June,2009

SFC HEADQUARTERS DOCTRINE

"Read by Thousands Round' the World!"

24 June 2009: The Night I killed Myself

The night I killed myself still lingers like a chemical stain in my brain. Ever have a serious dream? I mean a dream like an out of body experience? In triple-Technicolor, hi-def? One whipped up and cooked up by your brain on a cranky vindictive night, when it paints a palette of uncompromising horror?

When I was young man, too young, I hung up my traveling, motorcycle spurs in noth Texas. You know, the kind that Peter Fonda wore? And I got married for the first time like some kind of damn fool. Instead of getting back on the high road and

“looken' for adventure, or whatever comes my way.”

Who knows what I was thinking and what I was doing when I did that? But who knows such things about a damn fool? Worse, a young one. My Harley suddenly became a “Hardly” and was used to transport me back and forth to work at a metal factory. After about two years of a two-wheeler, traveling dream, it all whittled down to this roller-bed, Shakespearian nightmare.

The nightmare theater unfolded in a cheap, two-room, shoebox apartment with a scrap of cheap furniture. Sheets for the old mattress would come with the next paycheck. The old apartment complex supplied an air conditioning window unit to beat back the blistering Tejas sun, and it rattled and dripped away as the soundtrack to my new life. My new trap. The night grew tight and empty, as I finally fell deep asleep into a thrombosis, hypnosis.

Then it happened. The two-room, apartment changed dimension. I was awake but I was not. It was here, but it was there. And someone, some thing was moving in the living room! As real as real can get, I whipped my bare, dream feet from the dream bed to the dirty, dream carpet. What? I listened again. There was someone in there. Someone with a deep, wolf breath right in there.

I stepped to the doorway. Looked through the veil. There he was. A large man, taller then me with a long dark jacket – Hell, it was more like a cape. It had a huge collar turned straight up. He was looking about the living room, his backed turned to me. I got up behind him, grabbed his shoulder and turned him violently around, ready to bark some threat.

But it was me! It was me in that cape! But, this me – had like a Dracula-like face. A monster's face. He sneered at me. A sneering, smile. Big teeth. I froze like ice. Ice. In his right hand was a large, silver knife in an ice pick grip. He lifted it up. I couldn't move. He plunged it deep into my chest and into my heart like a hammer fist, like a sledge.

You are not supposed to die in your dreams. They say – the collective “they” in charge of nightmares - that if you die in your dreams, you will die for real. Well, I fell back with that big-ass knife in my chest and hit the floor. This Dracula thing that was another me, just stared down at me. Grinning. I was dieing. I was dead. Eye to eye with my own monster self that smite me down good. Dead on the floor of shit-hole apartment in a dried-up, no-where place in Texas.

I woke up violently, kicking and gasping, atop a dirty mattress in a shit-hole apartment in a dried-up, no-where, place in Texas. My heart was out of control. I sat up like you see in the old, B-movies.

Clutching my sucking chest wound, I ran to the doorway, as it was all so real. I thought my monster was still in there. But he was gone and there was no hole in my heart. Just helplessness in there. A breathlessness. A lifelessness.

I sucked in some air, still holding my chest, still holding the horror show in there and in my mind. I sat on the old couch in the dark. What was that all about? I was too young and stupid to know. And stupid is stupid does. I wandered back into the bed of my own making, pondering the pseudoscience of dreams and the wonders of the universe, and the conspiracies of fate. But I did feel or understand one thing way back then. A part of me was dead that night, I had killed off a part of myself. I came to myself with a big-ass knife and did the nasty deed, deep into my own heart.

Years later, I better understood the big picture. I had killed off some kind of spirit in me that first took me away from New York City and onto the road west. The need to be different. To do bigger, better. I'd settled in too young. I'd cashed in all my radical chips, got married too young and the cast of characters inside me didn't like it one bit, and they sent in Dracula to rough me up.

Dracula roughed the fuck out of me. After his vampire visit, I gravitated away from the metal yards and into college majoring in Police Science. I joined a security company and then joined the Army. AND got a divorce. I never saw this Dracula/Me again in my dreams. But I remember him vividly to this day, many decades later. I still see his face. Still see his shiny knife. Still feel it pierce into my chest. Still think about from time to time. Here I am today still writing about it.

I suspect I may see Drac again the moment I die? The Shakespearian chorus may send him back in to punish me for all my faults, failures and misdeeds. As Paul Anka wrote and Frank Sinatra sang, "...regrets, I've had a few..."I think maybe Mr. Dracula is waiting in the next room.

Life is thin veil and death a silver knife.

Adios, Amigos

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

17 June 2009: Controversies on Sentry Removal and Elimination by Knife
Not all sentry elimination is done by knife. Nor is all sentry removal done from behind, which is so commonly practiced and thought of. This blog entry will cover some brief thoughts on the world-wide, military methods and controversies involving these military killing tactics. Here is a world-wide look at the most commonly taught tactics for a rear approach kills.

Controversies?
Soldiers from various countries and some from within the same country will argue that some of the sentry kill stabs and slashes are dangerous and some will even declare them “wrong!” Most of the arguments stem from the forgotten reality that when you snatch a sentry with your support arm, often a brief tussle may ensue and the sentry may well be moving violently about. His energized movement causes the soldier to move about also. If a soldier slashes the neck? The soldiers are essentially pulling their knive edge back at themselves and a self-inflicted wound/accident is a possibility. As an alternative these soldiers suggest stabbing the side of the throat and "punching" the knife forward, with the intention of ripping the windpipe out and anything else in the path with it. Naysayers of this method say that in the "struggling sentry model" the sentry is struggling and should the stabber miss the stab and punch forward? The soldier will reflexively put up a hand and grab the weapon-bearing forearm. This is also a possibility.

A Vietnam veteran reported to me once that he once stabbed an enemy guard in the side of the neck, in an effort to punch the blade forward as perscribed. The knife went through the oriental's thin neck and he stabbed his own left, support forearm that held the face and mouth of the enemy. This soldier instinctively yanked that arm back and cut his own forearm open for several inches, from his own protuding knife tip!

The same is said of the various ice pick slashes and stabs. The ice pick/reverse grip slash may come back upon the soldier, cutting him. The somewhat vertical, downward stabs may also hit the soldier as the sentry moves energetically about after a sudden surprise. These are also possible accidents.

It is apparent that while any of of these strategies might work, the naysayers will argue that even the most surprised sentry still may reflexively react, therefore the soldier should avoid any stabbing or slashing knife attacks that point the edges or tip of the knife back at themselves. At least, consider the potential for self-wounding should the attack become even the briefest of struggles. There are solutions and counters to these attacks...

(Much, much more on this subject...this comes from a chapter in Hock's upcoming Knife/Counter-Knife book published mid-July, 2009. Next Month! Over 2,000 how-to photos, essays and 50 true knife combat stories. The essence of knife combat, full spectrum from standing to ground-fighting)

Adios, Amigos

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

11 June 2009: Notes on Generic Gear

I have collected a tan, military police-style belt, with a tan cavalry holster and tan .45 magazine pouch. On the belt is the tan, leather-sheath, engraved U.S. Marine knife the Devil Dogs gave me on one off my many trips to teach at Camp Pendleton. I have a replica .45 in it. It hangs again on my new wall. But, I look like freaken' Patton in the mirror once a year when I can't resist clicking it on me. A guy said to me once, you should wear that gear in your gun DVDs sometimes.

I thought of this because I had a recent conversation with a buddy who mentioned he thought it odd that in my training videos, in particular the knife and gun ones, I never really wear any official or cool, or name brand gear. If I did a stress, pistol quick draw section, my simple belt often did not contain a magazine pouch. Things like this. I am just not decked out enough..."in the look." You know the look. The tactical folder. The expensive gun belt with the expensive holster, pouch and so forth. Maybe this even extends to the correct sun glasses and ball cap? It's shooten' day, by God!

First off, if you haven't figured it out. I am life-long, non-conformist by nature. I mean, just look at me. I have no one martial art. No one religion. I don't trust either political party. I am a Yankee/Texan. I got married in the drive-thru window at a Las Vegas, wedding chapel. Sometimes I think the reason I managed to stay in police work for 23 years is I spent most of that time as a detective, working solo. They gave me cases to work in the morning and I virtually disappeared to work them on my own. If things start looking too established? If the anti-established begin to look established? I honestly start feeling uncomfortable.

So, the "look" of just about anything, is not appealing to me. And, by this lifelong approach, I think I have been able to examine things from a perspective most people do not. For an example? I am a patriot for this country only after world examination, not by brainwashing. Not by geographic happenstance. (Texan by choice, not by accident - as the famous, local bumper sticker declares).

In this vein, I made it a point to film all ten DVD gun levels NOT ON A GUN RANGE! How strange is that? A gun DVD not on a gun range. There is an rare, occasional range clip in them, but I am interested in simulated ammo training which should be done elsewhere. In real environments. I am convinced there is more REAL survival shooting info in these films than any other gun range productions. People think, act, dress and perform a certain way on the range, much of it out of sheer range-rule, necessity. No question about that. After a while, people expect gun people to look a certain way, eve talk a certain way. But since I do not film at the range, I am not wearing any of that needed stuff.

Well, on the subject of "decking out" for a say, a gun training film, almost all my work is with simulated ammo guns. I may dress in a really generic police/military uniform for a rare theme presentation in a DVD, but only to really make point. Even then, I wear the slickest (cleanest) belt and gear possible to stay generic. I may do some police films in the future. I will be in the most generic uniform and switch to plainclothes in them. The plain-est of clothes. Universal.

I noted years ago in shooting schools how much simpler it was when the instructor mandated that "all students must have Glocks." Mandatory. In some cases these pistols were available at the course. Some of my contacts who run state-law, concealed-carry classes, first issue applicants standard revolvers to run the students on the rudimentary, mandatory shoot-the-target section. When everyone has the same gun, holster, belt, ammo magazine, etc...ahhh sounds very military and uniform and MUCH, much easier and safer to teach.

It is when an instructor must deal with a vast majority of pistols or long guns that range day gets real challenging. My friends have lots of great stories on these problems. An old lady showed up once with a Desert Eagle for her CCW class. "Its my son's!" she explained.

Each year, I stand before a huge, diverse groups of people-military, police and citizens. I have to present the material in the most generic way, quite void of specific gear. I may mention specific problems, but must not dwell on them. A Major in the Marines is wearing different gear than an undercover cop in Boulder, Colorado, than a business man going CCW, than a SWAT guy, etc. Such a variety. Such a need to be generic. And the tactics can be different for each person, each "mission."

This same point carries over to supplying gear for training. At times, I need to carry a sack of holsters and belts and you can bet I get the generic, cheapest, durable ones, that will fit a rubber band pistol, any rubber replica anyone has, as well as Berretta airsoft and yes...they make airsoft Desert Eagles too! I see them at seminars. (I call these "bucket" holsters - big enough to carry about anything). If my subject that session is stress quick draws? I will reach into my gear sack and yank out a generic, bucket holster and slick, generic belt and get busy. It ain't purty, girls and boys. It ain't sexy. I will not put an ammo pouch on the "sack" belt, unless the lesson plan calls for one. If there happens to be one on the belt from last time, then you'll see it. I guess, I hope the audience is mature enough to understand this.

I also use the most generic training knives possible. A common, simple, fixed-blade and/or a primitive folder. Like a basic gun shape and basic holsters, etc., as these basic knife shapes are conducive to translating tactics to as many other knife shapes as possible. Generic in clothing and gear reaches the masses in fundamental teaching.

Even when I do a theme subject for a theme group, its best to start out generic for them in their field.

Hey! I know I am way too boring. No Israeli commando pitch. No WW II Combatives claims. No monastery monk pitch. No outlandish claims of being the superior, extreme, ultimate system. No Filipino, hidden, secret connection. No tattoo on my forehead. No sales pitch or sales crutches. The real truth is beyond and past all that. It's just tactics and strategies.

But! I do have a lot of cool stuff on my walls at home (not like Chuck Heston's room seen to the left).

Adios, Amigos

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

8 June 2009: Snatching Peeble or Noose? Or..What Killed Bill?

To the world's surprise in June 2009, actor David Carradine was found death in a Thailand hotel. "He hung himself," was the first words uttered by the media. Suicide! But, within two days, other words were "leaking" out, for lack of a better term - Erotic Asphyxiation or EA. Which some have also called auto-erotoc asphyxiation. And since very few people know about this, and worse, hate to talk about it at large if they do, the whole Carradine affair sounds quite mysterious and confusing. Let's talk about it.

Through my years as a detective I worked several EAs and up to that point, despite numerous academies and schools in the 1970s and 1980s, I'd never heard of EA. The practice goes back to the 1600s.

Dictionaries like to define it as - “Erotic asphyxiation refers to intentionally cutting off oxygen to the brain for sexual arousal. It is also called asphyxiophilia, autoerotic asphyxia, scarfing, kotzwarraism, or breath control play.”

But they are not really doing a succinct enough job describing it. At the core of the practice, limiting

Carradine- a unique, unforgettable, iconoc bastard.

oxygen to the brain just before and during orgasm heightens the orgasm. Practitioners masturbate while cutting off their oxygen supply, but they are usually able to escape their little throat trap when finished. This is not just a lonely practice, as couples choke and strangle each other to a certain degree also during sex. One might recall the Cricton book and Sean Connery movie Rising Sun. The central MacGuffin being the murder investigation surrounding a politician who does a bit of strangling during intercourse, in a back office of a big Japanese business party and kills a high-priced prostitute.

No doubt this theme has worked its way into Law and Order TV show plots, since they seem to have a hundred spinoffs and thousands of episodes. Surely by now they have covered every conceivable plot three times over? How about that virus of CSI? ( I can't wait for CSI Mayberry, coming next fall). Surely, they have covered this topic a time or two? So some members of the public at large must know something about AE.

Still, knowing or not, when you find a stranger, friend or loved one hanging about in this manner (and there are usually odd props around them, as some emergency methods of escape from their air-trap), people find the death-by-masturbation motive hard to grasp (another bad choice of words, I know).

I have worked numerous hanging suicides and people tend to plummet off of high objects with short ropes. But an investigator must know that if the body is not immediately found, the neck and the rope will stretch dramatically. The discovered body may be “hanging” with its feet right on the ground, or the feet are planted and the body is slumped and bent to the side. The family screams murder, but the police must take note of the Mr. Fantastic neck stretch. Between the stretching rope and the stretching neck, the stretches can easily confuse the novice.

Still you have to treat a suicide like a murder and cross off the homicide checklist. I have worked two suicides where men have used thin chains to hang themselves, which will not stretch. The links of the chain leave distinct bruising on the neck and lead to very, conclusive suicide-versus-murder results. Too lengthy to explain here.

The EA victim does not plummet from heights and is typically found on his knees or near knee high. Here's one typical example. I once found a man, a respected county probation officer dead in his apartment. An exasperated, county department head called him in as missing to our detective squad and she suspected foul play from one of his crazy probationers. My Lieutenant sent me to his apartment on the rush and I kicked the door open to find the man dead, hung from…his bathroom doorknob. He was on his knees and used a silk stocking around his neck and door knob. Hung from...a door knob! EA! But the county co-workers refused to believe happy “Jimmy” would kill himself. At the behest of my LT., I had to conduct an very uncomfortable, impromptu class on EA (where was Law and Order when you need it – but this was years before the TV show)

Another typical case I worked was with a respected high school teacher and football coach. His wife said goodbye to him one Saturday and drove away from their house, whereupon he immediately ran to his hidden covey of over-sized ladies wear, put these unmentionables on and started a thrilling episode in his garage. Oops, it was too exciting and he passed out and died. The worst part I remember is the story of the wife returning hours later, opening the garage door and seeing her husband hung by the knees in a bawdy, ladies sex outfit. The temptation is to blame a Hannibal Lector type, mastermind displaying his victim for shock. But no. Sadly, no, it's just another AE.

The world is now confused by the death of Kung Fu's Caine. But crime scene photos will quickly tell much of the tale. A knee-high or knee-high contraption, with some emergency escapes and a few fantasy props or porn on the floor. Quite simple really. His last, ex-wife divorced him years back for weird sex habits. The remaining family has asked the FBI to get involved and document what happened. The facts coming out of Thailand are blurry.

But, David Carradine was an iconic bastard and just a fabulous charactor actor. Unforgettable. Friends said that a part of him would at least like his death to be a "mysterious demise." The mysterious demise of David Carradine. He'd like that. Bruce Lee-ish.

Adios, Amigos

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

5 June 2009: A Room With a View

Rooms with a view. Been a cultural phrase. Even been a movie title. People often want to live in a place with a view. I am not too sure how important it is to others, or me but it would be nice to have a view, than not have one. What view? The New York skyline at night? The vistas of Colorado from the balconies of movie star mansions? The Alps? What your bag? What's your view?

To me, views are transitory. Here's how I started to think this. On a mountain top decades ago, on a foot patrol in South Korea, I stalled for moment and looked at the vast landscape before me, which even revealed parts of North Korea. My Military Police sergeant, Thomas Gaston asked, “whatcha' doing, Hochheim?”

“Looken' at the scenery, Sarge,” I answered.

“ Yea well...ya' can't fuck the scenery. Let's go,” he said.

Can't fuck the scenery. I guess so. Maybe you can only date it? In Gaston's crude, street smart, Washington D.C. slum lingo, he summed up the situation, as he so often did. No matter how good the vista looks, you can't "love" it too much. Gaston had a way with life and words. He was poet and he did not know it. Views are nice, but that ain't real, real life, huh? Ain't real important without the important parts of your life in order first. Your ducks in a row. Your bidness' squared away. The right moment at the right time with the right person is the magic of life, and it don't matter where that is, but location helps. Location is just an icing on the cake, unless you are opening a pizzeria. Lots of people have committed suicide in the world's most beautiful places.

Me? I'm a monk at heart. If left completely to my own devices, there is no telling what rooms I would have and where they would be. I only appear to be civilized. I agree with the American Indians who would laugh, “white man? White man - he think he can OWN land. HA!” Apparently, Indians only dated the landscape and understand the transitory nature of land ownership in the big picture.

We never really own land, do we? Really? We just squat. Transitory. Still we part-and-parcel it off and pay exorbitant fees and then taxes to possess the truly unposess-able. Unpossess-able because we...”we can't take it with us,” in the end to the Happy Hunting Ground. We own our soul. We own our memories. We don't own “Lot 47,” for any kind of eternity. We don't even own our own gravesite indefinitely.

As I pass through a myriad of hotel rooms around the planet, I never think about my early past. Thank goodness. But randomly, tricked by a dream, or abstract thought, I recall my youth in the 1950s just outside of New York City. It was sad, confined youth I would say. Early on, I grew up in what would be called a tenement building. An upstairs, apartment with no separate rooms. Just an open space with a living room, a kitchen and a bathroom. Families were expected to open a living room couch into a bed, you know a hide-a-bed. My parents slept in one. I can't recall where exactly I slept; except for a vague thought it was on a small folding bed in the living room. They grew up like this and yours truly would also follow suit. Like father, like son.

The city view from the windows wasn't pleasant. An old movie theater, embedded into other tenament buildings across a one-lane, one-way street flashed its lights like a scene from detective, noir movie. Our apartment building burned in Christmas fire in 1957, and was later refurbished. Homeless, we moved into another similar place, but on the Hudson River. The burned building became, through the subsequent years the cramp, housing for Cuban and Puerto Rican immigrants who flooded into the area. I suspect the edifice it is still there to this day, serving the poor for a simple shelter, as depressing as it was. As it is. I hate going back to look. So I won't.

My factory worker father amassed some money and bought a small house. But there were few, defined rooms in this place also. My new designated “room” was actually a bay window area off of the living room (back in the living room again!). It was no bigger than a closet found in newer houses. Just a place to slip in a small bed and a book shelf. Such was my life. As I grew older, my dad rigged some sliding doors for this inventive “room,” so I might be able to have some modicum of privacy. Hollow core, track doors that shifted on their tracks as the heat rose and clanging though the cold radiators like a ghost in the basement hitting the pipes with a hammer. I rarely closed these doors. At that point why bother? So even as a gangly teen over 6 foot tall, I remained curled up in this bay window, closet-room. And there I spent my childhood and teenage life. Any wonder why I left on a motorcycle as soon as I could?

Despite my recollections in the here and now, I have no real complaints about this. I never think about it really. I know most kids had or have rooms, or share a room with a sibling. Me? I had a bay window. It was a “room” with a view of sorts. The view of a shitty, urban street of crappy houses and cars. And, the occasional rat busy with dashing from sewer to sewer.

I do think this hanging on a window-ledge in my early life lead to certain restlessness, a rootlessness. After all, I am still stomping around the planet and think nothing of it. I enjoy decent hotel room views...unless they are too costly. A monk won't need such an expensive view. A monk has his own "views."

Perhaps someday I too will have a house with a great, grand, vista view, but I would prefer the cities in these panoramas far enough off to be a few, mere twinkles. I've already seen enough cities close up at night through oily, windowpanes.

Perhaps. If not? That's okay too, because like Gaston said, “you can't fuck the scenery, Hochheim.” Who knew Gaston was, in his own way, as wise as a monk?

Adios, Amigos

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

2 June 2009: June begins with a reminder....

Your daily Combatives News Service webpage...

Combat Centric News

Email Hock at Hock@HocksCQC.com