Paul B. Dague

Transcription

Fairbairn-Sykes fighting knife. F-S knife. Field service knife. Length - possibly six inches and six inches. Some blades were nine inches. The secret of this knife is not because of the cutting edge, but because of the point. This one's a bit blunt. Normally it's a needle point and you don't need any weight or thrust when you're going to use it. If I'm going into somebody and I'm going to use this, I don't have to push it forwards. Just grab him and pull him onto the knife. You got it? Now then, you don't hold the knife this way. Wrong. It's held between the thumb and the forefinger so that the palm of the hand can go round it. And if you're going towards a person, you don't just walk towards it, you change hands very slowly so that he doesn't know which hand you're going to have the knife in. Right? But mostly, if you're going to do a job on a sentry, you don't do what they say - lift his chin up and cut his throat like that. Yes, lift his chin up, but put the knife in by the jugular vein, which is both sides of the throat, push it through, punch it forward. You rip out the lot. Bit of a messy job, but that's it. There is a way of stopping a knife and I'll tell you this. When I was at Achnacarry, a bloke in my section disputed the fact that it could or couldn't be done. And I said it could. And he said: "No, you can't. If a bloke's coming at you with a knife and he's like that," he said "you'd have to be very, very quick to do it." I said: "Look, with training and practice it's possible." Well it came to such a point that evening talking about it that somebody said (with the sheath on) prove it. So this bloke took the knife and I stood there. And he came at me like this, the way they said not to do it. And as his arm went up I knew he was going to come down, so I blocked it with my elbow (you never grab it). Blocked it with the elbow, right? The other hand comes round the back there and then you take a pace forward...whooph...down. And I broke his arm. I said: "See, it does work!" But the upshot was in the morning we had to go and see Charlie Vaughan who was the commandant of the Commmando Training School. And Charlie said to this bloke who's got his arm in a sling (he'd been seen by the medics) he said to him: "You don't think our methods of training work." And this bloke went: "Well...yes sir...well..but...er...um." And Charlie looked at me and he said: "You think our methods of training are good." And I said: "Yes sir. I've just proved it." He turned round to this bloke with the broken arm and said: "You can pack your kit and get off the camp. You're RTU'd." [returned to unit] He's got no faith in the training, leave it out. But that is a Mark 3 knife, right? And these channels are not for what people say - to let the blood run through - it's just a gripping effort. Used right, used well, it's a good weapon for close-quarter combat.