UNARMED COMBAT

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 77, 10 August 1942, Page 3

UNARMED COMBAT

THEY FIGHT WITH THEIR HANDS TOl Gil, CANNY TROOPS On a clearing in the scrub, two patrols which had stalked each other j through the bush had come to grips, j They weir lighting hand to hand and j lighting the toughest, dirtiest way they knew. Clouting, kicking, using all the : tricks of jiu-jitsu, boxing and wrestling and their teeth as well in a grand : lree-l'or-all that made a street corner brawl look like a polite conversazione. I writes a “Melbourne Age” correspon- ! dent. j Phlegmatically, the sergeant major. '■ a regular with a string of ribbons on ! his tunic watched them Then, rub- ! bing his hands with satisfaction. "They j get like kittens.” he said. "Always sparring." lie added as an afterj thought. “Sometimes wc have to stop I them.” Just at wlial stage intervention was 1 deemed necessary he did not reveal. To the lay onlooker, it seemed long : overdue. This "kittenish” sparring is just j one part of the gruelling training in ; unarmed combat that our officers and ! troops are getting in army camps in I various parts of Australia. The men j at the school are all potential instruc- | tors in the tough and tricky art of | lighting without arms. Hand-picked j from different units all over the j country, they come to the school to i specialise in this particularly modi ern brand of modern warfare —a type j of fighting made famous by Britain’s I commando men. j* To start with they must be alert. ; rugged types, strong and husky. They J finish lip their three weeks’ course j even more rugged, even more alert and toughly aggressive, with unlimited confidence in their capacity to hold their own any time, anywhere. Stalking, sentry snatching, patrolling 'on a dirty night in enemy-infested country will be child’s play to them. They have a dare-devil dash, cunning and initiative. The training they get is as tough as the army can make it. That broken heads and fractured limbs are rare at tht school (black eyes, cuts and bruises are not )is due to the fact that the training progresses by what the instructors call easy stages. The first deals with the not-so-easy art of taking a tumble without getting hurt and coming up on-balance, ready “to let ’em have it.” Coupled with this are elementary lessons in anatomy, which is a euphemistic way of describing learning how to lash out at ‘lie most vulnerable parts of the body. In between whiles the novices do P.T. work, limbering and strengthening exercises to toughen them up. In the next stage they get down in earnest to the business of learning to fight with their hare hands. They are taught a deadly assortment of grips and holds and locks, and the counters to all of them. The training here is a mixture of jiu-jitsu, rough-and-tumble fighting, largely modelled on the Japanese pattern. They learn how to make use of the adversary’s clothing; they discover what an invaluable ally a steel helmet can he in a hand-to-hand scrap. Its sharp edge, they find, is admirable for slashing out at the enemy who creeps up out of the night and tackles from behind. Worn on the head, the tin hat can he just as useful. A nicely timed jerk backwards or forwards will deal a knock-out blow. And against a knife or dagger it makes a handy shield. Taken all round, an admirable weapon for unarmed combat.

OHSTAULE COURSE

The men have to master the art j of scaling walls, hurdling barricades, climbing trees, moving sure-footed I as a cat over narrow surfaces at di/.- i zy heights. They might have to stalk j a man over the house-tops, through i a ruined building, along a cliff face. So they put in many an hour on an obstacle course ingeniously designed | to give them nimbleness and conti- J dence at this sort of job, and plenty [ of exercise into the bargain. There is a vaulting rail, a high wall they have to clamber up and tumble down, and “confidence planks” they must race across. Even more tricky is a contraption known locally as the hen coop—a set of narrow, sharply-slop-ing planks to be negotiated at high speed. There are 20-foot ropes to shin up and down, and, final test in the course, a brushwood hurdle to be taken in a headlong dive. Usually an enemy ambush is waiting on the other side. Necessarily, the obstacle course is treated with respect; no man is allowed near it till his second week of training. Record time for the course to date is one minute eight seconds “through the bush and out.” It is a record that is going to be hard to beat. Alertness is as important as toughness in this kind of warfare, and all sorts of nefarious dodges are used to get the men into the habit of thinking fast. Patrolling the bush around the school they never know when an ambush will pounce on them, when they will take a header into a concealed pit. trip heavily over hidden wires or have gum saplings come crashing round their heads—tricks all designed to keep them on their toes and make split-second decisions. The one thing a man can be sure of during the battle tests in the scrub is that if he falls into one of these booby traps the enemy, lurking hidden in the bushes, is waiting to tackle him while he is down.

NIGHT PATROLS

At least three nights a week the men are out on manoeuvres, patrolling, stalking, doing cross-country treks. Word comes through that enemy tanks are parked for the night somewhere in the neighbourhood. A patrol is detailed to locate and capture them. The tanks, represented by semi-blaeked-out lanterns hidden in the scrub, mat be only a mile away, or they may be four or five miles distant, and the only clue the patrol gets as to their position is a vague generalisation on direction-north-east or south-west of the camp. Spotting a dimmed lamp in thick scrub country on a dirty night is a ticklish assignment, especially when the patrol lias to hunt as a pack, since to split up would be just asking for trouble. Sometimes it means hours of bush-combing over all sorts of country; sometimes a patrol gets lost. One was missing for six hours one night, and on another occasion some of the Americans who are now in training at the school found tliem-

: selves stalking will-o -the-wisps in j the shape of a rabbit trapper's light : and the lantern dangling from a ! milkman’s cart. Even so. the Amej ricans were not the last home from 1 that patrol—and the time factor i counts a lot in these night exercises. | When the “tanks” are located the ! patrol’s job is to creep up unseen by i the enemy guards and remove them. And since the enemy’s job is to keep their tanks, the hunt usually ends i with a free-for-all fight, in which ; the lamps gel badly bent. So do the i men on occasions. Sometimes Fifth | Columnists are detailed to make the | going even tougher on these night j manoeuvres. Their job is to mingle ! with the patrols, get the “low-down’ j on their movements and objectives, i and then fade into the night. There ! is a classic story about one hapless j patrol which arrived home blissfully j unconscious that the enemy it had I been stalking in vain were in its own i ranks. Those men are now not likely to forget the army’s golden rule about checking personnel every sc often. When a particularly black and dirty night happens along the men are marched out of the camp and taken for a long maze-like hike through scrub, over paddocks, across farms. When they have changed direction so often that the officer in charge reckons there is a good chance of them being properly bamboozled, they are ordered to split up into sections and make for home. They may take five, or six hours to get back, or on the other hand, they may suffer the humiliation of getting lost and having to wait for the dawn. All through their training the men are kept under highly critical observation. and subjected to constant tests. Marks are awarded at the end of the course for morale and general behaviour, as well as mental and physical capacity. The type of soldiers that the school sets out to make can be gauged from the phraseology of the reports that accompany them back to their units. “Tough, aggresj sive, alert, with great powers of cnI durance, a natural leader,” typify the i comments alongside the names of ! those who have passed out with the I highest marks.