A Fight Story

The following is an excerpt from a story I’m working on, but it’s essentially a sitrep about an actual incident.

No, I didn’t wind up in lockup, there were too many police witnesses to how the whole thing went down and I was working for a few of them. The only real difference was that my father was the cook, not my brother, and my dinner guest was a detective sergeant; but he was definitely my boss.

The story picks up in a restaurant, just before we got our orders.

So we chatted about the manning, every time we get to the required level, corporate wants us to do more. The roll call and how it could be improved, Ed promised to lobby HR about the unnecessary fluff; and training issues. We had just started to touch on personnel issues, when the food came out, steaming. But Peggy brought the order out.

“What happened to the kid?” Peggy put down the two chicken fried steaks, with an offhand shrug she said, “She left out the back door, her brother came to pick her up, their little sister is sick” Peggy started back to the waitress’ station, “She said she probably wouldn’t be back in today” I put my napkin on the table and started towards the door at a jog trot, I could hear Ed behind me, “Do you know the family? Is it serious?” I half turned, replying, “She’s an only child” I finished my explanation as I turned to leave, “and her boyfriend used to beat her, badly” I stepped out the door.

Just as I thought; they were just leaving the side street and the imbecile hadn’t even waited to get completely out of sight of the restaurant as he half dragged her down the street, accompanied by three other goons. “Hey you” I shouted; they turned to look, she was half on her knees, trying to wave me off, “is that the best that you ball-less cunts can do? Brutalize a five foot, one hundred pound waitress?” They stopped, staring and began making the usual comments. God, was originality so totally dead as that?

Let’s see, Bruno was the biggest, but all of them were bigger than me, good, no one could say it wasn’t a fair fight. “Why don’t you come on over and see what you can do against someone who can fight back” my feet shifted position slightly, bracing myself and “gripping” the ground.

Hands slightly away from the body, palms in, hands open. No one who saw me, unless they were well trained, could tell I was ready for an attack.

They were still standing there, talking, laughing, and trying to work up the nerve to attack. I needed to get this going, or David was going to give me grief for letting the food get cold, “The uniform bothers you? Don’t worry about it, no one here but a man and four worthless pieces of shit” I unbuttoned the shirt and it slid to the ground; the equipment belt soon followed, good, they were focused on me. I waved them on over, assuming a “peek a boo” defense posture, if Pretty Boy Floyd can make it work, so can I. Besides, it’ll keep them guessing. Bruno tossed Angela to the ground and told her, “Stay put, bitch, this won’t take long” O.K., one more thing to make him pay for.

All four moved in, then I heard a hiss/click as the door behind me opened and closed, nothing to worry me back there, his cronies were all with him,. I ignored the noise, focusing on the targets in front of me.

They moved into a loose wedge with Bruno in the lead, stupid, why didn’t they just send me a written notice that Bruno was going to lead the attack. Their loose easy strut/attempted glide/swagger/walk was a clear signal that they had done this previously; probably successfully.

Too bad they moved like constipated orangutans.

Bruno dropped his head to his chest as he attempted a long, looping roundhouse punch. Much to his chagrin I stepped inside the swing, guiding his right outward with my left, catching hold of his arm just before the bicep. Pulling forward with my left, I continued his swing past me and pulling him into my right cross, a hesitation, a slight move back and my right arm came forward with an elbow smash into his left cheek, smashing the zygomatic arch. That caused his eye to pop out slightly, a macabre sight.

All this action took place in slightly less than two seconds but it covered his face in blood. The next few seconds involved Bruno’s head becoming one with the concrete of the sidewalk as my right arm suddenly reversed direction, making contact with his neck and throwing him over my right hip, the action pitching him forward onto his face. This left me in a left lead, preparatory position facing the nogoodnik who had been on his right.

He looked at Bruno, his face slowly contorting with rage, “Look what you did to my brother, you motherfucker!” While speaking he pulled a balisong knife from his right pocket, waving it in an exaggerated figure eight. That can be an effective move, but generally speaking it isn’t. Lord, save us from people who watch too much T.V., just don’t make it too soon.

He started with a couple of feints, pretty lame ones at that, I maneuvered backwards, keeping him between myself and the other two.

My posture shifted, slightly crouching, hands out to the sides without moving past the shoulders, palms toward each other, time to setup for defanging the serpent. I taunted him, voice low, splitting his attention between what I was muttering and what my hands were doing. Sooner or later he was going to take the bait.

Tag the back of his hand, move back before he could reverse direction, another insult, keeping my weight low and centered to insure my mobility.

Right hand, then left, keeping the patter coming, never letting up on the tagging action or the insults. Bruno started to moan, then tried to move, whoops, can’t have that.

A low level snap side kick and he was out again. The brother screamed something and made his move.

Bad for him, good for me as I pivoted outside the thrust; immobilized his right hand with my right and delivered a palm smash to his elbow with my left. Ever wonder how to break an arm in less than a second? He didn’t scream, much to his credit, but he did offer a few choice observations on my presumed parentage while he held his arm. Two down and … huh?? Looking down the street I saw the other two high tailing it away from the fight … and right into the arms of the security team that someone had dispatched. There were shouted orders, insults, then a small pop followed by an unearthly scream, ouch, someone just got tazed.

I picked up my shirt before walking over to Angela, “You O.K. hon’?” I crouched down beside her, pushing her hair back, checking the damage, didn’t see anything serious, both pupils good, “Might have a shiner there, we need to get you back to the restaurant, have Uncle David take a look at it” I helped her up as she stood; started to sob. “Uncle David, hell” Ed’s voice came from behind as I wrapped my shirt around her, “that little lady is going to the damned hospital, a medical team is already enroute.”

I handed Angela off to Ed, picking up my equipment belt from the ground, where I had thrown it, “How much did you see?” Ed grinned, “Enough, you’re an evil bastard, you know that?”

“Yeah, I’ve heard it once or twice, in my life.”

We went back into the restaurant; Ed got some traffic on his radio and stopped to answer as David took Angela from him. He sat her in a chair near the entrance and put an ice pack on her eye.

Angela looked at me through her good eye, “Why?”

I plopped my over aged backside into a chair, taking the cup of coffee that Peggy pressed into my hand, sipping it as Peggy said, “It’s all in the genes hon’, the whole family’s crazy like that” she sauntered back into the kitchen, “Never back down from a fight, never leave a wounded bird unprotected.”

The last thing I need to add here, is that Peggy is real, she was one of those waitresses who could have been the inspiration for “Flo” in that television series about Mel’s Diner. Except that far from being a whipcord thin little cowgirl, Peggy looked like a Valkyrie incarnate and knew no fear of any man I ever saw her around.

Other than his wife, Peggy was the only person I ever saw Big John back down from (he was a beat cop in Cleveland) and it didn’t look as if he was joking. There were plenty of other times I’d seen that seven foot plus Polack (his own description, so don’t get touchy) joking around but that wasn’t one of them.

The only real difference between Flo and Peggy is that Peggy had a bigger heart, and had little or no patience with bullies. One day, as I dealt with an irate customer (being twelve years old did not exempt me from having to do that when I was managing the restaurant) I suddenly became aware that he was no longer focused on me, but on someone behind me. It was Peggy, holding a tray full of dirty dishes with absolutely no effort, and tapping her foot very deliberately. I’m not so sure I wanted to know what she had in mind if he tried getting out of his chair, or tried grabbing me. I do know that it wasn’t because she thought I couldn’t defend myself as she had already seen me knock out a customer earlier that week (think about the mechanical advantage I had and the how becomes very clear).

So, the parts of the story where she is “seen” are a kind of homage to Peggy. I don’t have any idea where she is, or if she’s even still alive; (I’m constantly losing track of my friends, almost as bad as me and my glasses) I just think something should be said that memorializes one of the truly wondrous women I’ve met in my life.

One last thing, there’s a scene that takes place between David (David being my actual brother) and Peggy, after the fight; which is played out just as it had happened in real life.

You’ll have to find the book if/when it gets printed to read it but it is one hundred percent true to the two people involved and not changed one iota from the actual incident.

There isn't one of us that doesn't want to be someplace else. But this is what we do, who we are. Live for nothing, or die for something. Your call.

John Rambo

Knives

Alright, if you’re reading this and you’ve known me for over a week, then you know that this is going to be a rant, how long? I don’t know, I’ve only just begun typing, but I have an entire eight hour shift, uninterrupted, to type and somewhere around forty six years of experience to draw on for comments.

This is your last warning, ;)

I’ve heard this same tired, stale, pointless argument for decades now, and it doesn’t sound any better when you change the noun. “This _______ is far superior to that ________, because (fill in whatever vapid nonsense enters your head at this point).
It’s a pointless argument, which can never be won because it is an opinion based argument which generally has no basis in probative fact.

The case in point, and the current burr under my collar (wolves don’t wear saddles, and if you don’t understand the referent, then don’t bother asking for explanation) is the subject of knives.
I have heard every argument in the world as to why one knife is better than the other and why some people just “absolutely will not use any knife other than BRANDO Knives, model whaddafark.”

Wanna know something real? An attitude like that is going to get you killed.

An attitude like that is also a leading cause for people being a lot more cold, wet, hungry, thirsty and, generally speaking, miserable than they need to be.

Care to know why?

Because (and I’ve yet to see it work out any other way), there always seems to arise some circumstance; some situation where you become separated from the object of your affection, and generally at a time when you need it the most!

Can’t/Won’t/Will Never happen to me, you say?

Keep chanting that mantra, it’s about as effective as “om mane padme hum.”

In my case, my Randall and I became separated because I secured the sheath for a jump, in a hurry and consequently got to see that knife “hurry” on its way as soon as my chute opened. For whatever reason, I almost worshiped that knife.
Had to rely on a cheesy looking GI issue pocket knife and my Buck model 110 for the duration of that particular exercise. I didn’t complain though, just worked out some really inventive ways to help those knives accomplish what I’d gotten used to using the Randall for.

How useful a knife is in a given situation depends on several things:

a. type of steel
b. type of tempering
c. blade shape
d. type of grind at the final edge
e. the construction of the handle attachment (full tang, spike tang, bolted on, etc.)
f. the overall construction of the knife

Now, those items are a good start, but you also need to consider:

a. the use you intend for the knife
b. the environmental conditions where you are likely to be using the knife
c. what requirements you may personally have for that knife, in order to utilize it to its maximum efficiency

This is where you get the real kick in the pants,

NO ONE KNIFE IS GOOD FOR ALL TASKS UNDER ALL CONDITIONS

Knives built for use in the jungle, are less than perfect for use in the Arctic, knives made for use at extreme marine depths will give you problems in the desert, so on and ad nauseum. The knife that you thought was a real kitten while skinning a moose is probably going to be a pain in the arse if you try to carve a bow drill with it.

More problematic yet is the fact that there are people out there who believe that ANY Paleolithic knife will be perfect for all tasks; hooooooo boy, let me tell you, are THEY in for an education!

Personally, I generally carry about three knives and they seem to be up to what I require of them when I need them. Which three knives they are, of the thirty some which I still own is the question.

What I usually try to do, is to insure that the mix of knives I carry with me is correct.

Usually it will be one large general utility knife, one small to medium sized utility knife (even a paring knife, well built, will suffice, as long as you have a sheath for it), and some type of folding knife. On a recent hike (for my children, it was a hike) I carried my Tah-chee bowie, a vintage neck knife around eighty years old, or so (I can attest to it being on its third handle) and a Leatherman “Kick.”
The Tah-Chee bowie didn’t get much use, but the other two got a workout. Other times the large knife’ll get the work while the other two just kind of hang around. Such as the time we had some feral dogs try a bluff charge. They weren’t quite ready for someone who wasn’t bluffing.

I try to keep the mix interesting so among the large knives (the brand name knives, not the flea market specials I sometimes indulge in) I have an Ontario Knives SP5-95 Bowie, a Cold Steel Bushman, a TOPS Tracker knife and the Crazy Crow Tah-Chee reproduction. I generally have at least one of these somewhere close to hand no matter where I am.

The midsized knives are a Mora (from the Tracker School), an Uluu, an Old Hickory butcher knife and a Buck Nighthawk.

The neck knives are an antique, of indeterminate origin, a Blackie Collins “Necklance” and a Gerber jump knife.

My folding knives run the full gamut from some Pakistani made items (which were picked up at a flea market and STILL haven’t died) to a high end, handmade, miracle work from Al Mar. The knife is an incredible piece of work, well balanced, lightweight and holds an edge as sharp as all get out. It was a gift from an admirer who had more money than sense and wouldn’t listen to my, to his mind, unsophisticated preferences.

However, even though I can’t think of another knife I’d rather have in my pocket while traipsing about the city, you’ll never see that particular knife on my person whilst I travel the wilds. Because although it is a splendid knife, it isn’t suitable for that sort of work.

One knife which I’ve seen come under fire, repeatedly of late, is the Tracker knife.

Some folks have issue with it because they have issue with TBJ, guess what, I don’t care who designed it; that has nothing to do with its functionality.
So far, I’ve abused that poor knife to the point where other knives I’ve had, from Schrade, Gerber, Buck and others, have failed.

The manner in which they failed was that they came apart.

I can be a real demanding bastard when I decide to take a knife to its limits.
I have dug with it, chopped with it (including some things that had my wife scratching her head and going, “Wha??”) pried with it and found a few other things to do that knives were NEVER intended to do.

So far, the Tracker knife has held up just fine, just scuffed up the epoxy coating they use, but then, I manage to do that with every knife like that. I generally strip the epoxy off and blue the blade anyway.
I have tried the wire cutter and found that with a wire under tension it works just fine, otherwise, you’d be better off with a Chinese AKM bayonet. Can it break? Of course it can, the idea is to try to keep from being too stupid with it. That includes realizing that, with the fulcrum being that far forward, any load put on the other end is liable to snap off anything near the tip that is less than ideally attached.
I’ve also carved a Thanksgiving turkey with it, boned a chicken (wouldn’t care to repeat the experiment, but it is doable) and cut vegetables. Works just fine so far.
I could probably use it to skin a deer also, but all I’ve had access to for almost the last decade, are road killed deer, and attempts to skin them (around here) earn strange looks and a quick call to the sheriff’s department (nice young men, just asked that I stop what I was doing because it was freaking out the PETA nuts, their word choice, not mine).

The only change I’ve made so far is to recut the blade angle, I found a crock stick (pocket sized) from Lansky that has multiple surfaces and does a bang up job on the knife, including the quarter round on the draw knife portion of the blade. Keeps a decent edge and you can easily hone it up with a broken beer bottle.
Sheath retention is pretty good, you just have to remember to push it far enough into the sheath that you feel a “click.” I haven’t tried fastening it to my day pack (a WWII vintage RTO’s ruck sack) but I have strapped it to my pack basket and that’s worked out pretty well so far. I’ve put the sheathed knife on both sides of my belt and across my back (as it was used in “the Hunted”) and the draw from all three locations is smooth. Quick and quiet enough that the local talent would rather steer clear of me than take their chances.
But back to the original premise, that no one knife is good for all jobs, in all types of terrain. Are there times and places where I wouldn’t take the Tracker? Probably, but I haven’t found those yet, maybe a triple canopy jungle but I think it might do well there also.
What a lot of people seem to forget when dealing with the Tracker is that it isn’t a specialist knife. It isn’t a “super knife” and it isn’t a “do all” knife. It’s a general purpose utility knife that is designed to accomplish as many tasks as possible, with as few moving/movable parts as is possible.

I do have to admit that, for that purpose, it has my vote.

I’ve tried other knives which have attempted the same type of concept, the Buckmaster (exotic steel, hell to work with if you ding the blade up too badly), the aforementioned Chinese AKM bayonet, a “Woodsman’s Pal” type of knife and probably about ten or so others.

I found the Buckmaster to be a nice enough blade, if you aren’t too far from civilization or some other support. The saw worked pretty well, the grapple actually had a good bite if you made certain that the hooks and eye were pretty well seated (used it in a storm, to secure the canoe off shore, a complicated mess) and I was able to chop down (standing dead wood) a six to seven inch diameter tree with it and still slice tomatoes cleanly afterward. The serrated blade, being located near the tip was a bit of a problem when you wanted to cut a rope (anything over ¾ inch took forever to cut) and the blade didn’t have enough mass for efficient chopping. Oh, and it didn’t exit the sheath cleanly enough (belt attachments need dropped about an inch from factory spec and you need to use the leg tie) for a quick draw in a fight.

The AKM bayonet was a lot more limited in its applications, although I’d had some friends who actually raved about how great it is, they’re entitled to their opinions, I just don’t happen to agree. I do have to admit though, that for a five dollar knife (Smoky Mountain Knife Works, quite some years ago) I’ve seen a lot worse. Overall performed pretty well, nothing particularly notable other than, if you need it quick, in a fight, you better have it already out and in your hand.

The “Woodsman’s Pal” which I’d had the experience of was, admittedly, a knock off, but it was a well done knock off by a friend who is a decent blade smith. The brush hook worked well and I had no arguments about how well the straight blade handled things, both sides of the knife could speak with authority if the situation demanded it. The sheath he made for it was great, if feral dogs were to try their luck with you, they’d be in a world of serious hurt. Problems though, were that you couldn’t do any sort of small carving with it, without a lot more trouble than it was worth. You were better off grabbing a broken beer bottle (state parks are wonderful) and knapping the edge to make a bow drill, or even a hand drill. One other thing, don’t EVEN think of using it to cook with.

So far, among these four, my preference is still the Tracker knife.

I’ve yet to try a comparison with a Kukri, but that’ll be coming as soon as I can afford the cash outlay to get one, and I also plan on obtaining one of the newer model bayonets and finding out how well those work. I’m not holding my breath on those, however, as I have very clear memories of finding out that my drill instructors were all too correct when they said that the only thing most bayonets were good for were for use as tent stakes.

I do plan on giving them a fair chance so, let’s wait and see what happens.

Beginning Woodslore

Well, let’s see here, what to write of next?

Hmmmm, now I did say that this would also touch on my education as an outdoorsman from time to time, didn’t I? So I guess that’s where we’re going to wander off to next then.

I don’t make any claims as to having anything special in my outdoors education other than Boy Scout leaders who were all veterans, Marines mostly, and the occasional “nut.” Who the nuts were, and who the Marines were, was a subject of intense debate, at times, and depended ENTIRELY on who you approached; as well as when.

Mom never seemed to worry too much about me being outdoors and running around the woods, but then again, most other kids didn’t have a two hundred pound behemoth (named Saber) for a friend and ally. After a while, she didn’t even worry too much if I wandered off completely on my own. Although she wasn’t all that thrilled about me being gone for entire weekends, or weeks, if it was a school break, I always made it home, in one piece and without a police escort.

The “without a police escort” was the especially important part. A lot of the kids I grew up with seemed to get to know the local cops, on a first name basis, early in their lives. I only knew one or two cops like that; only because they were neighbors. Other cops I met much later in my young life when I volunteered at “Safety Town.”

It wasn’t that I was particularly angelic, I just had sense enough; then later, training enough to keep myself out of the limelight.

So, to get back to the point, I was pretty much my own boss, as long as my dogs were taken care of properly and I made arrangements to get my other chores done.

When I first took to the woods I was probably seven. I wandered into the edge of the forest across the street from the back of our property. It was only a woodlot really, right there, but to me it looked like something out of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ “Tarzan” novels.
Pausing briefly I looked back at my mother, she had wanted to see how I was going to react to having a “forest” that close.
“What are you waiting for?” she asked.
“I don’t know, how far can I go?”
“How far do you want to go?”
“When do I have to be back?”
“Before dark …”
Without waiting for the rest of her answer I went crashing off into the underbrush, trying to “merge silently as a ghost” with the undergrowth only to discover a blackberry patch.
Cursing as only the son of a gunnery sergeant can (and I could hear my mother laughing as she walked back to the house) I managed to untangle myself from the briars without disemboweling myself. I also picked a few of the berries, eating them carefully at first
(at the time, I had no idea if they were even edible, I was just lucky that they weren’t belladonna); making a mental note to myself that I would need to learn how to store them if I ever got around to making a semi-permanent camp.

Now, there are a couple of points I’d like to make first.

In those days, there weren’t a lot of “nature” or “survival” books available to the general public. It wasn’t that they didn’t exist (I later came to regard Kephart as some sort of camping saint, finding out his life story put a stop to that, but not the respect I had for the man) but simply that a lot of it was considered common sense, if you lived in the country. I had spent the first six years of my life in the city of Cleveland; the most greenery I had seen prior to moving out to Aurora was down at the corner of our street, an empty, abandoned lot that was severely overgrown.

My only information about animals had come from our own dogs, two Pekingese, a Chow Chow and a German shepherd, in addition to what I learned from my books, the Cleveland Zoo and the Cleveland Aquarium.

The Natural History museum was alright but I have always preferred my animals to have a pulse, even if it means that I might get a harsh lesson in animal communications.

So there I was, a city boy about to start an education which would consume very nearly the whole of the rest of my life.

Looking back I believe that there were two reasons that Mom didn’t worry about me a whole lot, although I don’t believe she ever had to give it much thought.

The first is, although I might be consumed by the desire to learn something, I have never been so consumed as to put myself at unnecessary risk. Some teachers; some of my former friends and associates might find that statement amusing but even with the most hare brained stunts I might pull, there was a certain amount of calculation to them. Not as much as the people around me would have asked for, but I’m still here and (kind of, mostly) in one piece.

The second reason; not one that you’ll see in most children today, is that I’ve always been willing to listen (well, as much as I listen to anyone) to stories that my elders might want to tell me. I have learned a LOT by the simple act of stopping and listening to people.
A habit which has been known to grate on the nerves of my (most beloved) wife.

So, as I ramble, let’s get back to the story of my first lesson as an outdoorsman.

This one was a quick lesson about two things, knowing what you’re putting into your mouth and patience.

So I went into the woods and spent the better part of three hours in there. I followed a deer trail, some rabbit trails and learned what their bedding areas looked like with the help of a couple of hunting books I had.
I also learned that it’s pointless to run around, trying to follow a squirrel. I then learned that feral kittens have no distinguishing markings (OUCH!!!!!!) which magically tell you not to pick them up, that’s what their claws are for.

Glancing up at the sun while playing gave me plenty of indication that I needed to start heading home, and real soon. I only had about forty minutes of daylight left (the sun was three fingers off the tops of the trees.

Even though I didn’t want for the fun to end, neither did I want to be banned from a place I had only just gained access to. I started home.

After crossing the street back to my home (under the watchful eye of Officer George, who kept a close eye on the four, and then later five, of us brothers) I noticed that there was a tree with green and red apples.

Now, let me be the first to tell, many of you, what I learned in the course of the next ten minutes. Officer George stood watching me, in disbelief, from his living room while I did this. He later told my mother that he would have stopped me, if he hadn’t been under the impression that I knew what I was doing.

Well, I thought I knew.

Since I had twenty minutes of light left and only a five minute walk ahead of me; since I was feeling a might bit hungry and wanted to experience the “full rapture and joy in supplying food for oneself” …. I decided to eat a few of the apples.

More precisely, CRAB apples

Now, one didn’t generally give me a problem; even two or three, I usually got away with. But I didn’t stop there.

I probably ate all the apples off one branch.

Alright, that’s enough with the laughing, already.

I didn’t have far to go, not more than about a quarter acre from the tree to the edge of the barn (this was years before it burnt down) for about half the distance I was O.K., but as I came around the barn I knew I was having problems. My stomach had gone from a mild rumble, to something that sounded like a rabid bear was growling in my stomach while moving around restlessly. Sitting down outside the barn’s side door I was praying for death, or at least that if I was going to have “issues” that it would be while I was outside, so that I could preserve at least the APPEARANCE of dignity.

Without warning an arm slipped under mine, assisting me in getting up, “Too many of those apples’ll ruin your day for sure, son,” a familiar voice said. I looked up, it was Officer George, he helped me into the house and straight to the bathroom.
He and Mom were talking but I wasn’t listening …. I closed the door behind me, then it opened a bit and a shot glass full of some foul smelling oil came through, “Just drink all this, and stay in there for a bit.”
“How long should I stay in here?”
“Just drink that, you’ll know when you can come out.”
Well, his advice was sound, I drank the castor oil and after a few minutes, well, it wasn’t pretty but the pain in my stomach subsided and I felt a lot better.

Note to self, LAY OFF THE WEIRD LITTLE APPLES.

Second note to self, OBTAIN BOOK ON WILD EDIBLES

Third note to self, MAKE CERTAIN YOU KNOW WHAT YOU’RE EATING

To quote the Bard, “ ‘nuff said.”



It's not about anger - it's about peace
It's not about power - it's about grace
It's not about knowing your enemy - it's about knowing yourself.

the Monk

Enemies, Part II

What happened next was a few years more down the road, but it reinforced the concept of enemy. It also made clear to me how much more I’d grown since then.
One thing I’d like to make clear to everyone reading this, however, is that it never happened. Our government has committed no illegal actions, nor has it encouraged anyone else to commit those actions on their behalf.
So there was this group of young men, of questionable morals, who one day decided to take their outing to the next level. The decision was made to give their handler something to consider before he double crossed them again.
Yes, I did say “double cross.”
They upped the ante by taking their mission from “black” to “red.” In today’s vernacular I believe it would be said that they “went hot.” Plain English would read that they had gone from being a covert action, with as low a profile as possible, to an active and armed threat to the local government and military. There wasn’t much thought involved, just anger.
So for approximately one month we raised havoc among the locals, everything from intercepting their radio transmissions and retransmitting them with orders that we found amusing (e.g. hunt down and assassinate a local warlord who was a problem for the locals; who also had a force and firepower superior to the local militia) or taking matters into our own hands about the party officials who were harassing and/or intimidating the local natives. There were even occasions when we would start a cross border incident by firing on a border patrol of a much larger nation.
Day raids, night raids, impersonation of party officials with forged documents; the list went on. If we could think of it and it was going to cause problems, or even just give us a good laugh (it seems they had never seen the “burning bag of manure” gag before) we would do it without a second thought.
We had a very high opinion of our skills, at that point in time, because it appeared that no one could touch us, or even get close.
Consequently we got sloppy.
In our sloppiness, we stayed in one location for something over a week, instead of moving nightly as we had been. An action which almost cost us our lives.
Save for what my enemy did.
Sounds weird, eh?
Perhaps, but you need to understand the psychology of a classically trained Asian warrior.
Much of the training is based on “The Art of War” by Sun-tzu; many facets of it are based on Taoist thought. For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, one of Newton’s laws of motion. At the time, it was considered quite an advanced principal. To a Taoist, had one been inclined to be rude, the response would have been “DUH!”
To make what happened next a bit clearer, for every force or creature in Nature, there is a precise opposite, a balancing force. Even among humankind.
And it is taught that if you would truly know yourself, know your enemy.
So there we were, snug in our firebase and encampment, monitoring both our own radio network (which was generally silent, as none of our people were supposed to be in country) and that of our avowed enemies.
When the radio came to life, it was a bit of an awakening to all of us.
A transmission from someone asking to speak to the “Ghost Walker,” but they were speaking Vietnamese, I believe the phrase they used sounded something like “sân khấu.”
What caught our attention though was the fact that the identifier they used wasn’t one we had heard before and a quick check of the captured paperwork we had (the Vietnamese equivalent of a CEOI) didn’t show anything that even came close to what had been heard. Our translator wasn’t around, but I sent one of the men after him. We needed to know what was going on, especially since it was in our AO.
At first we thought it was some sort of test or mistake, but then the request came across a second time, in slightly accented English, and note, I do mean English, not American.
“Is the American known as ‘Ghost Walker’ receiving this transmission?”
At this point our translator, a bit winded after his run up the hillside, looked at me and pointed, “He means you Dai Wei.”
I picked up the mike and answered, “Affirmative.”
He then requested a meeting between the two of us, with the appropriate security measures, of course. I asked what assurance I would have that it wasn’t a trap, there was a brief pause before he informed me of the location we were at and how long we had been there. My team didn’t need any directions, we had been compromised. They immediately started securing equipment and preparing to move. After a moment’s thought, I agreed to the meeting. I did tell him that I wanted to know who it was I was to be meeting with, there was only a slight pause before he told me that he was Colonel Nguyễn Tranh. My translator started chuckling, I motioned for him to be quiet as the Colonel then asked whom he would be meeting with, I identified myself as “Jan DeVries.” A slight pause before the Colonel answered, “I see we will be starting on an even footing …” During the next few moments we discussed when and where we should meet. There was a small ‘ville about twenty kilometers to the south of us, we were to meet there at sunset, the following day.
I looked at the translator and asked what the joke was, it seems that our erstwhile Colonel had identified himself as a Vietnamese “John Smith” while I had used the Dutch version.
That night we made our move, maintaining radio silence and even refraining from monitoring the local military. We didn’t encounter any patrols and made the trip in good time.
Early the next morning we were busy. Establishing an observation post, setting up to intercept any radio traffic we could and putting snipers into secure locations. I left nothing to chance, even establishing the route of withdrawal if I should be captured in addition to making enormously clear to all that I was to be left behind if anything should happen. I’d either find my own way out or I wouldn’t.
About fifteen minutes prior to the meet we heard a helicopter coming in, it was an old Huey that had been either abandoned in place, or captured. We had no way to tell. The old bird circled the meeting place, a small restaurant kind of place on the outskirts of town, before setting down in a cleared area to the west of the building. Two soldiers exited, dashing to the road and establishing a checkpoint before the Colonel stepped down. As he looked around, I stepped from the bush. When he saw me, I raised my shotgun, cleared it and set it to the ground. He nodded, we both retained our sidearm’s as we had agreed.
I don’t know what he had thought he would see when he arranged the meeting, but I don’t believe that either of us met the other’s preconceptions. He was a dapper, neat, well spoken man conversant in at least two languages. I was a five foot tall, one hundred forty seven pound kid who looked like he should be an accountant.
As we first sat, he ordered a local wine for us, he looked at me a long time before the conversation started.
“Should I mention that you are nothing of what I expected, young man?”
“Is that a good thing, or a bad thing?”
“Actually, it is a splendid thing, I hadn’t realized that your country still produced people of courtesy and education”
“Thank you, and I would like to add that you are nothing of what I was told that I should expect, were I to come in contact with someone of your rank and authority”
H e smiled, thanked me, and asked if I played chess. I asked if he meant the Chinese, Vietnamese or English version of the game. He asked which I preferred, I told him that the only version I was familiar with was the English version. He sent his aide to the Huey to retrieve the set.
While we were setting up, he dismissed his aide. The aide objected and the Colonel told him in no uncertain terms that he was to leave or be shot.
Early evening became late evening and the darkness became deeper. We lit the obligatory gas lantern; played chess and spoke into the night. Toward the end of the evening the Colonel had his aide secure the chess set and leaned toward me conspiratorially.
“You are nothing of what I would have expected, and I must toast you for not falling prey to the excesses of which your country is famous”
Taking a sip of wine, I asked him, “What precisely led you to ask for this meeting?”
“I had a need, a great need, to meet the man whom had become such a terror to the military and civil authorities in my district.”
I know my face reflected my confusion as I asked, “Meet me? Not capture me? Why?”
Laughing quietly, and sitting back in his chair he said, “Your escapades have been very good for my career. First a promotion, then more money for essential items such as arms and ammunition, “ he pointed at me, “and finally, the joy of seeing that such a young man, a young warrior, could wreak such havoc that three different countries have put a considerable bounty on his head.”
I thought for a moment, “Three countries? I can pretty well guess who the first two are, but who’s the third?”
The Colonel leaned on the table and took another hit from his cigarette, “When you first went outside your ‘hunting license’ your people weren’t too worried, but you have been so very successful that not only have they put a bounty on you, they are releasing the information on how to find you.”
“Destroy all your radio equipment my young friend, all of it, and capture some new”
With that we bid each other good night and went back out to the LZ where the Huey’s pilot was beginning his pre-flight checks. As the engine began to spin the blades, he turned to me and asked if I had taken “the usual precautions.” I swept my hair back and my men immediately stepped forward from cover, before fading back into the darkness, silent. I asked if he was insulted, “Not at all, I would have been disappointed if you hadn’t.” He then raised his hat in salute, and his men stepped out, equally silent. “Both of us are men of war, but we both, are men of honor.”
We bowed to each other then returned to our men.
As I gained the cover of the tree line, I heard his voice one last time.

“A pity, Mr. Chin, that we could not be friends, but good fortune to you nonetheless.”

A true warrior can dine with his enemy without fear, for both know that they might learn from looking within the mirror. Something that my uncles had tried to teach me, but I think I finally understand.



It's not about anger - it's about peace
It's not about power - it's about grace
It's not about knowing your enemy - it's about knowing yourself.

the Monk