Hank Reinhardt's Book of Knives: A Practical and Illustrated Guide to Knife Fighting (10 page)

Harvey was pretty big, about six-foot-two and two hundred thirty-five pounds. He wore his hair in a crewcut about two inches long. It stood straight up.

He and some other boy got into it one night at a drive-in. I don’t know who the other guy was, but Harvey wouldn’t make a move. Finally the boy said, “Harvey, you’re a goddamn coward. You wouldn’t hit me with a stick.”

“Yeah hell I would.”

The boy walked over to a trash pile, picked up a two-by-four and walked over to Harvey. Proferring the stick, he said, “Here, goddamn it. Hit me with it.”

Moving really well, Harvey snatched the stick and slammed it down on the fool’s head. The boy fell like a poleaxed steer, blood gushing from his scalp.

Harvey looked down and said, “I told him I’d hit ’im with it.”

◊     ◊     ◊

The other story about Harvey also concerns Smokey Stover, whom we’ve met before. It happened at a drive-in movie. Smokey was an inch taller, but a good seventy-five pounds lighter. As should be expected, out popped the knife. Harvey wanted no part of that, but he didn’t back down, either.

“Hey, man, I ain’t got no knife. If I had a knife, I’d fight you but I ain’t got one.”

There was a crowd gathered and when he said that, at least twenty people held out knives, butt-first and yelled, “Here, take mine.”

Harvey paid no attention. He didn’t want to see them. He just kept backing up and saying that if he had a knife he’d fight.

Smokey was unimpressed. He just kept coming.

When Harvey made his move, it was as fast as I’ve ever seen a man move. He just turned and ran. Just flat got it down the road.

You see, Harvey understood fighting.

Even so, Harvey’s dead. Years after he ran from Smokey, he shot a man and got life in prison. While he was there, somebody chopped him with an ax. It was no real loss to the world.

◊     ◊     ◊

So where does all this leave us?

Knife fighting is neither glamorous nor heroic. It is a quick and dirty affair that leaves everyone feeling soiled.

A man who deliberately tries to get into a knife fight is a damn fool. To risk your life, that of a stranger, and the well-being of friends and relatives for some childish, macho self-image is the height of stupidity.

However, it is equally stupid in this day and age to go around unprepared and denying such things happen. They happen, and I’m a firm believer in trying to make sure they don’t happen to me.

⁴
The same Don as mentioned previously in Chapter 5.

INTERLUDE

HANK’S STUDENTS

Editor’s Note:
We asked Hank’s pupils to contribute to this volume by talking about aspects of knives and knife fighting they had learned from Hank. Retired Michigan State Trooper Mike Stamm’s contribution serves as the foreword to this volume.

Following this section, one of Hank’s long-time students and close associates, Greg Phillips, with the editorial help of Jerry Proctor, has added to and updated the material Hank had completed. Greg worked with Hank for forty years studying the history and performance of edged weapons, modern, medieval and ancient, and he passes on to you many of the things Hank taught to him about knives, their history and their usage.

Interlude Contributors

• Massad Ayoob
  
• Richard Garrison
  
• Henderson Hatfield Heatherly III
  
• Michael D. Janich
  
• Nils Onsager
  
• John Maddox Roberts
  
• Whit Williams
  

Photo of Hank
taken by Greg Phillips.

REMEMBERING HANK REINHARDT

MASSAD AYOOB

Of all the knife-related courses I’ve taken over the years, none are more memorable than the one I took in Georgia many years ago with the great Hank Reinhardt.

Massad Ayoob and Hank Reinhardt.
Photo by Richard Garrison.

There are historians of the edged weapons, from sword to dagger. There are master practitioners of fighting with the blade. There are experts in the craft and the metallurgy of these tools. And there are those who have actually used them to fight. To get that expertise together would normally take a large, round table of separate masters.

Or, you could just meet Hank Reinhardt.

He had devoted his life to the blade. Hank not only made his living at it, he compiled the exhaustive research that he left behind to guide the rest of us, and those who would follow later. He could design . . . and build . . . and teach . . . and
do.
And, perhaps more important, he could inspire.

Others could talk about
espada y daga,
but Hank could
do
it, and more importantly, he could teach it. He understood human dynamics as deeply as he did the physics of the cutting edge. Watching him demonstrate was like being in a vampire movie, where the creature of the night is in front of you, and suddenly disappears, and then reappears behind you in an instant, letting you feel that your throat is about to be opened.

He showed us what could truly be done with a blade in each hand . . . when to strike, and when to fall back and force the opponent to commit himself into your already-prepared defense. Hank showed us—and the world—the awesome practical value of the kukri knife, which he did so much to resurrect and popularize outside the culture that had spawned it.

Above all, he did it without ego or concern for himself. Hank taught what he did because it was important to him to continue the core value of protecting the innocent from evil.

And he lived what he taught. The day came when he flew back into Atlanta from a long knife-buying trip in Europe for Atlanta Cutlery. He didn’t have his customary Star PD .45 with him under the circumstances, of course, but back then pocket knives were allowed on commercial aircraft, and he had a little folding Puma in the pocket of his jeans. Having cleaned out his refrigerator before leaving on the long trip, Hank stopped at a grocery store on his drive home from the airport.

As he made his way back to his car with his purchases, two young punks vectored in on him in the parking lot. Hank was a slim, older guy with grey hair and eyeglasses, and apparently fit their profile of a mugging victim . . . a classic example of what I’ve come to call “sudden and acute failure of the victim selection process.”

They closed into rapid contact with him and one snarled, “Give it up, old man!”

There was a soft “click” sound as the Puma’s blade sprang open in Hank’s right hand. His left had already grabbed the talker’s belt in an iron grip, pulling him in tight to Reinhardt, who brought the razor-sharp Puma into light contact with the mugger’s lower abdomen. Only then did the assailant see the confident, anticipatory grin on Hank Reinhardt’s face.

The second suspect went ashen and backed away in slow motion, hands raised, an expression of confused horror on his face. The one Hank had grabbed squeaked plaintively, “No problem, old man!”

In a voice somewhere between a growl and a purr, and without losing the grin, Hank replied. “No problem at all. Ah’m gonna gut ya lak a chicken.”

The would-be mugger didn’t move anything but his bowels.

After a moment, Reinhardt decided it wasn’t worth the paperwork, and shoved the reeking mugger away. He watched them both run . . . and then put his Puma back in his pocket, picked up his grocery bags, and went home.

We lost Hank Reinhardt too soon, but thankfully, much of his legacy remains. I miss him still, and I am glad that so much of what he learned, rediscovered, and created, has been preserved for us who remain, and for the generations to follow.

RICHARD GARRISON

I was still in high school when first I met Hank. It was at an early Society for Creative Anachronism event in Atlanta. I was just an observer, but nevertheless recognized Hank as someone of knowledge and I asked him about contemporary knife fighting. He asked if I had a knife and I did. I took it out, opened it and handed it over hilt first.

Hank, in a flash, reversed the knife, grabbed my shirt, pulled me in and graphically showed that I could be a dead man at that point. “The first thing,” he said, “is never to give a perfectly good knife up.” That was one of my first, good practical lessons that followed me through my life. Others had, undoubtedly, have learned it earlier in their life than I. But, as slow as I am, I think I am a good learner.

A few years later, I met Hank again in SF fandom. Besides science fiction, comics, the characters therein, we talked knives, swords, axes, guns . . . and, of course, ice tea. Like a good romance, one thing led to another and pretty soon we were shooting handguns and rifles, slashing at each other and learning about leverage and body mechanics.

My parents did a good job with me, but Hank sort of gave this Yankee a gander at some things I didn’t pick up . . . as I wrote above, I am slow, but still a good learner.

The foremost thing I learned was the art of deception. Other attributes are good, but deception is the force multiplier to speed, leverage, timing, and strength. He understood reaction and timing like few others. He also knew how to make a person with ill-will think he had the upper-hand . . . until it was too late.

I also learned Hank’s version of being courteous to all you meet, but have a plan to kill them.

And one of the more important lessons revolved around testosterone filled exhibitions. When you get into a friendly shooting or axe-throwing competition . . . and you win . . . shrug your shoulders like the champion you are and
don’t
try to duplicate the feat, as you can only become lucky so often. Of course, a smart remark might be appropriate.

A few years later, I went from a printing and publishing background into police work. Thirty-plus years later in federal, state and local service, I still draw upon many of his strategies and tactics when I teach today. His teachings about deception were absolutely priceless when I worked undercover and later became one of the foundations for the firearms, defensive tactics, and control techniques I teach to this day.

I learned that if you were in a true-enough knife fight, you will get cut. And that pain is a series of electric nerve transmissions and you can mitigate their effects.

Hank taught me about human reaction. I learned that
action beats reaction
, but you can manipulate the outcome. He would have understood and marveled at Colonel John Boyd’s OODA loop. For the uninitiated, that is an acronym for Observe-Orient-Decide-Act—an incredible, simple observation on reaction and timing. If you don’t know of it, read
Certain to Win
and
Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War.

I learned iced tea was only proper with lime.

I learned that I was no card player, much to his disgust, as once he learned I didn’t partake, a victim had been removed from the pool.

I learned that televisions can be replaced in the early dead of night and usually before Janet got home.

I learned what grief can do to a man. It can drive you to the horizon of life and, once crossed, that which you know and trust begins to be indistinct. Stray too far beyond the offing, you could lose all that it’s dear to you.

Hank taught me that learning and discovery never dies.

And that this man is much bigger than his legend.

IF

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too:

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated don’t give way to hating,

And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;

If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim,

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same:.

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings,

And never breathe a word about your loss:

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

If all men count with you, but none too much:

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,

And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

by Rudyard Kipling