Hank Reinhardt's Book of Knives: A Practical and Illustrated Guide to Knife Fighting (5 page)

4

KNIFE CONCEALMENT

Concealing a knife and yet having it readily accessible is virtually an art form. It also requires a skill closely approaching that of a good stage conjurer. You must be able to move deftly and swiftly, and your audience needs to be just the tiniest bit distracted—at exactly the proper moment. I’ve known people who were simply incredible at getting a hidden knife out where it could be useful. With a bit of boastful modesty, let me say I wasn’t too bad myself.

Back in my wild and rambunctious days, I carried a knife in my back pocket.

Not only a confident and aggressive posture but a reassuringly normal one.

I would make a couple of stitches in my pants so the knife would stand upright next to my wallet. This allowed me to hook my thumbs in my back pocket in a casual manner. I could walk around or merely hang about. In any sort of confrontation, this is not only a confident and aggressive posture, but a reassuringly normal one. But it also kept the knife well within reach if it were needed.

This is so natural a stance that most people don’t realize that your hands are hidden.

We had a saying about that: “When some clown hides his hands, hit ’em. You know he ain’t gonna surprise you with a lollipop.” Remember that. It was true then and it’s true now.

The front pants pocket is also a good place to carry a knife, but it also requires the pants to be stitched. Done properly, the knife will ride flat against the leg and slightly below the top of the pocket. This way, you can carry change and keys and the knife, and they won’t interfere with each other. The knife can be gotten pretty quickly by reaching in and gripping the blade with finger and thumb and popping it open.

There are all sorts of ways to hide a knife and I don’t claim to know them all. At one time, I thought I did and then an incident occurred that convinced me I was still a babe in the woods.

About 1963, I was running a bar located in one of the rougher ghetto sections of Atlanta. I’d gotten to know the regulars and was having a pretty good time. I wasn’t making any money but it was damn sure exciting.

One Saturday afternoon a very loud argument broke out between two of the regulars. It was getting serious, which was unusual since most of my trouble was caused by strangers. Regular customers don’t want trouble in a bar because this causes the Man to show up and everyone had problems then. (I wholeheartedly agreed with this.)

I wandered down to that end of the bar and then really started to worry. The guy who was hot was a fellow named Zack, about forty-five and normally very quiet. Zack leaned on the bar, but Shorty, the other fellow, kept on yapping at him. I remember it very clearly. I was worried about a cutting and was watching to see if I could forestall trouble.

Zack turned and raised his hands high in the air, with the fingers of each hand spread. He wore a short sleeve shirt and the sleeves fell back to reveal bare, brown, and muscular arms.

“Shorty, you leave me the goddamn hell alone. Get that!” With each word he would jerk his arms to give them emphasis. When he finished his statement he turned back to the bar, folded his arms, and opened his knife.

I laid my hands on his arms and told him to cool it or he’d have the Man down all over me. I ran Shorty off and got everything calmed down.

And then I started to wonder, and I’ve wondered ever since. Where in the hell did that knife come from?

Standing where I was, I would have bet $100 that Zack had not gone for a knife, and I would have continued taking bets right up until I saw him open that knife. Standing where Shorty was, I would have bet $1,000 that Zack had no knife or any other kind of weapon. His arms were bare, ruling out an arm sheath. His hands never went close to his sides: they merely came down on the bar. He did not have the knife palmed: I could see the back of his hands and Shorty could see the front. But the knife opened up like magic.

My best guess so far is that he wore it under his collar. He could slip it out as his arms came down to the bar. But I really don’t know. Wherever it was, I’ve never seen anything else quite so slick in all my born days.

I really wanted to ask him where he carried that knife, but just couldn’t do that. Every social level has its own rules of etiquette. I was well liked and I wasn’t about to sacrifice that goodwill by committing the gaucherie of inquiring about his knife. But I really wish I knew.

The main point to consider in concealing a knife is that it must be readily available. You can’t really hide one from a thorough search, but that’s not the purpose. The purpose is to keep it from being obvious that you’re armed. Whether you do this from desire to catch someone off guard or to keep other folk from being disturbed by the realization you are armed is immaterial.

Above all, however, it must be available, and you must be practiced enough to get to it quickly.

Telling about where people conceal knives is not to suggest that you do the same. But it will make you aware of the places that are available, and it will also alert you to what some other guy might be doing.

Arm and shoulder sheaths are pretty good, but they generally require a coat or long-sleeved shirt. The exception is a sheath high on the upper arm that can be worn with short sleeves. It’s secured by flat elastic and the knife is worn on the inside of the arm. It works pretty well.

Hats are also a good place to carry a knife. I had a buddy who used to wear an old slouch hat all the time. He carried his knife inside it, and if trouble seemed to be brewing, he would simply get nervous and take off his hat.

The smaller the knife, the easier it is to conceal. That’s obvious. But don’t assume a large knife can’t be concealed. I used to wear a full-sized fighting knife with a nine-inch blade in a sheath I had made of very stiff leather. I could conceal it merely by wearing it upside down on my side. A coat hid it perfectly, and yet the knife was available almost instantly. The blade lay flat against the body and all that was necessary was to pop the snap and the blade was in the hand.

It’s just human nature to jump at any good idea when you’re trying to invent something like a place to conceal a knife. But always think your idea through to make sure it’s practical. People have carried knives or guns concealed in a rolled-up newspaper or raincoat, for example, and I’ve always wondered about that. Sure, it conceals the knife, but who wants to walk around with something like that all the time? And what happens when you visit a bar? Are you going to maintain a death grip on your rolled-up newspaper all the time you’re there? Why not just carry a sign saying that you’ve got a weapon concealed. Some people may be stupid, but there are a lot of them who aren’t. Since you can handle the stupid people more easily than the smart ones, generally, for the sake of safety, always assume the one you’ll run into is smart.

Let me end this with one more example before moving on to the more esoteric and erudite subjects. Several years ago, I had occasion to visit a large hospital in Atlanta to discuss with one of their doctors a lawsuit my company was involved in. I was waiting around outside the Outpatient Room where an old woman, as drunk as a skunk, was wandering around, talking to herself and picking up cigarette butts off the floor. Two young girls, both well dressed and attractive, started trying to take care of her. Evidently they did not know her but felt embarrassed by her behavior.

One finally got her to sit down and then patted her on the shoulder. She drew back, then patted her again.

“Honey, what’s that?” she said, pointing to a barely noticeable lump under her sweater.

The woman glanced at her with a rather pitying expression on her face and moved with a speed no one would expect from a drunken old woman, whipping out a butcher knife with an eight-inch blade.

“Just my knife, child.”

In my mind’s eye, I pictured some young punk snatching
her
purse. Bet she could ruin his whole day.

5

WOUNDS

This section deals more with larger fighting knives than with the small folder or dagger. Larger knives deal more severe wounds, thus the fight is apt to be terminated more quickly. Nevertheless, I feel the information you’re about to read is important and should be included in any book dealing with edged-weapon combat systems.

The controversy over point versus edge has raged for years. It was very much a major issue in the British military regarding the shape and use of the cavalry saber. The last issue saber [1912] was a pure thrusting weapon, so it might appear they had decided the thrust was superior to the cut, but that isn’t quite true. At the time that saber was issued, there were many predicting all manner of dire consequences for a cavalry sword that relied on the use of the thrust only. And there were dire consequences, but they arose from the meeting of the cavalry with machine-gun fire. Those were dire consequences all right, but even a slashing sword wouldn’t have helped and there was no point to further experiments with the design of the saber.

There was another fact that played an important role in the argument, however. The British always used steel scabbards for their swords. The slashing swords rarely had a sharp edge. Consequently, the damage inflicted was never as severe as it could have been. Steel scabbards are just not conducive to helping a sword maintain any sort of edge.

The British, however, encountered sharp slashing weapons on occasion and the damage was awesome. This was particularly true in India, where the results were far more lopped-off arms and legs than the British were prepared for.

Granted, there is a big difference between a cavalry saber and a three- or four-inch knife, but the lesson here is that all edges work better when they are sharp.

Medically speaking, a puncture wound is always considered more dangerous than a cut or open wound. The reason is that in a puncture, the damage cannot be examined easily, while with a cut or open wound the damage is easily visible. But a doctor isn’t interested in inflicting damage. He wants to cure it. There’s a big difference.

There’s an old adage attributed to the Romans, who relied mainly on the thrust: “Two inches of steel in the right place will kill any man.” It’s pretty much true, but it does have a built-in fallacy: “. . . in the right place.” Stabs in the throat, eye, heart, solar plexus, and a few other such places are frequently fatal and very quickly so. But the human body is large and these spots are small. What happens when you miss?

Many years ago, I was at a local bar with a close friend. I was paying the tab and my friend went on outside. I heard a lot of yelling and cursing and ran out to see what was happening. My friend was getting up off the ground and he still had a knife sticking in his stomach. Two brothers with whom he had been feuding had jumped him and stabbed him three times in the stomach. I got him to the hospital, and the doctors sewed him up. When the cops came, we told them we didn’t know who the guys were and then left. Don had six stitches, two in each wound. The cops kept the knife, one of the Italian stilettos, but we didn’t want it anyway. It seems the blade was dull and when it entered, it had merely pushed aside the entrails and whatever other organs it encountered. All my friend had was three small punctures of the skin and muscle. No big deal.

During the reign of Henri IV of France, a well-recorded duel occurred between the Sire La Garde and Sire Bazanez. As was the custom, the two principals met accompanied by their seconds. After the usual formalities, the four went at it, the principals engaging one another and the seconds doing the same. La Garde seems to have been the superior swordsman, as he soon landed a thrust on the forehead of Bazanez. The blade failed to penetrate the skull and the fight continued. La Garde then landed a thrust through the body and shortly thereafter, another. There was a momentary break and, when the action resumed, again La Garde sent the point of his sword through Bazanez’s body.

At this point, Bazanez threw away his own sword and drew his dagger. “Look to it as you are a dead man!” he shouted and, dodging yet another thrust, leapt on his enemy. He stabbed him fourteen times in the neck and body. La Garde, while dying, managed to bite off half of Bazanez’s chin.

Meanwhile, the seconds were finishing off their play. Mirabel, the brother of La Garde, landed a thrust through the body of Fermontez, the cousin of Bazanez. Fermontez managed to close with Mirabel, but was held and stabbed again, and so died. Mirabel offered to continue the fight with Bazanez, who declined on the grounds that he really needed to see a doctor, and rides away.

It would seem that not once did a stab land in the right place.

What all of this boils down to is that I feel the edge is superior in its ability to simply stop a fight and I think historical records lend credence to the idea. Consider the fact that most spears, at least those intended to be held in the hands, rather than thrown, have provisions to keep an opponent from running up the blade and shaft. A thrust in the body may kill your opponent, but that doesn’t help you if he lives long enough to see you dead.

The thrust or stab is risky because it can kill and yet not stop. In most street encounters, killing is not desired, but stopping is. The cut will stop but not kill.

Now, having said the edge is better than the point, let me bring up a very important consideration. Trying to predict how a man will react when injured is impossible. Some will fall down screaming from a very minor wound, while others will keep on coming despite the most awful and awesome of injuries. There is simply no way to tell beforehand how a specific person will behave.

Any encounter involving a knife is serious. It’s no game. A game has a set of rules and a goal, which remain invariable. But an encounter with a knife, indeed any life-and-death combat situation, will be governed by the circumstances and the goals of the participants.

Consider, for example, the commando raid where the killing of a sentry and doing it quietly are the prime goals. Compare this with a street encounter with a young tough out to impress himself and cut you up. What do you do?
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Finally, in the hopes of nailing the point home, consider the well-known Colonel Jim Bowie. During the fight at the Vidalia Sand Bar, he received two gunshots wounds and a thrust through the chest with a sword cane. He still killed his man.

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Editor’s note:
page 23 of original manuscript missing here.