When the riots hit on the last Monday of April, I went down to the mixed race sports bar to make sure any non-combatants that needed to get home, could. Arrangements were made for that day and phone numbers were swapped between Big Jim and I and a few ladies who did not own cars. All were sure that it would never again be safe for a white woman to take the bus in Baltimore after what was seen on the TV monitors on that day.
Yesterday, after having a nice spring day of training and returning home to write, I received a phone call from Ellen, a woman who works a half mile from my home and lives two miles in the other direction. She had gotten off work and gone to the supermarket and bought some groceries. Her normal ride was out of work with an injury. The cabs were not apparently running, and the thought of taking three buses over the course of three hours, past the scenes of three recent shootings [two being fatal] struck her with dread.
I told her that if she was up to walking the two and a half miles I would carry her groceries home for her.
When I showed up with my rapier-umbrella, she looked at the sky and said, “Really, rain?”
I responded, "You can never be too well prepared."
It was a pleasant walk. Unlike my various bimbonic female friends, who always sought to walk by my side, she took her proper place at my back and asked if she should look out. I affirmed her suspicion and regulated my stride to hers so that there were two steps between us. We were fortunately walking away from the sun. I would not be blinded, and would have the benefit of shadow as we crossed 8 blocks, a primary road, and then two more blocks uphill, past where Simon was shot down by two black dudes during the recent curfew.
The curfew bottle-necked victims into an ambush time slot for the local thugs; all potential targets coming home between 9:30 and 10, entering the un-policed wilderness of the side streets at the same time, like bison headed for a cliff. The curfew got people beaten, robbed, raped, shot, stabbed, and killed.
Simon had been returning from the bar with his wife after purchasing his monthly supply of pot, when two home boys, probably tipped off by phone, ambushed him, shooting him in the arm. He did save his pot, but based on his bleed rate soon realized that 911 would have to be called. As his wife phoned in the shooting—to which there was a timely response—he, being fearful of having a dozen retail size bags of pot on him when he passed out, began throwing them on a neighbor’s lawn. He passed out, waking up on stretcher to the sight of cops bagging up his pot in evidence bags.
I had brought a spare backpack for Ellen to put her purse and groceries in, directing her to sling her beverages in a double bag as a potential flail.
I carried the heavy bag in my left hand and the rapier-umbrella in my right. Just as we passed the ambush zone, where these hilly side streets are bisected by a rubble-strewn alley, through which I was chased by a yellow Mustang 30 years ago, and a grassed-over street, seven innocent unarmed black youths emerged from the alley, split into two flanking pairs and a three thug following pack, and began making hand signs to each other.
Many couples and individuals are immediately attacked like this. The fact that I have something in my hand and am not spooked makes them nervous and tentative. I hefted each item to get a fresh grip and did a limited head swivel with every step, never looking at them, but keeping the flankers in my peripheral vision and watching for any second shadow to merge with Ellen’s shadow. She was being a good streetwise girl and did not say a peep.
We were on the sidewalk. There was a definite leader and sub-leader in this group. The leader stayed with the two in the tail element. The sub-leader was to my left in the street with the biggest dummy. The other two were flanking through the yards and were parallel with the tail group, having trouble keeping up without being obvious.
In this situation, which was a target of opportunity that seemed a little on the tough side, what these guys needed was a cohesion building action from Ellen or I.
If I had stopped and stared, it would have been on. I would have been challenging the pack’s right to patrol their home range.
If Ellen would have gotten nervous and showed signs of fear the leader would have gotten verbally defensive, claiming an insult, and beginning to build group indignation along the lines of, “So you cracker ass thinks we a thug, then we shows ya a thug!”
In liberal media eyes they would have been the victims of Ellen’s racial profiling in any altercation that followed.
Verbal threats to Ellen would have been mixed with claims that I was afraid to defend my woman and it would be on. I would have been quickly enveloped by a far more mobile attacking force. I was confident of fighting these boys off with the weapon in hand and hefted it as I continued to swagger through their hunting ground. Ellen noticed my weapon check and switched her sack of two sports drinks into her right hand.
As soon as I saw her shadow do this in the slanting 7 p.m. rays that illuminated the rising hillside sidewalk before me, I heard the leader—who had drifted toward the left flankers to link up with his sub-leader—say, “Back to it, Yo.”
The taller, larger, sub-leader answered, “Yo certain, Yo?”
There was a nod of the leader’s head barely perceptible out of my peripheral vision and the sub-leader said, “’Back to the cut,” and all seven of them drifted as one through the yard that took them back to the grass-covered side street and over to where Simon was ambushed five weeks ago. They were lost to sight and sound in five seconds, cutting between two houses into a winding maze of an ancient street that now looks like a dead end greenway. They had immediately seized upon us as a target of opportunity, did a tactical assessment, and then continued on their way upon realizing they had a fight on their hands—most importantly, a fight that smelled like a walking ambush, a counter attack waiting to happen.
As we crested the hill Ellen said, “Whew! That was close. I saw you getting ready to stab people and got ready to stand and swing. I remember you telling me that the woman should never move, stay put and give the man room to move. How did I do, Tarzan?”
“You did fine, girl.”
I sat out on Ellen’s porch and drank three beers until her roommate came home, and gave me a lift to my place. This is cooperative small scale community defense. Martial arts people only train for what happens after the situation has devolved into a confrontation between me and the leadership of the pack. That is as stupid as a military unit training to attack superior forces in head-on amphibious or airborne assaults, instead of what effective military units train to do, which is use of intelligence and mobility to put the enemy in an untenable position. In military terms, what I did here was similar to a recon squad accessing a defensible position, before the enemy was able to coordinate a battle plan.
I never train self-defense.
I train awareness and tactical mobility.
And, in case that does not keep a combat situation from developing, I train for combat, for the elimination of the enemy from my personal space. I advise any non combatants I walk with to either curl up in a sitting fetal position with their back to something, so I only have to defend 180 degrees. Or, if they are armed or somehow marginally effective, to stand still and fight off intruders while I stab any one entering into contact range. For this a mixture of saber and boxing footwork is my tactical base.
When you are about to get boned, convince your hunter to move The Boned Zone to another venue through taking reasonable tactical measures within plain view of the hungry predator that is assessing your palatability. If the attack comes from him—if you let the considered hunter feel comfortable with attacking you—it will be worse than if he and his pack just ran at you on sight in an impulsive frenzy. The more dangerous, high cohesion, tactically conceived attacks are delayed and discouraged by competent defensive tactics. Low cohesion frenzy attacks are easily broken from a tactically sound base.
Think tactically.
Behave tactically.
Act tactically.
If you must react, do so with direct, muscle-memory based ruthless efficiency, which breaks the antagonistic rhythm that has been brought into being by your tactical interaction with the enemy.
That’s what Men do.
Learned a ton from this article. Thank you! Any chance you could share the make of your "umbrella"?
Rodrigo,
The umbrella is 4 feet tall and has a 4 foot + span. It has a handle of synthetic rubber heavy enough to butt with and serve as a counterweight. The 8 light steel stays are bound into a point under a cap at the end. It has no hidden blade or anything illegal, and was purchased for $5 at Home Depot. There is no name brand. It has held up after one hard thrust, with the cap-point bending slightly three inches down it's 4 inch length to the awning crown.
I will do an umbrella and pimp cane video at some point.
Take care, sir.
So I have a technical question. Why do you advise her to stand still? In this context do you mean don't run at which point she will be alone and easily overtaken or do you mean literally stand in one spot without side to side or front and back maneuvering and juse attack from that position?
One, a middle-aged white chick running from black teenagers is just pointless.
Two, I would rather only have to calculate their position, not her's. I want to know where she is. I don't want her getting cut out and swarmed, nor do I want her under my feet. I like her an empty hand away. If she's a little chick, or frail, I'd stuff her to the ground under my empty hand and zone around her. If she's a big girl and she's standing and fighting I might use her as a post, might even shove her over onto some grounded twerp if she ran her mouth and started the thing. I honestly regard any fight movement on her part as to be useless and indecisive unless I'm dating Rhonda Rousey.
Good points man and I will do at least one sequel to this piece.
James,
Do you have any resources for people who are too far away to train with you in tactics like these but would like to learn more? I've found that I'm prepared for the physical encounter but always make mistakes before the encounter that I could've avoided altogether with better tactical training.
I don't really want to pay an expert bullshido consultant for a week of intensive training either. The situational awareness and tactics you describe are by far the most important element of martial arts.
Of course you know I'm going to steal Bullshido!
That is what I will name the article that will hopefully cover the details behind Into the Sun, which has prompted numerous questions in e-mails, on the site, and in person.