No Combat Style Is Complete
I stood in the middle of a circle of soldiers and I could smell the antagonism in the air. They eyed me stonily. I sighed. Teaching people is difficult enough. Teaching them when they don’t want to learn from you is even harder.
They were all sergeants of one type or another. Fit and hard. I knew from the briefing material I had gone over last night that they had all been through a prototype advanced unarmed combat course. They’d done Airborne and Ranger and Special Forces training. Some were just back from a tour in Iraq. Their body language clearly indicated that they didn’t think I had anything to tell them.
[Colonel] Ashby introduced me as Dr. Burke and started to give a quick synopsis of my expertise. It was standard stuff, the Ph.D. and books, the blackbelts I had earned. It was a miracle no one snickered out loud. I waved Ashby off and stood in the circle.
“I’m Connor Burke,” I said to them. I looked around the circle, taking in their faces, reading their stances and the different body shapes. “I think you’ve all done things I haven’t and have that knowledge I don’t.” You could see they liked that. We all want respect. “But,” I continued, “that cuts both ways. You guys work with a range of weapons. I work with blades and sticks and bare hands. For you, close combat is anything under three hundred meters. In all my fights, you can smell the opponent’s spit. So I can probably teach you some things as well.” But their eyes told me that they were still skeptical.
I thought about my brother Micky and the discussions we’d had over the years. Micky is a pragmatist. He’s suspicious of the exotic. It’s only in the last few years that he’s grudgingly admitted that Yamashita’s training isn’t an exercise in delusion. And I had to have the same sort of conversation with these people around me now, only it all had to be compressed into a few days.
“Look,” I continued, “I don’t break boards or claim I can levitate. I work in an old tradition that has much the same goal as yours.“
“What’s that?” a compact, swarthy soldier asked.
I smiled. “To locate, close with, and destroy the enemy.“
The soldier made a grimace that I think was a smile. “Fuckin’ A,” he said, and heads nodded. But they were still wary.
“The bottom line is that you’re professionals,” I continued. “It’s your responsibility to learn every possible thing that can help you in getting the job done and maybe help you stay alive. I’m here to see what I can contribute to your mission readiness.” The reading last night had come in handy. “Okay?” A few heads nodded. “Let’s see what you’ve got,” I told them, and the workout began.
I spent two whole days watching them move. All systems tend to emphasize a finite range of actions and techniques. It’s what creates stylistic patterns. Individual capacity and talent introduces minor quirks and variations as well. So I observed the training to see what areas were emphasized and what additional things they could benefit from.
No style is complete—the range of possible attack/response scenarios is infinite. And this sort of training was only part of what these soldiers were expected to do. They had focused on a general range of techniques and emphasized specific skills in hand to hand work. It made sense, in a way. Yamashita would have said that they were neglecting “basics,” but he’s also someone who believes it takes three years to teach students the correct way to grip the floor with their toes.
— Tengu, Chapter 9
Emphases mine.
