The Bank Job

I am reminded of the concept of bringing a knife to a gunfight.

007 Folding Knife

Some years ago, a fellow told me of his misadventures. He had been a street creep and low-level criminal several years earlier. One day, under the influence of alcohol and who-knows-what-else, the man had the brilliant idea of robbing a bank. He was armed with a “OO7" knife, a cheap street knife with large wooden handle slabs. Satisfied that he was equipped for this adventure, he went to the bank.

Rather than go to a teller, the man went to the back to one of the women behind desks. He showed his knife.

“Bring me a bag full of money, and none of those exploding dye packs. I’ll be sitting right here waiting for you.”

The woman nodded and left her desk. While she was supposedly getting the money, the man fell asleep in a drunken stupor.

The next thing he knew, there were cops all over.

The police booked  him and took him to the House of Detention (I forget if it was Brooklyn, Queens or the Manhattan “Tombs”.) Word of his failed bank job preceded him. As he was led through the facility, a corrections officer pointed at him and shouted, “There’s our financial wizard!”

A few years in a prison in upstate New York cured him of criminal ambitions. It also freed him of his penchant for booze.

Classic Combat Knives: The Mk III Trench Knife

Author holding M3 Trench Knife in modified Applegate grip

The close-quarter trench fighting of World War I brought the combat knife back into prominence among a soldier’s weapons.  The immediate answer were trench knives equipped with heavy knuckle guards. These combined the striking power of brass knuckles with the stabbing force of a dagger. Some had triangular thrusting blades. Others were equipped with a double-edged dagger blade. They were good for the close quarters of a trench brawl, but little else.

Between the wars, both the Army and Marine Corps sought a reliable combat knife. The most immediate response was the bayonet, whic h coud lalso serve as a knife. The bayonet of World War II was a cut-down M1907 bayonet. It was made of good steel and was a manageable size. However, both services needed a knife for those not equipped with an M1 rifle.

The Army came up with the M3 trench knife. It had a single blade wit ha thick spine and false edge. The handle was made of tightly-compressed leather washers. It had a small crossguard to prevent the hand from running up onto the blade when thrusting. The M3 blade was later used on rifle bayonets from the M1 to M7 models. (The M1 rifle, M1 carbine, M14 rifle and M16).

M3 Trench Knife

The M3 was mostly a thrusting weapon. It could punch through heavy clothing. It was not a very good camp knife. The M3 Trench Knives were sharpened.

The M3 blade in bayonets was replaced by a Bowie-type blade in the 1990s. It is more practical as a camp knife. Remaining M7s were sold to allies using the M16 or put on the civilian market for collectors. A few knife manufacturers still sell M3s and the M7 Bayonets, mostly for collectors.

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The M3 style blade fit the style of knife fighting devised by Col. Rex Applegate for the O.S.S.  Applegate claimed that his staff examined many styles of knife fighting. You can see the influence of W.E. Fairbairn in his work. As late as 1992, Applegate’s method was still taught to the US Army.  Even the grip is right out of Applegate’s work.

Apprlegate grip, from 1971 Army manual Combatives FM 21-150

Applegate Stance, from Army FM 21-150 (1971)

Applegate stance, from 19992 Army Combatives manual

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My experience with this style blade is mostly via the M7 bayonet. These blades were not sharpened. In fact ,we were forbidden to sharpen them. I remember one occasion where we were probing in wet sand. A couple of times, we had to remove a “land mine.” (This was training.) The edges of the blades curled ever so much. The steel was too soft. That is a problem with the M7 and other military knives made in massive numbers.. They are tempered in batches. Quality of the tempering varies, so that one may encounter examples that are too soft or too brittle. Keep in mind that these knives / bayonets are also made by a variety of manufacturers. Quality control and methods may vary from one plant to another.

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M3 Trench Knife, M7 Bayonet, Modern version of M3

Pictured here: M3 Trench knife, M7 Bayonet, modern knife based on the M3. The leather-ring handle offers a secure grip. All three have pommels that keep the hand from slipping off. *

*You cannot count on ideal conditions when working with a knife. Wet hands, thick gloves and other things can make adversely affect your grip. That is why I like a pommel that keeps my hand from slipping off the end.

A crossguard’s main purpose is to keep your hand from sliding onto the blade. Thrusting and pushing are best avoided on knives that have no guard. One group who often run afoul of their own knives are criminals. Many a criminal leaves his blood on the blade. Finger-grips are no substitute for the safety of a crossguard.

Soldier of Fortune and The Mercenary Fantasy

Soldier of Fortune Magazine ceased publication in 2016. Its book publishing wing, Paladin Press, closed in November of 2017.  Paladin joins Desert Publications and Loompanics and several other defunct purveyors of paramilitary literature.

For folks like myself, Soldier of Fortune magazine was fun. Each issue had a couple of good stories and some outrageous and unbelievable articles. Interspersed between them were plugs for various products and services ranging from custom knives to “mercenary schools.” You had to take it all with a grain of salt the size of football. Though I had not seen a copy of the magazine since the 1980s, I can imagine that it kept pumping up its hype to the very end.

Soldier of Fortune arrived in 1975, the same year Vietnam fell. The general sentiment in the country was anti-war and anti-military. Billing itself as “The Journal of the Professional Adventurer.” Soldier of Fortune was a unique counterpoint to the feeling of the times. The magazine supported the military profession and opposed Communism. It also reported on obscure brush wars in Africa, Asia and Central America. There was an undercurrent supported adventurers who might serve as mercenaries against insurgencies. The writing was usually chest thumping, military macho.

And for folks like myself who are veterans, well, it provided more than a few laughs. The folks who took it most seriously were wannabe soldiers and wannabe cops. Soldier of Fortune was mind candy for security guards, folks who could not get into the Army and those who fancied themselves some kind of clandestine operative.

Among the magazine’s hypes was the field of custom knives and knife combat. One of the editors’ cronies, David Steel, wrote a book titles “Secrets of Modern Knife Fighting.” There was not much of fighting technique, but a lot of pictures and talk of various custom knives and the folks who made them. And the magazine touted knives sold by its advertisers. Some shavetail lieutenants and weekend warriors bought these overpriced wonders. They wore them as if they were Excalibur. (The rest of us were content with the old Army Air Corps survival knife, which was available for well under 20 simoleons in those days. The most any of us used a knife for was to slice pie or shave a branch to replace a missing tent peg.)

Paladin (and Desert Pubs and, Loompanics) had a few really good books. Most of these were reprints of government manuals. The rest were a very mixed bag of crap. I’d say 90% of these books need never have been written. Another 8% varied from Fair to Satisfactory. Only 1% to 2% were Good or better. (The same goes for the Occult, New Age and Martial Arts genres.)

Soldier of Fortune thrived in the era of brush conflicts and proxy wars in Third World countries. It’s heyday was long past. Obviously, nobody wanted to take over the mantle of the Paladin Press or the Magazine after its editors “aged out.” Then again, the world has changed a lot since 1975. Magazines are losing out to the Internet.

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There was a lot of concern over some topics covered in books by the alternate military publishers.  Among subjects were poisons, making bombs and making firearms. Fortunately for society, most of the injuries sustained with this knowledge was suffered by those trying to use it. Most of the books were written by people of questionable authority. in their chosen subjects.

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Soldier of Fortune was not entirely inert. There are some who believe it was in cahoots with several clandestine agencies. Indeed, some staffers and writers got involved in African and Central American conflicts. One person somehow affiliated with it was executed in Angola, having been captured as a mercenary. Two of its people were killed during the fighting in Nicaragua. Many suspect that in its early years, the magazine was being backed with South African and Rhodesian money. A quirky rag of this type could have been a nice cover for agencies to continue their programs away from government oversight. Conspiracy theory or truth?