarmed combat and pistol. In 1943 Applegate wrote his own book on the subject called ‘Kill or Get Killed’ based on his studies with Fairbairn. Applegate would get promoted and transferred to Camp Ritchie where he would help set up the US Army Intelligence School and conduct the close combat training till the end of the war. By all accounts I have heard OSS was better suited to Fairbairn’s creative talents as it had more resources and cash than SOE. Fairbairn’s main role was still to train the agents in close combat. The OSS recruited potential agents from a wide variety of backgrounds and ages just as SOE had. Unlike today’s super spies, education was not the only bench mark to getting in. Having the smarts to be able to get the job done was. So they recruited plumbers, lawyers, prostitutes, businessmen, actors, doctors, Spanish Civil War Veterans, criminals, gangsters, journalist, even people with handicaps. Some celebrity members who were trained by Fairbairn were actor Sterling Haydon, Julia Child and Moe Berg. As a result Fairbairn became too well known for some of t he ‘OSS office brass’s’ liking. Fairbairn would spend the rest of the war working for OSS in the States and would be responsible for training instructors for the whole of the US Armed Forces including the US Coast Guard which adopted his system of fighting. He brought Pat O’Neil from Australia to help train the OSS. After his arrival O’Neil spent a lot of time criss-crossing the US filling requests for instructor training which Fairbairn’s duties at OSS would not allow him to conduct. One important request that came into the OSS for Fairbairn’s services was from the Chief of the General Staff wanting Fairbairn to train a new US/ Canadian Commando Force but at 59 he considered himself too old so he recommended Pat O’Neil for the job.

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The legend starts By the end of WWll in OSS circles you either loved Fairbairn or hated him. Rumor has it the agents respected him for what he taught them but the ‘desk jockey’s’ weren’t so happy with him most likely Fairbairn was not interested in their point of view since they had not had the experiences he had. However it was very clear Donavan did respect Fairbairn and valued his abilities to train and improvise realistic training. After Fairbairn’s arrival with OSS he was put on the higher US pay scale as the British Army pay was pretty low compared to the US Officer’s pay scale. Donavan was also instrumental in getting him promoted to Lt Colonel and having him awarded the US Legion of Merit by the President for his services to OSS. At War’s end Fairbairn return to England. But more on the post war years later….

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Pat O’Neil and the e c r o c i e F v r e l S a i c e p S t s r i F

1 94 2 As I told you earlier Fairbairn was asked to train the First Special Service Force (FSSF) but managed to get the role assigned to his much younger protégé O’Neil. O’Neil would become the best choice he was 37 yrs old very fit and as I already told you tough as nails and loved to fight. This was just the type of man this elite Force would be built around by its commanding officer Col Robert Frederick (Major General -1907-1970). On a personal note many of my NCO and Officers whom I served under in my early years with the C anadian Army were veterans of this Unit. The FSSF was created for ‘Operation Plough’ proposing commando raids into Norway to destroy the German’s ability to produce ‘heavy water’ needed to make atomic bombs. The British could not afford the cost of financing such a Force and the task went to the Americans. Frederick who had initially helped plan the operation and did the study on its merits was put in Command and charged with creating a Force of 2,500 Officers and men and to train them to be the most elite commando force of WWII. The Force as the members of the FSSF liked to be called were unique right from the start because the Brigade size Force was made up of half Canadian and half US personnel. Frederick recruited from both armies asking for volunteers who were bushmen, hard rock miners, and hunters who liked to fight. A few years ago I did a TV show for History Channel where we recreated the training of the Force and I was given access to Fredericks training diaries and unit planning as well as the veterans themselves. Frederick set a modern blueprint for Special Forces training and operations that are hardly matched today. Like Fairbairn I believe Frederick is an unsung genius and forgotten warrior. Frederick’s set out from the very beginning to create something different from the British Commandoes; the US Army had Rangers but they where a copy of the Commandoes. Frederick wanted a Special Force better equipped than any unit (and by today’s standards they where ‘hard’) because he knew that his men would need to be assertively confident and extremely fit to fight both physically and mentally, because a parachute drop into Norway was basically a suicide mission.

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The legend starts I can tell you we re-created his standard for physical training and conducted it for over a month for the show. It was grueling and the Force did it in combat boots not running shoes. Frederick like no other Commander understood the importance of the moral building characteristics O’Neil’s training would have on his men and instructed the now Captain O’Neil that, ‘He wanted his men assertively confident to fight and kill the enemy”. Frederick and O’Neil designed the unit’s famous V-42 fighting knife; every Forceman was issued one and O’Neil taught them how to use it. The V-42 became a symbol of that confidence in close combat and you will still see it worn on the badges of the US and Canadian Special Forces today. Now imagine O’Neil’s drama. You arrive at Fort Harrison have a series of meetings with the Commanding Officer and he tells you, you have to train 2,500 men l a r e n e g the entire Force from Frederick down to the lowest private to kill not just de s fend themselves. O’Neil took to this role with zeal and understood very clearly k c i r e d e r F how it had to be accomplished. Although a protégé of Fairbairn’s I believe he was the best of all the WWII unarmed combat instructors skill wise and he surely was martial arts wise ranking as a 6th dan. He also understood the mission of the Force and the time constraints to learning affective skills. So he designed a course of close combat much different than the one Fairbairn was teaching. It was far more aggressive and based on striking taking the fight to the enemy and killing. He designed it over a three tier training format based on the amount of time he had to train. The overview of this would be a first phase consisting of striking skills with hands and feet heavy on dirty fighting; to this phase he would add knife fighting. It struck him a boxer with a knife in his hand would be hard to deal with. Next phase would be simple grappling using dirty fighting drawing the knife to kill or choking the enemy to death, after all silence was important. He taught knife hand strikes to soft tissue areas like the throat, thumbs and fingers into the eyes of jabs, knees and instep kicks. Tactics that in 1942 was unheard of unless you were a gangster and were used to rough and tumble fighting. His last phase taught weapons and he designed a stalking course for killing sentries (something the Forceman became famous for). Everyone from Fredericks down learned what we’ll call the O’Neil System.

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the legend starts O’Neil also started his training phase by pulling together men in the Force that had some type of combative sports background including 2 actual Mafia gangsters/hit men members of Lt Larry Story’s platoon, (Lt Story is an old friend and related the story. He is also in the famous FSSF unarmed combat photo disarming the handgun; he’s the man on the right doing the disarm p. 7) O’Neil spent two weeks teaching them how to teach the first phase. By the end of the FSSF training at Fort Harrison every unit member was a very skilled close combat ‘craftsman’. The old timers in Helena Montana still tell stories of the Forceman in bar fights with the local loggers and cowboys and coming out on top. How well O'Neil did his job is exemplified in the name the Germans gave to the FSSF ‘Black Devils’ (Hollywood called them The Devil’s Brigade in a 1968 movie with William Holden). German veterans I have met who opposed the Force in Italy told me they were scared as hell of them. They would go out at night faces blackened armed with their V-42 fighting knife and a pistol in small teams and hunt Germans. They would sneak in and kill sentries and machine gunners at their post while leaving his team mate asleep in the bottom of the trench. The poor guy sleeping would wake up find his mate dead and an FSSF sticker glued to his helmet which read in German,”The Worst is yet to come…FSSF”. The Force never gave up an inch of ground and took every objective they were assigned. Churchill acclaimed they where the best unit in the war and struck more fear into the hearts of the enemy than any other. O’Neil could have gone back to OSS after the Force was trained but he said, “I trained them and I am damn well going to fight with them”. He served as Frederick’s body guard, no mean task as Frederick was wounded eight times in combat. The veterans of the FSSF still speak highly of O’Neil’s training and the edge it gave them and I was told many stories over beers of just how affective it made them at closing with and killing the enemy. As a young soldier I was turned ‘inside out ‘by a few of these guys especially if I got to ‘cocky’ with them so I was on the business end of learning how effectively they were trained and most of these guys where my age now (old). When the FSSF was disbanded in 1944 the best trained and most unique WWII Commando unit disappeared into just a few pages of the WWII history books. O’Neil was re-assigned as the Provo Marshall at Monte Carlo until he was pulled back into OSS and assigned to the Far East.

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The post war years What do men do after a war and especially those who have lead a life of adventure almost it would seem being in the right place and time in history to fill volumes of adventure books. Well as best as I know this is what happened.

Major Eric Sykes;

Well Unfortunately Erick Sykes died an untimely death on the 12th of May 1945 at age 62. His health was affected by the pace at which he worked but his contribution to the War time SOE was legendary. Like so many men of his caliber he died alone and has been forgotten as much do to his own secretive nature and as a result of his work still being classified by Britain’s MI6.

Lt Colonel William Fairbairn;

Returned to England to his wife and family. Since the SMP no longer existed his pension was lost he spent the remainder of his years training Police Forces in Singapore and Cyprus. He died June 20th 1960 and his knowledge passed into history. Fairbairn never wrote a final manual that would have covered the depth and breadth of his knowledge. Most people think they know what he taught. Myself I might be one of the lucky ones who got to train directly under men he taught like Harold Starin and meet many others throughout my military career. Fairbairn and Sykes contribution to the WWII war effort touched almost every aspect of how front line soldiers were trained. Their legacy is still being passed on in the Special Forces and SWAT skills being used today by members who have no idea of their trainings origins. In most WWII history books Fairbairn hardly rates a paragraph.

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the legend starts

Captain Pat O’Neil;

Returned to working for the OSS and was sent to Japan as a liaison officer. This would have been a logical choice since he spoke Japanese and Chinese understood the culture and probably still had good connection within the martial arts community and other sources within Japan. He worked for various State Department organizations after the War including the CIA. In the mid 60’s he was with the International Police Academy funded by the Agency for International Development which was a cover for paramilitary operations run by the CIA. When the US Army formed the Green Berets O’Neil trained the first instructors in what we’ve called the O’Neil method of close combat some of which can be found in the old US Army manual FM21-150 Deal the First Deadly Blow – Hand-to-Hand Combat although this is a pale example of the course he actually taught. O’Neil I was told wrote only one training manual of his methods and it is held by the CIA and like all things CIA you and I are not going to see it ever. Much of O’Neil’s work is still classified. O’Neil passed away in Washington on August 11th 1985. The Close Combat Training Center on Post at Fort Harrison where he taught the FSSF is named in his honor ‘The O’Neil Center’ (a suggestion I made while filming the Devils Brigade TV show there). The O’Neil system of close combat training is the back bone of the old Canadian Army unarmed combat program far more so than Fairbairn’s initial program. More on this aspect later on...

Lt Colonel Rex Applegate;

After Camp B Applegate went to Camp Ritchie and taught there till the end of the war. He retired from the US Army shortly after the war as Lt Colonel. He spent some 20 years living in Mexico teaching the police and military of that country and Latin America riot control training and weapons skills. He lived out his life in Oregon and was active in teaching and training US Police Forces right up to his death. I had the honor of meeting him in 1975 while attached to the newly reformed 2nd Ranger Bn at Fort Lewis Washington. He was still very keen on people getting their training right and was not a big fan off the touchy feeling training that was soon to take over close combat skills. As I recall one of his favorite expressions was “Keep it simple stupid” when the younger Rangers would do something they had been taught that was just a little too martial artist. I still have a tape of him demonstrating knife techniques for use at 61 yrs old.

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e i z n e K c n M h o ) J t e O ( R W CDN Airborne REG

The legend starts The post war years I must not forget to mentioned that I have by no means y b d e r o t n touched on all those instructors who were qualified by the e o m s l s a a n w h o J men above and who went on to prove the effectiveness of Harold Starin the training. Luckily I got to serve with and learn from quite a few and met many more over the years. Most of these men returned to civi-street after the war and most never taught again. Some, a very few, went into police service and taught defense tactics and others like my instructors were career professional soldiers. Some like Harold continued to teach martial arts like Judo and Jujitsu at the local YMCA. But wherever they taught unarmed combat they gave soldiers and secret agents the tools to survive in the harshest environment in the world, the modern battlefield. The discipline of WWII combatics pioneered by these instructors stayed with many Allied Militaries well into the late 70’s. As an old Army Regimental Sergeant Major and martial arts master I can tell you it is still by far the most effective form of close combat I have ever studied and I have spent the last 48 years doing just that. In my more than 39 years of operational military and police service I have experienced a lot of violence and was t aught no better form of assertive confidence building to effectively deal with violence then the system established by Fairbairn and passed on by his instructors. The unfortunate aspect is that too many modern day exponents of his methods, know little or nothing about the actual system or its training. They only have the few books written by Fairbarn and Applegate to draw from and showcase their limited knowledge. And of course the few poorly written military manuals on the subject as well. The nature of how to teach these skills for real and more importantly for combat has been lost but for a few men like me; the last generation of WWII based military instructors who actually learnt and used these skills in the military at the hands of the generation mentioned above who proved its training value.

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Epilogue

We trained in the footsteps of heroes

Many students of this style of WWII combatics as well as many martial artists have asked me never ending questions about its fate and what happened to the system. Since there are many experts now on this subject any blog on the internet will give you an opinion! So I will tell you the Canadian Army story. The one I experienced firsthand.

After the war the Canadian Army still had tons of expertise still serving from our elite WWII units the FSSF, 1st Canadian Parachute Battalion, Canadian Commando Brigade and of course SOE. Remember we ran one of the best WWII spy schools in the War Camp X and the Canadian soldier was considered the best trained soldier in WWII (Still is today). In 1947 the Canadian Army decided to pull together a small Airborne Strike Force of Company strength from as many volunteers of the above units as they could find to man this new unit. The officer they choose to Command the Company was Lt Colonel Guy d’Artois. d’Artois had been a member of the Royal Montreal Regiment before the War and at the outbreak was keen to get into the fighting. So after his initial officer’s training he volunteered for both the SOE and the FSSF. He was accepted for the FSSF and went to Helena and Fort Harrison for training. During his second month of training with the Force he was ordered to report back to Ottawa for another assignment. Reluctantly he followed orders and upon arrival was ordered to report to Camp X for SOE training. Major d’Artois was parachuted into occupied France in 1943 and helped organize the French Resistance. He also commanded a large group during the war especially during the D Day operations. He was a very skilled operator, as was his wife whom he met at the SOE and who also parachuted into France and worked valiantly with the Resistance. Both were highly decorated SOE veterans.

N ot j us t a c u t e c ou p e l

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Copyright 2010 © William Hill Wolfe

Footsteps of heroes The Canadian Army High Command could not have picked a more experienced ‘out of the box’ thinking soldier for the job. So Major d’Artois was ordered to raise and train the 1st Canadian SAS Company. Into this unit came many veterans of the above noted units including several of the best close combat instructors we had. d’ Artois was keen on the value of close combat training and told them to come up with the best fighting system they could. The soldier leading this effort was S/Sgt John Crawford an O’Neil trained instructor and a veteran of both the FSSF and 1st Can Para. Crawford qualified many instructors of what he told me they called ‘Defendo’ within the SAS Company and the name ‘Defendo’ branded the system with a proper Canadian ID to separate our system from Fairbairn’s yet still pay respect to him and O’Neil. Remember instructors and soldiers in the 1st CDN SAS Company had been trained by both Fairbairn’s, Sykes and O’ Neil’s methods. They also blended in their own combat experiences and modified it to suit their needs and tailored a specific instructor’s program. On a personal note , in 1972 Crawford as my Company Sergeant Major, ran the last 11 week WWII O’Neil based close combat instructors course at CFB Wainwright based on what was systemized at 1st CDN SAS Company (and yours truly was on it). The first basic military publication of this system was the 1947 Canadian Army Provo Corp manual on self defense and arrest tactics. In the preface to this manual the system is referred to as Defendo not Defendu. I asked Crawford where the Defendo name come from and his answer was short, sweet and gruff as always, “Some dumb fucking officer at Camp X couldn’t get it right and when he heard Fairbairn and Defendu were coming he thought he meant Defendo, fucking type O and it has stuck with us ever since.” The name Defendo means in Latin “I Protect or To Protect”. Of course this information seemed unimportant to most on the course at the time but to me because of my Judo background I first thought it meant something like ‘The way of Defense’. Generally we simply called what we did ‘unarmed combat’ it was not until the 70’s when the military placed restrictions on teaching unarmed combat that as a senior instructor I started using the Defendo name again to get around the BS from ‘Higher’ and it worked. Martial arts training was OK but ‘unarmed combat was bad’ Defendo was martial arts enough sounding to get around the ban. The 1st Canadian SAS Company was short lived and disbanded in 1949 but not before they established the modern Canadian army airborne training doctrine and close combat training course. When the unit broke up the members, for the most part, were sent back to their original units across the length of the Canadian Infantry Corp; PPCLI, Queens Own Rifle, Royal Canadian Regiment and The Royal 22nd Regiment the unit Lt Col d’ Atrois would command in Korea. In my army career I served with and was mentored as a Sr NCO by several veterans of 1st Canadian SAS Company; RSM (Lt Col) Bob Blackwell (Black Watch), RSM (Capt) Bob Planet (QOR), RSM Frank Buxton (PPCLI), RSM Geordie Nailer (1Can Para/QOR) to name a few.

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Footsteps of heroes These veterans in turn dispersed the close combat training knowledge to the Canadian Infantry Corp. All of them by the late 70’s were retired from the Army which no longer saw a need for such training but a few of us fought to keep the skill’s being taught. The Army Instructor’s course I taught went from 11 weeks down to 5 weeks and eventually 1 week. From the days when every NCO in the Canadian Army could teach the skills to where by the 80’s few had any knowledge. Even in the Airborne Regiment they struggled for the real knowledge. The 70’s was a bad time for the Canadian military. The negative effects of the unification of the three services are still being felt today. The ‘Hippie Movement of the late 60’s & early 70’s’ a part as soldiers were hassled for wearing the uniform. There was a general disregard from the Canadian government and of course the Viet Nam War mindset. We went from being the best trained soldiers in the world in close combat to almost none. At one point orders came down from NDHQ banning unarmed combat training in all forms too many injuries and too many civilians allegedly getting beat up by soldiers in bars (don’t spit on a soldier and not expect to get hit). The latest Canadian Forces Close Combat manual is still a soft paper (no f***ing value) even though we’ve been at war for 9 years in Afghanistan. You might ask why I did not get tired of banging my head against a brick wall trying to keep the system alive. For example, at one point in time, the Canadian Army had a system in place that every recruit learned basic unarmed combat at what we then called ‘Regimental Depot’ not the same as CF Recruit School today. Once you got to Battalion you learnt ‘level II’ skills which honed striking skills and introduced you to grappling and then ‘level III’ weapons and silent killing. Every soldier practiced even our physical training (PT) was based Once upon a around it (Fitness with Purpose). These programs died off as the WWII and Korean veteran time, you were Commanding officers and Company Commanders retired leaving a breed of officer who did allowed to not see the need or reason for it (no combat experience). As this generation took over units look and feel received less and less unarmed combat training and the whole program was slowly scrapped like a soldier by neglect and by the 1980’s forgotten. Except by old Sergeant Majors like me who tried to teach as much of it as we could after all how many times does a soldier need to clean his rifle when it’s already clean. In these later years I experienced a lot more martial arts being passed off as military unarmed combat and armies including mine as a result have tried to re-invent the wheel as far as unarmed combat training goes for today’s soldiers. For some CO’s in the 80’s and onward the show of having all the soldiers on the parade square doing punches and kicks like robots and yelling ‘Kiia’ passed for real training but it has failed in this current war just as sport training has in combat operations. It was stupid and as a wise RSM said, ‘You can’t fix stupid’. So what do we do, we camouflage it.

Then they Issued cheap ugly suits or aka the bus diver outfit, called CF greens ... The start of the down turn

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The camouflage Smoke

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Well before I try and explain my experiences over the last 4 or 5 years let me share with you a quote from a great veteran of the FSSF and one of the very first members over the top at the battle of Monte La Defensa;

“How

do you explain

, if you have combat never been in combat you know you can’t …” explain it S/Sgt Joe Glass Gla ss WWII Veteran FSSF

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Veterans like Joe are the soldiers who taught me close combat (a term which w hich means all forms of infantry combat training) in the Canadian Army. Joe was one of those Canadian volunteers for the FSSF who reported to Fort Harrison in 1942 and was with the Force until wounds took him out of action and ended the war for him. I got to know Joe Glass when I did the Devil’s Brigade TV show and at almost 90 years old Joe was still passing on valuable CQB lessons (you can see Joe on the RSM Wolfe channel on YouTube). As I told you before that old school skill and knowledge has stood me in good stead throughout my military and police career and On set Devil’s Brigade saved my life on a few occasions. I have been passing passing on A S U U T this experience and knowledge now for more than 40 s 200 7 M e i r e V s T years. As I also told you it was taught to me by real pioneer SF warriors like Joe, Joe, Harold and others and now now validated by my own experience. Remember nothing is validated until it’s been proven in combat and you can never explain combat to someone who has never been there! All you ‘Curious Georges’ out there have been asking me about real modern military close combat training but I am not sure what your your definition of real is anymore? anymore? Remember I told you the story of the soldier who asked me about about the octagon. For most ‘real’ seems to be the UFC. So I’ll try and explain my thoughts thoughts on this subject matter matter so the ‘arm chair commandos’ commandos’ can have something to blog about and tell me I’m wrong!

42 F 1 9 42 S S s F s a a l e G o o J

F i st i r l l et e m t m e e e xp x p a l ai i n m n m y i d d ea e a o f r f r e e a a l

...the units and soldiers I teach today have been ‘bloodied’ and many more will be as they go into ‘harm’s way’ in this ongoing protracted 9+ year war. What do I mean by ‘bloodied’? It’s having to kill or having members killed in combat. So teaching close combat in these professional military environments is not a role I take lightly. When I see the ball ball being dropped I get a little more than ‘pissed off’ as do the soldiers who who need the skills to round out their professional professional ‘skill-at-arms’ abilities. abilities. There is no place for ‘gifted amateurs’ who have never been a ‘professional soldier’ teaching soldiers. It’s not a place for theory but serious fact! In training I teach soldiers to close with and kill the enemy. This is not based on sport sport but rational knowledge knowledge of the variables variables they will face on the current current battlefield. It’s the battlefield where soldiers die or get maimed not the base gym where they can win a title in the unit MMA sport competition. In this gym gym environment environment real close close combat training does not not matter. It is training training the ‘battle-wise skills’ that easily fit into the three defined tiers of this new battlefield of ‘War Fighting’.

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If you do not understand the concept of the modern ‘three tiered war’ you’re already lost before before I begin? You don’t! So go look it up! up! For example I recently did a training program for the US Army Special Forces Team’s (The Green Berets) Modern Army Combatives Instructors. Instructors. It was meant as a history lesson lesson ‘Are you as well trained trained as your Grandfathers were’ after all the FSSF was part of their units historic lineage. It turned out they were not and found the training ‘intimidating’ ‘intimidating’ (their words not mine). Why? Their current unarmed unarmed combat training model of Modern Army Combatics is based on the assumption that you can ‘deescalate’ time in a battlefield hand-to-hand combat (old school term) situation as you would in the ‘octagon’ (sports definition). What do they mean by ‘de-escalate’? For example; I take the enemy into my guard on the ground and hold on till he burns out and gets tired. I then make a move, relax and do it all over again until I get in a position where I can apply a painful lock or choke. First drama, the enemy is not wearing 80 lbs of Kevlar Kevlar Body Armour in one of the hottest places places on earth. Second drama, you’re now becoming isolated from your fire team partners as they fight through the objective leaving you behind or your fire team partner would have killed the enemy on top of you. Third drama, the enemies’ fire team partner is taking taking a sight picture on you and getting ready to ‘kill you’. Fourth drama, the risk of being overwhelmed by more enemy and taken prisoner because of becoming isolated is very real especially at night. night. The enemy does not wear Body Armour and is a natural natural born grappler from birth (remember (remember a guy named Alexander Alexander the Great). He likes knives up close close and personal and has been fighting an an ongoing war for more than 40 years years (just this time around)! The time clock in real battle does not ‘de-escalate’ as it can in the sports based octagon. Killing occurs in 'real time' with speed and force of action. Finishing off the enemy must be the first priority 'the kill'. I found these SF instructors too busy ‘pissing about’ trying to get in position and roll on the ground when they could have had the ‘kill’. Their techniques worked better for them without full battle gear and with extreme difficulty in full fighting order or not at all. Certain moves were hindered by the equipment itself when they played by the rules (Holy shit rules you say!). This is just one tier of battle knowledge ‘To Kill’. What are the other two? Yes that’s the question question you where looking up! We’re only talking talking about the Iraqi Leg picking soldier.. first tier here today, because that is the place where generations of wrestling training in CQB must start. It’s important knowledge for you to know blogger, especially you UFC types. Teaching soldiers to kill is a method of instruction you need to know how to do.

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OK continuing on. The older SF instructors who were also old ‘L.I.N.E.S’ instructors fared better but the sports base kept infiltrating back in because most of these guys were level 3 instructors and had been conditioned to the new concept. The few skilled boxers in the crew had the definite upper hand making it almost impossible for their fellow soldiers to close the gap, take a clinch, and impossible when I put a knife in their hand (remember O’Neil’s first line concept 1942). They seemed to have very limited offensive striking knowledge and limited blocking or parrying skills so they took hits trying to get in. Some soldiers have been told their helmet would protect them and put their head down and charged in. That stopped after I almost broke a few necks using the helmet itself to re-direct their body core. These attempts to take the enemy to the ground and mount him as they had been taught met with deadly negative results. Early on this created a psychological collapse and no trust in their current training system. This closing the distance seemed so critical to them, yet they had no real offensive skill to do it (apparently it comes later after ground fighting) they were dying that's not good, especially when they are only a few weeks away from the real battlefield. They were told it was the ultimate military system. So where do you go when ultimate fails for you? You enter ‘tonic shock’! They were also told that dirty fighting tactics would not work and would only make the enemy angrier (who told them that BS). Taking these soldiers’ eyes and nuts was easy because they were not taught to guard them, since they had never made use of the skills in their training (good thing the enemy fights fair too you’re thinking!) This infiltrating back in of the sports mindset instead of a ‘war mindset’ was not present in fire arms related weapons drills with the M4. Why? Their close combat marksmanship training is not sports based! Its killing based! If I told them to do something that was tactically wrong with any aspect of the weapon they were all over me and correcting me! How we train is how we react and that part they had down pat with their M4. Why not with Combatives? They found the old school unarmed combat intimidating. There was also no integration training between the empty hand aspects and weapons use (apparently it came in higher up the rank system…obs.. it’s needed now remember a few weeks away from real battlefields!). They had no difficulty transcending from their M4 to a pistol, if out of ammo but no such skill in defense tactics. Their Team training staff set the basic test; this was based on their current training knowledge. I just added in from my own experience the ‘combat sickiners’ which showed the cracks in the system’s knowledge base. Their present training conditioners had set them up for combat failure. For example any time I introduced a knife into the fight they failed to adjust their mental picture to a knife fight and reprioritize to it. They continued to sports fight and roll, ignoring the stabbing action. Since none of them wore groin protection in operations it left a lot of open opportunities for some very simple P=C because in normal training the ‘package’ was protected by the cup and the eyes were protected by rules.

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e r s a n o s s e l y r o t s i e h m o S

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Not in the ‘sand box’ and not here and the same went for other effective dirty tricks as well. They never watched the hands for weapons and felt they had an endless amount of time to fight, which was not true in real operations. Plus with all that body armour and assault rigs it dissipated their will to survive. Their current system did not take into account even the basic concept that the enemy’s National pass time is wrestling and that one of the largest Muslim groups of foreign Muslim fighters came from a real knife culture in the Philippines. They failed to grasp the nature of the enemies CQB, but the enemy did not forget theirs, hence their heavy reliance on the knife in close combat training. These SF guys thought to ‘ankle lock the enemy’ was a right smart combat move but they were not fast enough applying (lack of ongoing practice under varied combat conditions) before they had their inside thigh cut open. They thought in passive sports terms not honed battle reactions something they would never have done with their M4. This is what happens when Are still combat you make a big show of your close combat training on YouTube, applicable the smart bad guys watch and figure out simple more deadly counters to it. No one said the enemy was not smart or tough and they have some serious experience at ‘war fighting’ and they can buy Gracie DVD’s too! Simple basic skills presented by an ‘old guy’ like me should not have been intimidating to SF soldiers, who are 20-30 yrs younger and fitter, if these soldiers had the assertive confidence in their current combatives program. Remember you cannot de-escalate violence in combat. I don’t care who tells you that you can (or the street for that matter), you have no control of the environment in which it takes place, just control of your ‘assertive confidence’ to deal with it. There is no ‘Cage’ on the battlefield in Afghan. Assertive confidence has to be earned and it must be done starting in Recruit School! And there are no rules in combat so the sports mindset has to go. It only takes a secondary enemy soldier to get a sight picture and squeeze the trigger (5 second rule) because you’ve ‘rolled’ for too long. The reason you’re seeing the ‘whites of the enemy’s eyes’ is because ‘shit’ just happened – Murphy’s Law’ and you’re responsible for your survival not the Drill Sgt (Get over it if you do not understand the term!). Ask yourself when was the last time the enemy released one of our POW’s alive? This is the biggest difference your grandfathers’ elite soldiers like “Joe Glass” was taught…”to close with and kill effectively and personally’ with assertive confidence” the big misconception is that they were not taught CQB skills just some magical dirty fighting system. In 1942 boxing was more popular than martial arts are today so dirty tricks alone would not have worked if skill was not taught – Remember Gen Fredrick’s CO FSSF direction to Capt Pat O’Neil the Force’s Unarmed Combat Instructor. Your Grandfather for example faced a better trained, equipped and skilled professional soldier on that WWII battlefield than we face today. But are we training the better ‘killer’? I received very mixed reviews on the current US Army program from these soldiers. Newer members who had only experienced this one military system had no choice but to like it.

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They were the most intimidated. The senior Team members told me they preferred the old L.I.N.E.S. Shit Ha system with aspects of the new system added in. pp e ns... y ou a re t ra ining f o r But they were very grateful for my two bits worth. Keep in mind I only had them for 5 hard days to r a w hard wire skills they wanted to incorporate into their training to make it more combat effective for their next tour. Something SF soldiers can do more readily over ‘line soldiers’ especially considering current US Army Combatives training policies and directives. What struck me over those 5-days was the number of times the Base Safety Officer came by to check on the welfare of the men. Something I was not used to from my days of soldiering, and those words, ‘to dangerous Mr. Wolfe can’t do it’. Try telling that to the enemy! The overall item that struck me though was watching how their program was taught and that is wherein the trouble lies. They’ve forgotten how to teach it for war! They need to teach their soldiers better use of their hands in the attacking and blocking role and then put a knife into it before they deploy for war zones. They need to upgrade the system for ‘war fighting’ and this means more soldiers will get hurt in training but better here than on the battlefield (get the mindset out of the octagon). The soldiers I taught were embarrassed at the base safety officers action and to their credit we completed the training of Post on their own time. This is an indication of just how much value this training had for them and it was not something they were use to but their grandfathers were! Another example, when I taught the British army, I found they have no unarmed combat/close combat programs for their soldiers whatsoever. Very odd considering I had infantry soldiers on my program who had done bayonet charges in both the Iraq and Afghan campaigns. They had never been taught how to use the rifle and bayonet outside of fixing the bayonet to the rifle! The bayonet fighting program was dropped at Depot because the new SA80 was considered too short and you might break the sights. These where the lads that fixed bayonets and charged; some told me they were actually out of ammo when the order to charge was given, but they charged! (Sounds like WWI doesn’t it and I was told bayonet charges were a thing of the past Mr. Wolfe) These current combat veterans all stated there was a clear need for real close combat training but the only soldiers I found who got ongoing training where the ‘British Army Judo Team’ and no one was allowed to touch them (sports team!). Why not train these guys to teach proper military close combat training I thought. Well let’s just say it’s not my army because I was a member of the Canadian Army Judo team and we taught unarmed combat! The British army did have a ‘use of force’ instructor’s course in place which was a throwback to the days in Northern Ireland and is considered more than useless by the soldiers themselves. It’s hard not to have respect for young soldiers who bear the scars on their bodies from war and are keen to learn. Damn good bunch! It’s too bad their Army has dropped the ball!

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On mainland Europe I got the chance to provide training and/or view various countries military close combat programs. The old ‘Soviet Block ‘Armies had Russian influenced programs that were clearly based on skills they ‘the Soviets’ had acquired from North Korean martial arts programs ( yes I know the claim 2000 year old ancient Russian warrior system etc, etc!). I’ve never seen soldiers, who were suppose to be learning skills, do so many knuckle pushups and get slapped around for no reason. I saw lots of flaming bricks being broken but little of the simple and effective skills being imparted that an average soldier would use. And yes I did spend time going over training concepts with them. Lots of silly knife training that did not even stand up to my silly ‘old guy’ tests. I even saw soldiers being knocked over by invisible bolts of energy coming out of one Major’s finger tips ( I guess this had something to do with ammo shortages back in the day which allowed them to develop this secret skill…Sorry but what would you think?) In Stop paying lip service other words just too much flash being taught to some really to real combat training tough soldiers. Most units like Germany’s and Austria’s Special Forces had developed hybrid systems basically dependant on who in the unit knew some martial arts or brought in a civilian instructor, a mix match of skills from various systems with no defined purpose. The French Commandoes I had some fun with since I was a ‘kindred spirit’ having done the French Commando Course way back in 71. I found the French to be the most open minded bunch. Even my beloved Canadian Army program has now been mucked about with and it looks like a ‘theatrical Tae Kwon Do/Karate/waste of time Jujitsu Program! Some ‘dumb bugger’ at NDHQ tried telling me it’s based on Fairbairn’s teaching and I said BS to that! It’s a waste of training time! So even when you have something that works and proven like the old Canadian Army system someone thinks he/she knows more and screws it up. The Canadian Forces Close Combat Manual B-GL-382-004/FP-001 is based on my early works but today how to teach the system properly for ‘war fighting’ has been lost in my opinion. New age soldiers reinvent the wheel, selling it to some General at NDHQ who would not know a punch from a paper clip. Find a safer way to teach the program less chance of injuries to the soldier, Mr. Wolfe (Tell that story to the enemy). But if it looks good when you demo it ‘parade square mentally’ then it must be good stuff; sort of reminds me of my days in Korea watching ‘ROK Soldiers demonstrating TKD’. One word, unrealistic! When it’s stupid it is a waste of training time and ‘training time is valuable’ there’s never enough of it to go around. I think these inventors need some front line time ‘humping’ the gear and getting the overwhelming sense of fear that becomes part of the combat experience. Maybe then we’ll see a different program in the future that is soldier friendly and deadly to the enemy when the bullets go whizzing by. No effective system looks pretty. But they need to realize the enemy does not ‘give a rat’s ass’ about their unarmed combat sports competitions or parade ground demonstrations, he just wants to kill them something they are rather good at! And that is not very politically correct of him (the enemy) is it?

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I have been asked about Krav Maga in comparison to what I do and this is like comparing different flavors of chocolate ice cream. I met Imi Lichtenfeld while I was stationed in the Middle East (1973-1974) through some Israeli paratroopers I came to know. Though as brief as this encounter was we had a chat and demonstrated skills back and forth and there was a common ground. I saw a somewhat different approach more grappling from him than I see today in Krav. Unfortunately back then I had no real idea of who he was outside of being a Sergeant Major in the Israeli Defense Force. From what I gathered Mr. Lichtenfeld had served with the British Military during the war either with SOE Palestine helping train the ‘German Squads’ Jewish settlers of German heritage to work behind the lines gathering intelligence on troop movements and sabotage. As well as ‘the Jewish Brigade’ this Brigade fought with the British Army throughout the war. From my talks with Mr. Lichtnefeld and other Israeli veterans of SOE Palestine, No 3 Troop (Jewish)10 Commando, M.E. Commando Palestine, and the Jewish Brigade it is very clear they where taught close combat skills similar to Fairbairn and Sykes design and this training made its way into the early units of the Israeli Defense Force particularly the special operations units. To date I have had the good fortune to train with and share knowledge with some of Israeli’s best police and military trainers and have found as many variants of close combat training called by many names being taught in Israel. The one common factor with these is that the Israeli’s whom I’ve met trained for real but then these men are operators within operational military or police units. Their approach to ‘war fighting’ was more in line with my mindset than the other programs I have mentioned thus far. OK let’s take a step back. What was clear and good was that all the soldiers I have had the privilege to teach have been keen. They displayed themselves and their units in the best professional light they knew how. Every soldier was an ‘active learner’ once I earned their confidence. Yes I said earned their confidence. Before I could teach them my skills, that work on a tactical level, it had to be put into a ‘soldier’s context’ so they could understand its use. Remember you cannot fix ‘stupid’ and if a soldier has been exposed to stupid or barbaric training methods their enthusiasm for more is pretty low. So you have to earn the right to be there and gain their confidence. I chose a living history lesson and how it was taught over BS and hype! I start with a challenge, are they as tough as their grandfathers or in most cases their great grandfathers were! Hopefully their instructors found the knowledge valuable and they continue to prepare their soldiers to ‘assertively go into harm’s way with skills that can do bad things to the enemy’. Maybe too they will question and look closely at the skill sets they teach and the method of instruction for ‘war fighting’ I offered, to enhance their current depth of knowledge and to teach it in a validated manner. This means mentoring soldiers who are timid in unarmed combat training to a level of assertive confidence in their abilities.

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Smoke

& mirrors

This is why the instructors need to understand the mental and tactical component of unarmed combat training and why inter-locking it with the physical is so important today, especially in this new 3-tiered battlefield they find themselves fighting on. The other modern battlefield component is the concept of ‘lawful use of force’ so if you’re not familiar with that start studying it; Operational Rules of Engagement, Geneva Convention, Hague Convention on War Crimes, your National Defense Act and your Federal Law to name a few! Yes a Military instructor today needs to know more if they are going to develop ‘quiet professionals’ who serve in our Armed Forces. When I finish these military training sessions it leaves a big hole in my gut, because I know many are going into harm’s way sooner than later and there is never enough time to prepare them. Nor am I going with them and that is hard as well because after all it is a brotherhood! I teased some of the Hungarian Special Forces soldiers I taught because their Government seems to think they are going to Afghanistan to hand out flowers and their training policies reflected just that attitude. Many of them are there right now as you read this. For example I receive emails all the time from soldiers on operations letting me know how there’re making out; one recent one from Capt B. H….US Army who is in the ‘sand box’. He’s been teaching my knife fighting program because his soldiers found they need it and had no such training before deployment (on the job training). My old Battalion has taken heavy casualties and as an old RSM it’s never easy to see the bodies come home, therefore we should never drop the standards of this training ‘my lads’ and yours deserve the best! I am tired of hearing about ‘lessons learned’ on the battlefield that are actually ‘lessons forgotten’! The soldiers I know are the real Ultimate Warriors and there was a Legendary System their forebears of the Regiments like me were taught. My knowledge is old school Canadian Army and its part of that Legendary System, even if it seems I am the last guy teaching it this way! I have never qualified civilians to teach soldiers, how can I, they don’t understand war. We’ve had enough ‘lessons learned’!

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The Martial art opinion New age What is the modern martial arts communities’ perspective on WWII combatics? I would have to say not very good from my experience teaching around the world for the last 15 years. This is mainly true because of the lack of real knowledge on the training itself as it is poorly documented in manuals and what actual film footage of it generally shows a demonstration which is designed and filmed for morale building purposes for soldiers and the home front theater audience. For example John Ford the famous Hollywood Director did a short film on the OSS staring Fairbairn and Applegate and a host of ‘lone ranger’ mask wearing secret agents, who were actually instructors. The Film can be seen on ‘YouTube’ and by today’s standard it is quite comical especially for a generation used to seeing the fight scenes in movies today. When the film was made it was intended to be shown in theaters as a representation of the training not to actually show the training after all it was highly secret. And don’t underestimate the German’s concern for Fairbairn’s training because they went so far as to create their own manual “Abweher Englischer – Gangster Methoden” a system of training designed to combat ‘this new form of gangster fighting’ for their soldiers so they could counter Fairbairn’s training. The biggest problem in my opinion is how today some proponents of Fairbairn’s training have packaged it and presented it to the public which includes the martial arts community. It's almost like a secret society offering nonsensical programs like; WWII Black Ops long forgotten Secret Blocking, ‘Fear No Man’ learn to fight in Seconds deadly WWII combatics Revealed and especially those adverts t hat say martial arts are not affective the list goes on and on. But when you watch videos of what these new age Fairbairn societies are actually offering up as his training on DVD’s or worse attend a seminar as an experienced martial artist you just have to wonder at the stupidity you see. Don’t get me wrong there are some who try and present a realistic view but we are far outnumber by what I’ll term as ‘nut bars’ who have brought the nature and quality of the WWII training into disrepute. (I am pretty sure I’ll hear from them).

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New age There is also the comparison with the new US Army Modern Army Combatives Program which is based on Brazilian Jujitsu and billed as the ultimate military system; when the US Army says they are the best everyone listens but this is far from the truth (keep in mind I’m Canadian Army and we eat Yank soldiers for breakfast) but they do make reference to WWII combatives as being outdated and no longer valid. As mentioned above from my experience with their current program I would assume they drew that conclusion without having had any real experience in WW11 unarmed combat. If I may I will try and explain by way of a short story resulting from a question I was asked at a seminar not too long ago by a young serving soldier who had heard about this WWII style of training and came to find out for himself (good for him). In the beginning of my seminars right after the introduction I ask if there are any questions and there usually are. This young man, a member of the US Army maybe mid 20’s asked me if I had ever proven the system in the ‘Ultimate Fight’ I assumed he meant the sport matches not actual combat by the way he phrased the question. So I said no but I have been in street fights resulting in; having the tip of my nose bitten off, being stabbed and shot (luckily not at the same time but over a 20 year period) and I’m still here. He was ambivalent to my answer and stated, ‘that means you’ve not been in the Ultimate Fight?’ So I answered ‘No Lad I have been in the ultimate fight but not in the octagon.’ At this point his friend a fellow soldier hit him on the shoulder and called him ‘Stupid and told him to shut up’. So the question I ask you is how do you compete with all the hype created by the current marketing and coupled with the mixed messages being sent out about Fairbairn’s education in say the martial art magazines like ‘WWII Combatives Secrets Revealed etc.etc. Remember Fairbairn and Sykes were highly trained martial artists of their day and highly respected by Kodokan Judo. O’Neil was considered one of the best free style Judo fighters in Japan in the 1930’s and a very capable ground fighter (newaza in Judo). But how do you explain to a young man whose mind is bent around sports fighting that these men faced life and death challenges and survived. Not one or two but hundreds of times! That they created a system based on that experience that is surely well outside of the violence aspect of the 'Ultimate Fight', and especially since Fairbairn himself referred to his system as 'gutter fighting'. That alone reflects the serious intent of the training. I can tell you from my own experience that you don’t really win a street battle unless you like getting hurt; it’s not a sport’s experience, it is street warfare and in my case had life and death attached to the results. Does our ability to prevail in these real violent encounters trump the ‘UFC Hype’ and have value in the eyes of these young men?

Value in extrovert persona ?

d e s o l e c h n t n i e v i e g d a a F c n a e t f O t n e m n r i o v n g e n i n i a r t d e d n i m

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New age Generally from my experience no. It seems their egos get in the way and they've been brainwashed by all the hype based marketing. But at the same time I cannot really blame them because there are a lot of guys teaching Fairbairn’s alleged system ‘that could not fight their way out of a wet paper bag’ and this is not a true representation of Fairbairn or his instructors. All the men I have mentioned to you taught real skills and engaged with the enemy and killed them up close and personal. Harold for example I can remember him at our Sgt’s Mess Burn’s Dinner late in the evening standing at the bar about 0300 hrs (I was a Private at the time and the bar steward one of those assigned duties for the evening) one of the old WWII veterans was pretty much drunk so I called his house and asked if someone could come pick him up and his 22 yr old son arrived a short time later. His Dad ‘fully skinned’ drunk introduces his son to the officers and NCO and guest standing at the bar. He becomes fixed on Harold and tells him Judo is no good for fighting it’s Karate now old man (circa 1969). I knew this guy because I also studied karate in the same YMCA club and he always liked to mouth off and push his weight around. Well in short order he lit Harold’s fuse and the two of them were squaring off. Well Harold was sort of just standing there. The ‘Kid’, we’ll call him, throws a punch and in a flash Harold was behind him and he was choked out in seconds and left a heap lying on the floor. Harold said call an ambulance and I did, luckily they were not needed. Harold showed no emotion and no fear or concerns either for putting him out. So in my experience he and the others also taught real technique not just dirty tricks; yes dirty fighting as many call it are part and parcel but we learned the technical aspects first. We had to fight free style and soldiers got hurt and this is one of the reasons HQ banned the training. We used real knives and you learned to get out of its way and/or stop it. We were not crazy about it but after a while we became use to it. I can still remember in training having a loaded 9mm pistol pointed at my chest and told to disarm it. It would never be allowed today. The US Green Berets, I taught not too long ago, will tell you that we were shut down for doing this level of training (real knives not guns). Luckily having done that realistic level of training saved my life three times when the pistol scenario was met on the street, but fortunately it was so drilled into me the action was automatic. Maybe if I had to think about it I might not be here today. Crazy you say! No, it's not, we trained for a purpose; we were combat soldiers. It’s a level that stays with you just like it did for Harold when he was attacked as an old man by three thugs. The nature of what the training is in my opinion has been lost to this group and even misrepresented to the worldwide martial art community. Fairbairn’s knowledge was first learned in the Dojo; then taken to the street, then the battlefield and there is no reason it cannot be back in the Dojo. If taught right as a ‘lessons learned’ kind of system the culture trappings are not as important in my mind as the training is.

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History in the making

Living history

Approximately four years ago, as I told you I helped make a tribute TV show for the History channel called ‘The Devil’s Brigade’. It was a 3-part miniseries what TV types call a living history. I got the assignment as a result of 10 years of efforts teaching the My System to the mainstream public. A student of mine in the TV business heard about the project and suggested I contact the Producers ‘Frantic Films’. Since I grew up knowing members of the Force and serving with its veterans I thought I could contribute some value to the project and sent them a set of my training DVD’s In short order Frantic contacted me and I was on board with the production and was pretty excited because I was now able to honour the memory of some soldiers/mentors and friends who meant the world to me by honouring the FSSF the unit that meant the most to them. The project was simple, recreate the initial lead up phase training of the FSSF at Fort Harrison and then the soldiers would climb and assault the Forces battle honor of Mount La Defensa in Italy as it stands today. The goal was simple could modern US and Canadian soldiers undergo the same rigours of training the Forceman did in 1942? In the lead-up phase to this project we had full US Army support, FSSF Veterans Association Support, Key Surviving Foremen’s advice and support, Fort Harrison’s Total Support and the people of the City of Helena and the State of Montana’s support. The research and development phase for me was a gold mine, full access to the Forces training diaries including General Fredericks. Interviewing many of the Forceman themselves, US Army records and so forth. One bonus was an actual motion picture film of the training phase of the Force that General Frederick actually had the foresight to have made. I watched this over and over especially Pat O’Neil’s unarmed combat training and studied notes made by him and others on the training. I was in unarmed combat trainer’s heaven. Forceman veterans and friends like Lt. Larry Story gave me lessons on the O’Neil method including a sentry removal technique demo using his lovely wife as a German sentry. V-42 in hand 89 yrs old he’s demonstrating like it was yesterday. I had veterans view news footage of our current infantry soldiers in Afghanistan on patrol tell me what they saw. They gave me a tactical lesson that was right on, some 60 plus years on, from their own combat experience. They told me in the Force they always moved with their weapons safety off their finger on the trigger ready to fire; they told me their brain was their safety and when they bumped into German patrols they always beat them to the draw.

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Living history They told me modern soldiers carry too much gear and always have their heads down as a result. It went on and on. We went through their tactical training and soldier tips on how to handle the old WWII weapons which you do not find in the manuals. They told me they hated the Hollywood movie ‘Devil’s Brigade with William Holden’ because it made them look like lovers not fighters. They made me promise to make them out to be ‘Fighters’ and we tried as best as TV would allow. This project was very well received on History TV and more importantly by the Forceman and they gave us FSSF unit coins thanking us for making them look like Fighters. In the one month that we trained them at Fort Harrison, the modern soldiers found that the 1942 breed of Special Forces soldiers were tough by any standard. We all got a new appreciation for General Frederick’s genius and a whole new understanding of O’Neil’s skill and talent as a martial artist and unarmed combat pioneer. Watch the TV show you’ll be impressed!

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Living history Real Secret Forces Training... A few years back before I became a TV star I was asked to do some training for well.... we’ll have to call it a ‘secret unit’ (official secrets act and all that stuff) fighting terrorism shortly after 911. You remember the hype and fear following 911. Well I was told these operators we’ll call them ‘xyz…’ (sorry still classified) were super trained killer commandoes’, no joke that was exactly what I was told so I said I’ll be the judge of that. I said to these young operators let’s see if you’re as well trained as your grandfathers were. Well in short order I had them terrified psychologically; training knowledge collapsed they were not prepared at all for what they would have to do and that was ‘kill’. For example they had been taught some ridiculous knife fighting program so they could use this special concealed knife they would carry; I won’t tell you the system it was based on (sorry but they should have gotten their money back) when I taught them what I had been taught and used they were left in ‘toxic shock’. Even with pistols ‘their bread and butter weapon’ they had a hard time making what would be in my mind considered an operational standard of shooting for the role they were going to perform. So I took their now very less prideful instructor cadre and put them through two weeks of intensive training as they called it to upgrade skills but in actuality we were ‘retro-ing’ their knowledge. Training as for war! But they made the mark breaking bad habits and learning to use tactics and skill by creating the mind/body connection and use it rationally void of emotion. Quiet professionals now one and all!

Method in the madness... The method of how I was taught and how I still teach it is much different than what I see today whether its martial arts, police or military training. Training today is definitely more touchy feely (Col Applegate’s big fear) It’s sports or culturally based not really rationally based for addressing violence in all its forms. I rarely hear commands like; ‘Kill the bastard’, ‘Come on give him the tip of your boot while he’s down’, ‘Why are you not ripping off his F__king nuts laddie!’, ‘keep it bloody, simple and savage’, ‘Kill or be killed soldier it’s your choice’. We were not allowed to give up. Our mantra was ‘I will survive, I will never give up’ and just in case you did not get off the ground quick enough you got the tip of the instructor’s boot up your ass. Crude concepts by today’s training standards but mentally it severed a purpose. We also were not allowed to yell encouragement or technique advice to a soldier in free fighting if he got into a mess. Why you ask? Because on the battlefield no one was going to be yelling encouragement to you and it was up to you to survive. We were taught to take care of ourselves kill and then show compassion (if you were of a mind). We were taught such team sport dynamics created ‘blood lust’ and blood lust was an emotional state of mind and we must operate rationally that’s how you win. We actually poked eyes and ripped nuts and slapped throats with enough force in training to make it smart! Again a far cry from the training I see today. We worked attack drills till we threw up and just when we thought it was over the instructor threw in a ‘sickener’ to test our mental and tactical state of mind. We had soldiers charge us with fixed bayonets (real bayonets) and had to disarm them. We became a ‘combat craftsman whether armed or unarmed’ we had assertive confidence. No wonder civilians did not like bar fighting with us.

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Where are we now beyond Training Now; and what have I been doing with all this knowledge? I am pretty sure Harold and the others are rolling over in their graves and when I get upstairs I’ll have to answer to them. Harold was always keen on teaching Judo and Jujitsu and told me about the army skills no one will really want to learn. He told me I’d be a fool to try and teach it to you and often in my experience he has not been too far wrong either in civilian martial art, police or military circles where I have introduced this system. No one really wants the real deal and maybe that’s a good thing but extremely frustrating at the same time. Just so you sort of get the picture, when I started training with Harold in this system it was presented as an off shoot of his YMCA Judo club. You had to basically start with Judo and if you proved yourself keen enough he would invite selected students to join the Goshin Dojo (Goshin - Japanese for self defense) and he would train us in Jujitsu and elements of Defendu. Harold, although he fought against the Japanese Army, was keen on martial arts. He encouraged me to study them and even got me onto the Army Cadet Judo Team. We did not spend a lot of time on Japanese cultural aspects, outside of the bow, especially Bushido because Harold had no respect for the Samurai code after he experienced so many war atrocities committed by Japanese soldiers in the name of Bushido. But never the less his classes were extremely disciplined in the martial art training. Many years later in the 80’s when I returned home from the military I went into police work. Harold and I continued on with the mentorship and I practiced and taught the martial arts and taught ‘Use of Force’ at the B.C. Police Academy. Back then I kept Defendu/Defendo strictly for the military and police training as I was still a Chief Warrant Officer in the Army Reserve. In 1985 I took part in the modernization phase of the Canadian Police ‘Use of Force’ training initiated by S/Sgt Doug Farenhotz one of Canada’s leading Police trainers (Director of Physical Training Royal C anadian Mounted Police & later the Justice Institute) a close personal friend and martial art student of mine.

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beyond

During this phase Doug heard me complaining about the standard of police self defense and officer survival tactics and he challenged me to put my skills and knowledge to work rather than my mouth. During this time I also took on the role as a leader and instructor for our ERT/SWAT Team. In this role I taught the tactics and weapons use and lead the entry team on several operations over the years. Back then we sort of pioneered the whole concept of what it has become today and I wrote the first manual for our Department on the subject. As a result after a year of hard work in 1985 I presented a modernized curriculum for police training with Harold’s help called ‘Modern Defendo’ modifying Canadian Army Defendo to meet police requirements. Harold and I would go through the requirements proposed by Doug’s 2 year study on violence directed at Canadian Police officers. Then my brother Dennis and I would go through the techniques with a student of ours Jim Johnston and beat the crap out of each other to make sure the techniques and tactics worked. Then I took them to the street while on duty to improve them and modify techniques and tactics that failed. I often spoke with Harold about offering the same level of training to the general F in l an d 2 00 5 public but he was not sure they would embrace it and that I might be wasting my time. Harold was still disappointed by the current martial arts communities’ new lack of interest in the grappling aspect of Judo and Jujitsu compared to current martial art fads as he referred to the schools. But he gave me permission to use his old club name Goshin Dojo if I wanted it since I was really the last student still training and interested and because the YMCA had long since closed the Judo room because there was little interest in Judo anymore. I thought about it and asked Harold if I could change the name to De n 2 0 05 e d e w S fendo Dojo because I wanted to reflect the Canadian Army western martial arts concepts aspect more than the Japanese. He agreed and in 1989 just before his death he gave me the Japanese Calligraphy an old student had penned and Defendo Dojo was established from the roots of Harold’s original school. Since then I have branched out from the Defendo Dojo trying to reach as broad a body of people as possible. I have started many organizations teaching the Modern Defendo System. As the line diagram Current Defendo / Modern Defendo Organizations shows was started with my help and knowledge. You will now find this system in some variant taught in Canada, USA, UK, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Hungary, Australia, Mexico and India. As you’ll see I have also re-branded Modern Defendo now as Wolfe’s Combatives… You will find out why...

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beyond Student’s of mine have even broken off association and started their own variant. Some of the more unscrupulous ones are even claiming they created Modern Defendo . And of course there are those who have just jumped on the Defendu/Defendo/Modern Defendo bandwagon making change necessary, Hence Re–Branding to Wolfe’s Combatives. One of my first goals was to try and keep the concept of old school unarmed combat training going wherever; Brit 3 0 ish, Canadian, US, Australian etc army systems that are l 2 0 o o h c s WWII based alive and off the museum shelf. I learned a e l t t c b a B r e v long time ago if this was going to happen I would have to u o c n a V take it out of the military, which really was no longer keen, and sell it to the martial arts community of the world. In this aim I have made training Tapes and written manuals with the simple task of keeping the nature of WWII combatives represented by my systems approach in ‘play’ and from passing into history and being totally forgotten which nearly happened. My efforts are certainly not perfect by any stretch of ‘my military mind’ as I have made some serious blunders in who I have allied myself to but as I told Harold when I thought up the idea ‘nothing ventured nothing gained’. You can visit www.whwolfe.com to see how far it’s all come. What you have read is an exhausting (but by no means exclusive effort) by me to ensure that the history of these men lives on and what they accomplished education wise still has value. I have only offered a sample from my own experience of these men and their skill and knowledge. In other volumes of my manuals I have shown solid examples of this training method and hopefully the flavor of the train B a tt e l s ho c o l n ing they put me through. Others I am sure have a far more i gh t proper historical picture for you then an old RSM telling you Lecture 1999 war stories and teaching you the tactical aspects I’ve learned. I encourage you, especially you martial artist, to study Fairbairn’s/ Sykes/O’Neil and any other WWII unarmed combat instructor you can find who has written or trained people. Even very old men like the veterans I have introduced you to here that are still alive can give you great insight into being a modern warrior or as I call them an ‘Uncommon Warrior’. To those experts on this topic I take full responsibility for my historical mistakes and I know I missed many important figures but these are the men and the training my mentors taught me.

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Bumps in the road Bad apples

&

sour grapes

Well you’ll remember I told you in the beginning we would be traveling down some dark alley’s, so what would a book on History which includes spies and intrigue, be without some modern day backstabbing and other underhanded activities…so bear with me as I tell you now of some sour grapes and bad apples… Spreading Modern Defendo/Wolfe’s Combatives around the world and keeping the Legend Alive has been a challenge, and of course it has not all been smooth sailing. There have been some ups and downs and a few disappointments which has lead to a lot of sour grapes. But through it all my underlining goal has been to keep the knowledge of WWII combatives alive and in play to honor my mentors. Therefore I will not roll over and play dead when former students and associates screw the system, their students or me over. I have been through too much shit and fighting for too long to let a few ankle biters get away with that. As I told you I served and saw how the military and police discarded this knowledge and told me it was redundant. Therefore I knew it was not going to be easy if I were to keep it alive and it would have to be brought to the civilian marketplace, most notably the martial arts community. Of course I did not realize at the time how big the ego’s in this industry had become and the BS that would follow. Laughingly as a result I have come to ask myself where have all the martial warriors gone because it seems in many cases they have been replaced by hollowed out shells looking for the next business fad or the guerrillas masquerading as warriors.

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Bad apples

& sour

grapes

This aspect alone has been a huge learning curve and I have learned most lessons the hard way; I have found the level of current business ethics, marketing strategies, public relations and so forth tiring. (I found conducting hostage rescues easier) Like many I learned that just teaching from your heart is not enough and putting blind trust in people is a ‘fool’s parade’ (I should have listened more to my street-smarts). In order to make this project work in the mainstream I’ve taken risks and I’ve had to adjust our image and business tactics but the substance of the curriculum remains truthful to the core values of Fairbairn’s original education and research and to my mentors. No one really remembered the system when I started and the few who did were for the most part the collectors of military history especially all things Commando/SOE/OSS. These guys can tell you what Fairbairn had for breakfast on June 20th 1943 but not what his training stood for because they had no real exposure to it. Others, as I mentioned ‘the Nut bars’ are living an illusion and offering secret Fairbairn/WWII Combatives societies that I have traditionally distanced myself from. For example in the early stages when my associates and I formed the International Defendo Federation (IDF), to market the modern civilian system, I was guilty of allowing some pretty ridiculous advertising in Black Belt Magazine and other publications. You know the type ‘More Deadly than Deadly’ and my old associates at Defendo.com are still trying to run similar marketing concepts based on fear. You’ve seen the campaigns. Anyway these types of ad based marketing campaigns with these themes 1999 North Vancouver bC have been the downfall of getting WWII Combatives recognized and accepted as a legitimate training vehicle in the mainstream market place. Therefore proper marketing and product placement was another learning curve that only took about 15 years to sink in. For example when I left the IDF it had not met any of its business goals outside of making me ‘Bill Wolfe’ look like the deadliest ‘nut bar’ on the planet (well if I can’t laugh at myself who can). We produced a series of training DVD’s which I wrote, directed and help produce and that became the main focus (remember you saw the ads for them in Black Belt Magazine). The DVD’s still offer an outstanding self defense program and showcases parts of the system but not all of it. Instructor training was another focus but after 911 this important growth aspect slowed. There are many reasons for this but the foremost was that the martial arts were in transition when reality-based training was in vogue; everyone’s reality system was selling and every founder or instructor was either an ex Navy SEAL, SAS or Israeli Commando and then of course t here was me who had actually done some cooking in the army

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Bad apples

& sour

grapes

But soon after 911 the focus in the martial arts switched to UFC and later to MMA. I knew it was becoming laughable and would soon come to an end as real soldiers went off to war. And when the martial arts industry and its students became fixated on the huge money backed MMA market all of us ‘gods of war’ were left out in the cold having to rethink our marketing strategies. Now we also have to try and explain the difference between reality and sports training to the world (yes there is a huge difference). In my opinion this ‘down turn’ has been a good thing and it has been a time to rebuild. Many of the instructors I had qualified up until this time were what I call ‘camp followers’ so as the focus moved to MMA so did they. I went from a large cross section of associated schools in North America to a few. The breakup of the IDF did not help and most members did not realize I was no longer associated with them because the IDF continued to do business as if I was. This IDF break up occurred due to a huge difference in ideology and business goals so I moved on. It took time to address but luckily the alumni who stayed were totally interested in the System and although we are now fewer in numbers we have more depth from a training standpoint. My mantra has become quality not numbers; not good from a business stand point you’re thinking and I am sure you’re right, but I believe better for long term success. At this point I formed Modern Defendo International (MDI) and started over again from the ground up ‘I will survive, I will never give up’ army mentality. Today I have some extremely great people associated with me through our instructor alumnus and student alumni…And one day we will save the world! With MDI I started offering my system of Modern Defendo again, minus the hype, and started planting its seeds by doing seminars and workshops and later instructor certification around the world; Canada, USA, Mexico, Australia, India, Finland, Sweden, Germany, UK and this was done slowly with the exception of the Nordic countries of Finland and Sweden. But as a wise man once said”if it grows too fast there must be a down side” and here is where the sour grapes come in. About five years ago I meet a talented martial artist Jyrki Saario from Finland who invited me to Sweden to do a seminar and present my system to him and his students. I found them to be very good sports based martial artists but they had little effective knowledge of what I call modern reality-based self protection education especially tactically and mentally. In short order he and others embraced my system because it filled in the missing blanks they had found with their current training. Jyrki and I struck up an understanding that he would head up Modern Defendo operations solely in the Nordic countries and we would qualify instructors to teach my system. He was allowed teach only the basic HARD TARGET level (basic striking, movement, and taught him and qualified him on in order to progress. Unfortunately due tained in a car accident, Jyrki could not learn the more dynamic aspects of Combat Tech, especially the ground fighting .

J y rki Sa r rio to basic tactical skills) which I to his bad neck injury, susthe grappling techniques in

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Bad apples

& sour

grapes

I started by teaching the instructor courses to a pool of talented Finnish and Swedish instructors from various systems but most of them came from Krav Maga. Modern Defendo spread fast in Finland due to Jyrki’s connections and reputation in the Finish martial art community because he holds a high instructor’s rank in Krav Maga/Thai Boxing (and just about everything else). Before long we were cross qualifying all his Krav instructors as Modern Defendo instructors. I gave him permission to adopted a modified version of the old IDF Defendo triangle logo and make up some Defendo rank badges, something that we in North America did not normally use but Jyrki felt was important for the Fins especially those who came out of IKMF Krav. I also allowed him more leeway in how he would implement the system in the Nordic Countries because of the strong Krav base where most of the instructor candidates were crossing over from, but when it came to the physical, tactical and mental awareness training aspects of this system Jyrki was my student. He received training and we had long talks on every aspect of the training and I allowed him to film just about every aspect of it for his own edification and he assured me he could maintain the standards I set. Over the next five years I would teach programs in Finland and Sweden spreading the System with Jyrki as the overseer in the Nordic Countries. I even spent three months living and teaching in Gothenburg Sweden out of his Ironman Club to help make it work (this length of stay was not new I have done it in other countries to spread the word). Hence today you will see Modern Defendo being taught in the Nordic countries. A couple of years ago p l a i n x e o Jyrki decided he no longer needed to associate himself with me and decided to ‘dead r y t i s a d i d t e c t io n ” w i t h I h g t head’ off on his own. This action occurred after I jacked him up for dropping training d T h o u o n a l P r o s s o c i a t e s a r standards that had been brought to my attention by the Finnish instructors themselves. “ P e u s u a l ly .. … s m r d a e Once we split there was no shortage of suggestions who should replace poor old Jyrki from t o m c o n d the Finnish instructor pool, none of which I have accepted. Sadly as these things go today he claims to have created the system he offers now as Finnish Defendo / Defendo Alliance and sold his people on this message by insulting me and totally ignoring my five year contribution. I mention this because this is a common effect regarding this business that I have learned as I said the hard way. Any Founder that has started Associations/Federations/Alliances to represent the system has experienced this effect and that’s why there aren’t more schools teaching the real Modern Defendo. The students in Finland and Sweden and the other Nordic countries that attended my training are good people and some are really good instructors’ and I can only hope they will maintain the standards they received from me. They all tell me they hate the politics and the ‘back stabbing’ it creates and just want to train so let’s hope they do not lose that focus as their new Alliance takes hold. Me, what am I going to do about it... Nothing… I’m going to live on the beach in Mexico because it’s too cold in Finland and they made their choice of who to follow.

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I mention this because the ‘Jyrki effect’ as it has become known in Modern Defendo was a huge shock, especially after I spent so much energy building him up as a good guy…anyway it was a learning curve for me and as I discovered , his attitude is very common in this business. One just has to look at how many variations of Krav Maga there are today and this will become true for Defendo / Modern Defendo as well. I even had a meeting last year in Budapest with Eyal, the head of IKMF Krav Maga, about this very subject and we had a few good laughs because I thought I was the only guy experiencing this. But as we say in the Army, “Shit happens!” and just as God made little green apples, one day Jyrki will have the rug pulled out from under his feet by one of his students (and I’ll bet the Finns know which one it will be too!...don’t you just love the politics boys and girls). And this is not just a Finnish trait ladies and Gentleman. I have seen my former Canadian IDF associates conducting Defendo instructor certification training, and Jackson, the lead instructor for those courses, was never qualified to teach instructors in the first place or any place! When you watch the video footage they post on their site, you hear them say, “Bill always says this or does that” while he tells one of my war stories he memorized to a tee from watching me teach. They say imitation is the greatest form of flattery but I’m sure you will agree, not in this case. Even some other former students associated with me in Canada, UK and the USA teaching Defendo make no mention of where they learned it from except to say a few interesting catch lines like, ‘I learned my deadly knowledge from a secret army drill Sergeant (ME, THAT WAS ME, REALLY IT WAS!)’ so our Finnish cousins are not the only ones pulling this off. So what’s the solution you ask? Well first is to tell you about it. The second; Now, I alone conduct all instructor certification in Wolfe’s Combatives. No more ‘pretendo’ unless you get tied up with the Bad Apples! Hopefully they will no longer be using my name or image to help sell it. Nor will they stop teaching or using the name Defendo because they need credibility, so let’s hope they don’t screw it up too bad. That’s why it is important to let you the readers know! Wolfe’s Combatives is where its at! I’ll continue to build instructors and hope they represent the training and the history of the system well; after all, I cannot control people anymore than I can the weather nor do I wish too! Therefore it is only through legitimate and high standards for instructor qualification that this system will continue to grow. And this is something the Canadian Army taught me how to do very well and why my instructor training is so effective. This was the aim I told Harold about and as you recall he was doubtful about me ever achieving it; the concept of making the system more mainstream. Truly Wolfe’s Combatives and I have come a long way and the time I have spent on it since retirement has flown by. The bumps in the road and the sour grapes from ‘the students trying to steal the pebble from the master’s hand’ just makes it more interesting and shows just how effective this system’s curriculum is in the current market place. Otherwise, ladies and gentleman they would have made up their own name to describe what they teach. My training has become very market friendly.

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Don’t you just love a little more intrigue?

WARNING!

Watch out for falling bad apples, people who have never been in the military, served as a police officers or any form of law enforcement agency; Some are simply doormen checking ID’s for a living (nothing wrong with being a doorman but…), some feel they have the knowledge and the right to give police or military education when they have never walked the beat, never strapped on a pair of combat boots to face an enemy in war and never used firearms in real life but think that they have the knowledge to share with professional agencies. They are KIDDING themselves and far worse putting these men and women at risk. Remember old SSgt Joe Glass’s true words ; “How can you explain combat, if you have never been in combat you know you can’t explain it”

Yes I said putting these agencies and their soldiers and police officers and even employees at RISK. Those ‘lessons learned’ you hear about on the 6 O’clock News. ‘Often these bad Apples, we’ll call them, are too proud to take on further education and feel they KNOW IT ALL. So where do they get their police or military knowledge from… do they watch all the latest SWAT movies, or tune into History Television to catch military operations and get their tactical ideas? Now I’m not trying to be a total asshole, but when I watch their training footage it’s completely cocked up, wrong and badly staged. What would Fairbairn think? He released a few propaganda based films in his day, like footage from the OSS training, but if he thought people were watching his footage to gain tactical knowledge he would shake his head and laugh. Read t he w or d Ap ‘ pl ’ aloud There is no way all of Fairbairn’s knowledge was locked in a few books or videos; this was just lik e in t he dia g ra m… t ehs en y ou’ll g et a bet te r accur at e pr onunciathe tip of his knowledge. t ion of ‘ Bad A… ...s.

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We the instructors (and I include myself) who have been operators cannot fit our life’s work into a few publications, a few training DVD’s or even the courses we offer. True knowledge comes from YOU taking on a leadership n o s s n a s H r e d n role in your life and getting out there to learn. Learn with c i e A l p m o c c o & a i r a a i S k r y J m o r f t h i g g r n i n i a r t integrity and then apply that knowledge operationally, and f s o t c e p s l a l g a n i m l i F tactically in your own daily life. If you are a teacher, teach it h... 2 0 0 9 g u o h from the tactical first hand point of view. For example, please do 2 0 05 t not go out there and video tape everything you are learning from us and turn it into your own idea… that’s called pirating or just plan BS. Remember if Integrity, honor and loyalty to the people you’re teaching mean anything at all you would not go down that path. But my experience 9 0 0 2 is that many do. l i r p

A d n a l n i F

and a e w formed cr ” ce an i l l ds arose... w “A com b a t g o fore t he ne e e b ad ip m r f l t t se L as d o f r ne w bree ye t ano t he

It is ok in my mindset when civilian instructors go into these agencies and teach them CIVILIAN skills like martial art based skills (assuming they’re any good at it) but it is NOT ok for them to imply their own thoughts on tactical knowledge, that’s crossing the line and often their ego grows into believing they are police/ military instructors. This is completely unacceptable You wouldn’t want a person who attended a first aid course and watched an ER surgery on TV to go in and be your city's ambulance attendant’s instructors… same concept different field. …

In the past I have demonstrated arrest and control tactics with my own students which they filmed (yes I allowed that) but now I hear they’re offering their knowledge to police units based on that limited time with me. This is NOT appropriate. Sure I’d love to believe giving them a few hours of demonstrations on police tactics would give them a true understanding of the tactical needs of police operations. But it does not. Sadly I boosted some egos and now they’re coming off as the expert from a police officers point of view. If their approach was, say more humble and they say, I can show you some skills I learnt from a police officer that might work better. I have no problem with that approach and the police members can judge the value of the training for themselves. This comes into the area of ‘gifted amateur’ as I already mentioned. The list unfortunately does go on... example of former Hungarian students who now offer firearms training in Hungary as part of a Defendo course that was reportedly police or VIP operative based… who have never taken firearms course themselves.. It was suppose to be police tactical shooting but the concepts I saw being used was sport target shooting and paper targets do not shoot back ... I wonder if they know that…

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How far will these guys take it? I guess as far as people will let them? Why police or military allow them in to teach is beyond me. The Police agencies can save their budget bucks and get the same knowledge these men have by playing TOTAL RECON too… As I said I am not alone in this, many System founders, have created ‘hybrid experts’ unfortunately most of these other founders seem afraid to call them on it; why? So if you’re into browsing self-absorption! You’ll love these guys by their websites which will be full of fierce warrior poses and cool staged action videos of them beating the crap out of everybody. They will have really cool names for their training courses too ( I wish I could think up stuff that cool …)

you’ve got to love the internet...

Seriously!

I train military and police instructors separately on a contract basis from the professional organizations themselves. So if someone in Wolfe’s Combatives tells you he is a military or police instructor they better be able to prove service and having attended that course with me and that would have been about the hardest 5 weeks of their life! And I’ll tell you right now I have never taught a police or military course to civilians. I have only demonstrated some aspects of these curriculums sparingly.

More on the Word

Defendo is a Latin word meaning (I protect) and it is in common usage around the world. Flick on some Spanish News, you’ll hear the word often. But in the context of self protection training in the civilian market, there are only two true sources; one is Mr. Bill Underwood and the other is me, Bill Wolfe. Mr. Underwood has been deceased for some time, so his daughter I am afraid is left to defend his name and title; me I’m still above ground. Also ‘Defendo’ in this context refers to a Canadian System - especially my Canadian Army; so others who lay claim to creating it are simply lying YES I can say Lying. They got it from us Canadians and I’m pretty sure even Mr. Underwood would agree to that! So anyone using the name Defendo/Modern Defendo was taught by us Canadians or they are just using what's become a brand name now because it has grown to mean something as a reality-based system, especially through my efforts around the world in t he last 15 plus years!

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How will you know these ‘Bad Apples?” well most Everyone of them will mention Fairbairn/WWII combatics and then magically jump forward some 60 plus years leaving a huge void in their linage, magically taking up the knowledge and name Defendo not Defendu (the name Fairbairn used). They will also mention programs with names like Hard Target, Combat Tech, S.T.A.R and so forth…these programs are the civilian versions I created with John Parker some 15 years ago from the Canadian Army B.R.I.C.K. ‘s (Battle-Reactions-for Instantaneous-Control-or Killing) which I also created more than 30 years ago. Call me silly or am I the only person thinking this way?

l o o h c s d l Good thing John Parker is more humble than I. . . y o l l a t o T A smarty pants would wonder why names of the pro-

e g d e l w o n k f s o t l o v grams are in English and the ‘Bad Apples’ first language in t e r c e S many cases is not, so why would they use them? Embarrassing you say? There are tons of photos, videos, email correspondence….of and from all these ‘Big Bad Apples’ over the years I shared education with them. I taught them the skills and the programs and now they claim to have invented it all … the term they’re using ‘Primus Motor’ ("Prime Mover," that is, God, the unmoved mover who created the universe’… ..ouch.. now that’s not a dig at me... that one falls a little higher)

The ‘Alliance’ has forbidden students and instructors to have any contact with me WOW! NOW THAT IS DICTATORSHIP! It is not the concept of this system at all and most definitely not giving the students that ‘assertive confidence’ I preach.

Now as most betrayals and attacks on personal character… Can be gabbed about for years not to mention hold you captive. All it does is give these bastards credit in their own twisted way. These Bad Apples’ will be shot off the fence and new ones will move in to replace them. History lessons learn from them.

Ok take a deep breath...

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Relax and breath again Moving on There are tons of hard working Wolfe’s Combatives instructors doing the right thing, running schools and offering their knowledge and skill to students. I do not have an Association or even a Federation, I don’t believe in them anymore, just an education company and an J oh n P a ke r alumnus. These men and women are active learners and r & G r eg C a m p e b l l seek to increase their resume and continue to pursue more knowledge from me. I direct them to other experts in other areas for additional education because no one person has all the answers. This is why we have moved to offer a higher degree of training to fill a serious void of knowledge; mentally, tactically and physically. This training is on par with military and police standards and a level Colonel Fairbairn would be proud of! In time these hard workers will become the leaders because they will have earned the right, just like I had to do, and just like the men whose footsteps we train in did! BC Canada

Leadin g by ex am ple. Cont inuously ho nin g t heir ow n sk ills

For years I have fostered the acquisition of self reliance, initiative and general fearlessness in instructor graduates of Wolfe’s Combatives, these represent a cross section of society, from many different countries.

Why is there such varied interest in Wolfe’s Combatives? Why do so many different types of men and women study it as a hobby? Is there some hidden desire for security from aggression by force? I am inclined to think so. Once they have this sense of security they’re better prepared to enjoy living in any country around the world. This takes courage and teaching how to obtain it is rewarding. As our history clearly shows in time of war, like now, the professional soldier has to be weaned from his everyday life and in a short time must attain an aggressive maturity along military lines. He must be able to consider himself invincible in some form or another. He needs confidence in personal combat regardless of size and we are still offering that to a growing number of organizations.

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Moving on Many combative styles have an implacable idea that their system is invincible. We’ve learned the system is the vehicle for change in the students and it’s not the system that makes them invincible; for example when students are left on their own, apart from the school, they may know how to follow self protection theory in a class setting, but not know how to defend themselves in a street environment. They are frequently confused and puzzled by their own training, unable to cope with the conflicts of the environment thrown at them. Here I can build up an advantage, by my training that will help the development of individualism and self leadership to deal with real conflicts occurring in the environment outside the school. A study of Wolfe’s Combatives does aid in this attribute, not inadvertently but by course design. It’s called confidence and if they seem invincible as a result of their assertive presence in the face of danger, it’s because we offer a mechanism that works. Wolfe’s Combatives is not a new word; it is a new improved science of modern combat based on over 90 years of success as an education. This fact will be appreciated the more it is studied. Some boxing, kickboxing, karate, Jui Jitsu, MMA and many other methods are being taught around the world. That is fine, the more the better. All knowledge is not new but much of the quality of their teaching becomes obsolete. It is high time that all these miscellaneous bits of teaching were objectively evaluated and the few effective methods incorporated into one master program for teaching all out hand-to-hand fighting methods. Colonel Fairbairn understood this and accomplished it. I’ve been polishing that training wheel and validating it and finding the best methods to teach it. This advanced knowledge of Wolfe’s Combatives can add more to the training curricula now being used. It should be incorporated or substituted since it includes the best methods of the fighting arts. As taught in Wolfe’s Combatives instructor and vocational guidance programs some of the purposes of Wolfe’s Combatives are to assist the individual to maintain his rights of self-preservation, to develop his physique and general health and to enable him regardless of situation to do the right actions as he sees fit.

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o d n e f e n D r e d o g M n i n r a e c i e l l o n p a h g f A

Moving on At presentations to the Military and Police Forces of Canadian, USA, Britain, Germany France, Hungary, India and Mexico in just the last r o t c u r t s n c i e i l o P M t g S few years, several methods of Wolfe’s Combatives applicable to war and police work were shown. The enthusiasm of their members for such training was high. Desire has been evidenced among military and n a m police units alike for such instruction as shown in this volume’s pictures of the e g n i D l o c n o s n h t & B i o l J many sessions where I have presented it. We are now moving into the next D l r. / L phase certifying instructors for some of these selected units. .

In our usual classes of Wolfe’s Combatives, after students membership has been accepted, they are started on a series of fitness exercises based on my PT Program. We want to develop a comfort zone and a level of fitness first. When they feel they are ready they move into regular classes. Then come the endless interlocking sequences of strikes, grips, bone twisting and dislocation locks they must learn whilst standing or on the ground as per our programs curriculums’. As they start to master the mental and tactical components they accomplish something!

a ls ou t lin ing v i t

As a result the student learns how to fight even if they have an inferiority complex; they gradually develop assertive confidence in themselves which assures that they need not kneel down to anyone’s domination. They can feel freedom. They can project this feeling into all their endeavors. The psychological effect is remarkable, even with the un- Ladies specific self defence certainty that permeates future conflicts and problems. They are elated with the knowledge that they can be equal to the task. The psychological effect of possessing a working knowledge of Wolfe’s Combatives is bound to give soldiers, police officers and civilians alike a sense of security that will help to foster an incentive, fearlessness and assertive self confidence. Qualities I feel everyone wants to posses.

programs

a 2 0 0 0 d a n a , C C B

Wolfe’s Combatives will help to develop the self-confidence so necessary for persistence, determination and the ambition to use every faculty and resource of the human mind and body to push to the ultimate limits. Imagine never walking in fear again? What would that be worth to you, especially if you could give it as a gift to your children!

B ud ap est Hu ng a r y

2 00 8

In this Volume I have introduced you to a living history and in the volumes to follow, I shall attempt to explain some of the methods outlined above as I teach these concepts and techniques to our alumnus. So slow and steady we will grow as more students come to understand our history and the modern applications of training our mentors have left to us, to develop and expand. Hopefully the instructors I qualify will eclipse even my vision.

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... The end The beginning

It all started with my grandfather. ‘A road less traveled’ Like I said in the beginning of this book it all started with my grandfather’s stories of Shanghai, a book he gave me and a wooden sword. Who would have figured I would still be on this road after so many years. But if you come to my school to learn and train you’ll find an old bald retired Regimental Sergeant Major/Policeman and martial artist teaching his system without much hype. So if you come I hope you love to train because I do. I’m still a little old school that way.

The young boy sitting on his grandfather’s lap is now an old man trying very hard not to obtain the round Buda belly that seems to symbolize the fullness of expertise in the martial arts. I still return to the market-place to share whatever knowledge and skill I have to offer. My teaching still has true purpose, and the experience of true knowledge which I try to offer to anyone who will listen. I am still as enthusiastic as that young boy lessoning intently because that small boy and the old warrior are not opposites but aspects of an entire life-time of training and serving. As I have stressed throughout this book and in my other volumes, my Wolfe’s Combatives represents a particular state of mind and skills, which is attained through physical training. It then becomes a part of our daily life; I’ve made it a living history representing my friends and my heroes but even more; a System influencing the way in which we see the world and ourselves; permeating our life’s path, how we see ourselves, build our courage, define our dedication and our integrity. This leads to an attitude of simplicity and compassion as we face the challenges in life.

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The beginning As I wrote the final chapter of this book I was firmly entrenched teaching young Mexican Police and Soldiers who will go into ‘Harm’s Way’ fighting Drug Lords whose level of violence is unprecedented. When I look in their eyes they want answers, they want to have courage but there is no easy way to train them for this violence, no magic just the training. This is where the assertive confidence comes in and I am still passing on the skills and knowledge of the men I have mentioned in this book partnered with my 40 plus years of operational experience. This is not a walking daydream where men pretend too clouded by illusion. It’s about reality, mentoring ‘operators’ and giving them the basics, and once again this system emerges as a viable non compromising force of training; a living history fighting evil! This, I believe, is the legacy of the Fairbairn’s, the O’Neil’s, the Crawford’s, the Starin’s and many others gave to us. So are you as well trained as your great grandfather? Most likely not! But having read this book you may be tempted to explore this living history for yourself. You may wish to find out more about the real ultimate warriors ‘the veterans’ who gave us this in-depth knowledge and skill. But this means you will have to get off your ass to explore all the parts the history and the training, especially the skills; and this means physically, mentally, tactically and even spiritually. Once you do start you’ll not go back to being the same person who started the training. Spend some time reflecting on this history and you're hooked, because once it gets under your skin you will start down a road less traveled. I hope you enjoy your journey; I have mine and hopefully you too will have the same visions, the same revelation of assertive confidence, and some adventure in your life because I believe more people die from boredom than bullets! So let’s hope we get to meet on the mats and we’ll have some fun as I’ll share a little of this living history with you.

Till the Day!

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Next up Volume II

Hard Target Overview Hard Target is the start of your physical introduction to self-defence and self confidence. It’s the program where you get all sweaty learning new skills and yes in a school setting lots of bag drills to get you combat ready! Not only will you get fit but you will gain tactical knowledge, you will learn to use your intuition once again and thrive to move up to Combat Tech. This next Volume is full of Hard Target Intel… with tons of pics of my sexy manly body walking you through skill sets we teach everyone from little 8 yr. old girls to, ready to go again combat veterans... It’s honing the basics, no giving up and pushing yourself past what you think your capable of.

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Vol. II Hard Target

Vol. III Combat Technician

Vol. IV

Special Tactics and Response

Vol. V Tactical Awareness Vol. VI Tactical Communication Vol. VII Uncommon Warrior Philosophy

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We’ve got a lot more training ideas and concepts than you can shack a stick at www.whwolfe.com Check it today!

10 set DVD series

C.O.R.E. DVD

70 Copyright 2010 - 2012© William Hill Wolfe

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