大象传媒

Memories of 105574 Major R F 鈥楬enry鈥� Hall MC, The Dorset Regiment,
on His and Her Majesty鈥檚 Service
Part 2

On the first morning after our arrival we met 鈥楧an鈥� Fairbairn and 鈥楤ill鈥� Sykes. We were taken into the hall of the Big House and suddenly at the top of the stairs appeared a couple of dear old gentlemen (we later discovered one was 56 and the other 58). Both were wearing spectacles and both were dressed in battle dress with just a plain webbing belt. They walked to the top of the stairs and fell, tumbling, tumbling down the stairs and ended up at the bottom in the battle crouch position with a handgun in one hand and a fighting knife in the other. A shattering experience for all of us.
Fairbairn was the elder of the two. He was about 5 feet 10, lean faced and lean bodied, a tough leathery looking man, a taciturn character, he never spoke very much, except to say, 鈥淪tick a knife in here,鈥� or 鈥淗it him here,鈥� or 鈥淧ut your thumb in his eye鈥� or whatever. He kept himself to himself and I think he considered himself to be a little better than Sykes.
Sykes was a much more gregarious character, slightly shorter than Fairbairn, average build, certainly not on the lean side, he looked more like a bishop than anything else. He was easy to talk to, a pleasant character. One of the things he did for me 鈥� I asked him one day about sharpening my fighting knife, he said, 鈥淐ome up to my room, I鈥檒l hone it for you.鈥� Which he did. Two completely different characters, they hated each others guts but they worked together as a wonderful team and they both taught exactly the same things.
Their speciality was close combat fighting and silent killing. They had learnt their trade on the waterfront of International Shanghai. They had absolutely no respect for the Geneva Convention. They said, 鈥淚f you think our methods are not cricket, remember that Hitler does not play this game!鈥�
First of all they taught how to fall 鈥� a continuation of their falling down the stairs, they taught handgun and knife work and neck breaking. Now when you are attacking somebody the clothing that they are wearing and their equipment must be considered. For example if a fellow is wearing a greatcoat you can鈥檛 kick him in the parts because the blow won鈥檛 have any effect. You have got to hit him somewhere else.
If you suspect that someone is wearing body armour you can鈥檛 stick a knife into his chest, although the favourite place for sticking knives in, taught by Fairbairn and Sykes, does work even with body armour. We were taught releases. If you are grabbed by somebody from the back, front, side or whatever, how to get out of his grip.
We were taught 鈥榗ome-along grips鈥� 鈥� how to take a prisoner along safely without him being able to escape. We were taught the use of sticks, anything from four inches to six feet long; a four inch stick is just held in the hand and you can strike with the end of the stick and give a chap a nasty knock with it.
A stick can be anything, an actual stick, a rifle, something you pick up in a farmyard. A clipboard for example is a stick, you can strike somebody with it across the side of the neck, on the head, on the nose, under the nose, you can hit him in the parts, you can hit him in the solar plexus, almost anything is a stick. A stick is always held in two hands as exemplified by Robin Hood and Little John.
They taught the use of coshes, they preferred the spring type best, longbows, crossbows, catapults, garrotting, with anything that happens to be handy 鈥� a scarf, string, wire, anything you like; the use of shovels 鈥� every good soldier always carries either a pick or a shovel and you simply use it to chop off a chap鈥檚 head, or whack him on the shoulder, or just use it like a battle axe.
A pick and shovel are the only things you can dig in with quickly. Somebody made a lot of money from 鈥榚ntrenching tools鈥� 鈥� similar to the American ones 鈥� which were absolutely useless.
You can do the same with a tin hat, just whip the tin hat off and use the side of it to hit him in the face or whatever part happens to be handy. We were taught mouth slitting. If you are being gripped by somebody you can stick your thumb into the corner of his mouth and slit his cheek right up to his ear; ear clapping 鈥� cupping both your hands and hitting both his ears at the same time which of course breaks his eardrums; ear tearing 鈥� the easiest way to tear a chap鈥檚 ear off; eye gouging; the gralloch, - a nice little tip that 鈥楧an鈥� Fairbairn told us is, that if you gralloch anybody, to keep the point of your knife down, because otherwise when it comes up you might hurt the sharpening of the blade where it might catch his belt or his buckle; rib-lifting 鈥� grabbing a fellow under the ribs and lifting them up hard; nose chopping 鈥� chopping downwards or upwards with your hand or anything else; shin scraping 鈥� giving a fellow a good kick, say if he鈥檚 holding you from behind, a good kick on the knee with your boot, scraping it down his shin and ending up with a good sharp stamp on the instep; shoulder jerking 鈥� a sharp jab downwards of the arm which will dislocate the shoulder; the bronco kick 鈥� if you get somebody on the ground you jump on him hitting him with both heels at the same time which will break the particular part that you hit.; the bone crusher 鈥� a blow used on the sternum they recommended, where you put the tips of your fingers against the sternum and then with the full force of your body hit him with the ball of your hand and it will smash his ribs or it can be used on any other part of his body, especially the chin, and how to tie up a man 鈥� tying his wrists with a good old fashioned sailor鈥檚 handcuff knot and they also taught a way of tying the fellow鈥檚 wrists behind his back and pulling his ankles up and tying them with the same piece of cord and then putting a loop round his neck so that if he struggled he strangled himself.
They also taught the grapevine where a fellow is fixed to a thin pole by the forced bending of both legs round the pole, then he will lose his grip, fall backwards and eventually kill himself.
All these actions and holds were sometimes demonstrated by the two of them or with somebody else acting as a stooge and then after that they were practised on your own, supervised by Fairbairn and Sykes and if you did anything wrong you were severely ticked off and very often thrown about a bit and shown how to do it properly. It was a one to one instruction on how to fall correctly or how to impose a particular grip or a particular release or how to use a particular instrument in the correct manner to achieve the result required. It was a personal touch and personally done. If you didn鈥檛 show keenness or enthusiasm you were thrown off the course.
Fairbairn and Sykes also taught the use of the hand gun. They favoured the 9mm Browning. Now if you hit a man with a 9mm bullet, it will not stop him. If you use a .45 or anything larger, such as a shotgun, that will stop him dead, maybe blow him backwards. With a 9mm round you need two shots to stop a man dead and so Fairbairn and Sykes taught the Fairbairn Sykes 鈥榙ouble tap.鈥�
You draw your handgun, two shots, pom pom, and the chap is dead. They carried their handguns in the right hand trouser pocket. The normal opening of the trouser pocket is a little bit higher than where your hand naturally hangs and so they modified the trouser pocket so that you hand could go into the pocket with your arm at its normal length. The holster of the handgun was sewn into the inside of the pocket. The inside of the pocket was sewn to the trouser so that when you drew the handgun it came out without snagging on the pocket.
They carried the fighting knife in exactly the same way, in the left hand trouser pocket. I carried my handgun and fighting knife that way during the whole of the War.
As I mentioned they taught us to use the 鈥榙ouble tap鈥� with the handgun, we were not taught to hold the gun out at arm鈥檚 length or with two hands but to draw the gun and hold it tucked into your navel with the gun pointing straight ahead so that wherever you looked your gun moved round towards the target you were looking at. So you either drew your gun straight into your navel, pom, pom, the chap was dead, or you advanced as I did on one occasion in the mystery shooting house that 鈥楧an鈥� Fairbairn had made at Inverailort - with my handgun drawn, held into my navel, firing at the various targets that appeared here and there.
With that particular exercise which was supervised by 鈥楧an鈥� Fairbairn, if you were not a good shot, you were out, back to your unit. One thing they did emphasise, particularly with the handgun, was to count the number of shots you had fired so that you were never caught with an empty magazine and therefore unable to get a round off at your enemy.
Now the Fairbairn Sykes knife. Fairbairn and Sykes developed the knife in Shanghai, incidentally they never mentioned Shanghai at all at Inverailort, I didn鈥檛 discover they had come from Shanghai until years afterwards.
When they got back to England they went into Wilkinson鈥檚 in Pall Mall and got hold of one of the Directors and explained exactly what they wanted and what they wanted was a seven and a half inch blade made from one piece of metal right from the tip of the haft right down to the point and then with the guard put on and then the handle, the grip. The grip was to be checkered so that you could hold it whether it was wet or bloody.
Each was individually hand made, sharpened and honed so that your knife should be able to cut a piece of paper. I bought mine, one of the original Number 1 knives, in Pall Mall for thirteen shillings and sixpence. Later on they developed various other models for economy purposes. They only made 2,500 original No1 shiny knives 鈥� now worth over 拢3,000 each!
The Fairbairn Sykes knife is straight. If you are using it for slashing cuts you use it like a paintbrush, stroking it so that when the blade hits the surface you are trying to cut, it cuts at an angle, on the principal of the curve of the samurai sword.
You held the knife between the thumb and forefinger just behind the guard. The knife was perfectly balanced and so you could throw it from hand to hand. As you carried it in your left hand pocket, if you were right handed you could draw it with your left hand, throw it to your right hand and catch it quite easily, no problem at all.
The guard was not to stop the other chap鈥檚 knife from cutting your hand but to stop your hand going down and being cut on the blade when you made a thrusting blow.
On the battlefield you probably had your boots on for three or four weeks and you were filthy dirty, mucky and probably splashed with blood and the last thing you wanted to do was to draw any more blood and so the favourite blow that Fairbairn and Sykes taught was to a particular part of the body. They taught many other blows, vulnerable points and so on, but the snag is that with a man with equipment on or doing it in the dark you just don鈥檛 know what equipment he has got on and you can鈥檛 find a vulnerable point or somewhere to stick the knife.
The so called winged dagger of the SAS is not a dagger. The badge was designed by David Stirling and Jock Lewes, the original founders of the SAS. The weapon represents King Arthur鈥檚 sword, Excalibur. The wings come from a Phoenix in Shepherd鈥檚 Hotel, Cairo and the motto was David鈥檚 idea. The light and dark blue represent the colours of Cambridge, attended by Stirling, Oxford by Lewes.
We had lectures in Nissen Huts, but these Huts were located on the Islands of the River Ailort so that every lecture we attended we were wet either up to the ankles, the knees, the waist or perhaps even the chest, depending on the height of the water.
We had lectures in map reading 鈥� they insisted on very precise map reading, probably five to ten yard error only was acceptable, on nutrition, on hygiene, on living off the land, stalking, night work, explosives and explosive devices, fuses and so on, timing devices, booby traps and demolitions of anything, bridges, tanks, cratering roads, blowing down trees, the lot.
On the practical side we had demonstrations of all the things I have mentioned. We practised camouflage, sniping, stalking by day and particularly by night, demolitions and bridge demolition on the Glenfinnan viaduct, living off the land, told what was edible and what was not edible and one occasion we stood round a fire where something was being cooked and then we were asked to take a bite of what had been cooked - we were then told they were rats, hygiene 鈥� particularly your teeth, keeping your teeth clean after every meal (anything will do to clean your teeth, a stick of heather or anything like that), how to carry out one鈥檚 natural functions in the field 鈥� you obviously can鈥檛 stand up or squat down.
Every week we went to the top of An Stac, the local highest mountain, and back, up the wall at the back of the house and then back down again, which was the origin of the Commandos going up Ben Nevis every week and the SAS doing their endurance trials on the Brecon Beacons.
We started off from Inverailort one day over the hills and attacked Lettermorar on the banks of Loch Morar. We practised assault landings on the beach near to the Big House all under fire. We had an interesting exercise, we were taken down past Fort William and across the Loch to a place near Corran and then we had to make our way from there back to the Big House. It was a night exercise and we had to get across Loch Shiel. They did provide us with a small rowing boat, with only one oar. It was a timed exercise, and if anybody didn鈥檛 get back in the prescribed time they were sent back to their unit immediately.
The final grand exercise was the attack on Skye. We were taken at dusk one evening in assault boats from Inverailort across to Skye. We landed on the West coast of Skye, blew a gap in the barbed wire with Bangalore torpedoes and then crossed the Island and attacked Portree (it was raining all the time). Having attacked Portree we advanced down Skye attacking various places on the way, eventually attacking Broadford and ending up near the Kyle where we got on a Destroyer and were brought back to Inverailort and landed on the jetty probably about midday the following day.

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