OK. Done.
"Colonel Rex Applegate, who trained thousands of GI's in WWII and whose work was based on Fairbairn and Sikes, commented to me about the current crop of so-called knife fighting instruction, "What these people are teaching is dueling." "
OK. The obvious problem here is that a person teaching knife-work is complaining that people teaching knife work are not teaching something useful while excluding himself.
The *reality* is that *much* of the knife-work taught is poor at best. Though there is some truth to the "any reaction is better than no reaction" mentality, training given at most martial schools is poor at best.
Even hitting many of the more known brands (FMA), there is indeed a tendancy to focus on "dueling". But it is interesting how everyone who writes such articles ignores the fact that they are teaching knife work from a cirriculum learned by the people who taught them. It's a common thing to take "many people are wrong" and turn it into "only I am right".
That's my strategy for *every* confrontation. Every single one I'm trying to avoid (or, if I'm working in LE capacity, avoid escilating). Any situation where my life is in danger, my life is in danger. From a civillian standpoint, I tend to think of them as life-or-death regardless of weapon or lack thereof, and respond accordingly. Obviously, the occasions I'm working LE the rules are a little different, but since I do mounted work, it's not something I oft have to deal with from that perspective (never go without ground support).
Considering how many people view unarmed as a boxing match, I'm not surprised they view blade work as a duel.
