After contemplation, scratching is a real legit move

[Tez3]

What the hell is a "racing spoon", Tez??

Racing Spoon - ARRSEpedia

 

[Gerry Seymour]

Racing Spoon - ARRSEpedia

You military Brits are weird.

 

[Tez3]

You military Brits are weird.

A spoon is indispensable (you can eat anything with it), it has to have a deepish bowl, a long handle and be indestructible. It must also be easy to pack away in a pocket or pack. It's called 'racing' because you have to shovel the food down as fast as you can on exercise/in action. My other half can still eat chicken curry, oat biscuits, tinned cheese, custard and fruit pudding all together from one dish in a matter of minutes. They used to be wood which didn't 'clink' off the mess tin and didn't burn your mouth. Long discussions can be held when on stag ( guard duty) as to which the best one is, a solid silver one nicked from the officer's mess and wrapped around the handle with black and nasty ( duct tape) is considered good. It has to be a good size to get the food in your mouth quickly, plate is balanced on bottom lip and food shoved in. You can sharpen the end of the handle and have a weapon ( or knife/fork) as well, quite often it has a bit of string attached.

 

[Buka]

I think I've mentioned it before, but I've taken an (accidental) hard poke to the eyes three times so far in my sparring.

One time I stopped, stepped back, and asked for a minute to make sure I was okay and let my eye stop watering. In a real fight I would have kept fighting, but my opponent would have had opportunities to land some extra strikes while my vision was impaired. (Side note - for the next 6 months I saw random flashing circles of light in that eye at nighttime. Kind of worrisome, but they eventually went away.)

One time I immediately dropped to the ground in excruciating pain. Given the painkilling effects of the extra adrenaline in a real fight, I might have kept going in an actual self-defense situation, but it almost certainly would have been a fight-winning move regardless.

One time the eye immediately watered up and closed while the other eye mostly closed in sympathy - however I had already gotten a hand on my sparring partner and was able to use feel to take him down and armbar him without the use of my eyes.

Bottom line - my experience suggests that attacking the eyes can be very effective, but is not a guaranteed win even if you do land a clean attack.

I'm not of the "rip his eyeballs out" school. (More power to those that are) all I want from an intentional strike to the eye is to get the reaction of turning the head for a brief second. Obviously, I'm not talking about sparring or competition. As for sparring, can't possibly remember how many times I've caught something in an eye. But that's over many years. The ones you worry about are the ones that still bother you the next morning. But, fortunately, each time, the worry was for naught.

Always made my students have clipped finger nails and toe nails. Periodically checked them, too. I think that is very important.

Caught a few in competition over the years, it happens. Just clinched and hung on. And hoped it stopped watering before catching one upside the head. I've found that when something hit my eye and I had a lot of watering, I was always susceptible to strikes that came up from below from an angle, like a shovel hook or a hybrid roundhouse/front kick kind of thing, while my vision was still a little wet. One time I got poked (completely unintentional) by a Kung Fu guy. Right afterwards I got hit with one of those dragon whip spin kick things (for lack of a better term on my part), fortunately, I had my guard married to my cheek and weathered it okay.

 

[Tony Dismukes]

Caught a few in competition over the years, it happens. Just clinched and hung on.

Yeah, if I can get hold of my opponent, being blinded isn't going to stop me. If I'm at striking range and can't close or get away, then I'm in trouble.

 

[oftheherd1]

A spoon is indispensable (you can eat anything with it), it has to have a deepish bowl, a long handle and be indestructible. It must also be easy to pack away in a pocket or pack. It's called 'racing' because you have to shovel the food down as fast as you can on exercise/in action. My other half can still eat chicken curry, oat biscuits, tinned cheese, custard and fruit pudding all together from one dish in a matter of minutes. They used to be wood which didn't 'clink' off the mess tin and didn't burn your mouth. Long discussions can be held when on stag ( guard duty) as to which the best one is, a solid silver one nicked from the officer's mess and wrapped around the handle with black and nasty ( duct tape) is considered good. It has to be a good size to get the food in your mouth quickly, plate is balanced on bottom lip and food shoved in. You can sharpen the end of the handle and have a weapon ( or knife/fork) as well, quite often it has a bit of string attached.

I followed your link and some related links in utter amazement. Who knew? I could relate to a couple of things though. If I could only have one silver ware item, I would want a spoon like your describe; at least like we used to have when I first joined the US Army. Amazing tool and you could use it to eat with too. When I was on Okinawa, our houseboys used to use them to make rings from half dollars (more silver then) by holding them on edge and striking the top of the edge with the bottom of the spoon as they rotated the coin. They would then sand the inside. As to eating mixed food in a hurry, my first three years were in the airborne. Seemed like we almost never had time to stop and eat. And if we did, we would likely have to start moving in the middle of eating. Since we only had cans, it was difficult to mix items. Cans were opened with P38 openers.

As to smocks, in the US, that would normally be something like an apron, but could be smocked women's dresses as well. We would have called that 'coat' a field jacket, which also had removal inner liners as well. Usually liners, trousers and such used buttons rather than zippers or snaps. Smart solders carried a sewing kit in the field.

Anyway, thanks for the link and the education that came with it.

 

[drop bear]

Yeah, if I can get hold of my opponent, being blinded isn't going to stop me. If I'm at striking range and can't close or get away, then I'm in trouble.

Yeah well loosing a fight to someone who is trying to blind you is the last thing you want to do.

 

[Buka]

Yes, but if you're a fighter, and someone is trying to blind you, it's really going to piss you off. That's not good....for them.