Close Quarter Combat: CQC
Since I will be referring a lot to the close quarter combat system of W.E. Fairbairn and Rex Applegate, I decided to give an intro to these to great soldiers. Their lives and training are easily found on the net, so I won’t repeat it all here.
For details about these men and these wartime clips, click on the title or the "read more" button.
I know Wikipedia is unreliable, but in this case, it will get us on our way as a start.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_E._Fairbairn
William Ewart Fairbairn (1885-1960) was a soldier, police officer, and exponent of hand-to-hand combat methods for the Shanghai police between the World Wars, and allied special forces in World War II.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rex_Applegate
Colonel Rex Applegate (1914-1998) worked in the Office of Strategic Services where he trained allied special forces in close-quarter combat during World War II.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Strategic_Services
The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was a United States intelligence agency formed during World War II. It was the wartime intelligence agency and was the predecessor to the Central Intelligence Agency.
Of the many books these two have written about combat systems etc, I have, as yet, only reviewed one, Get Tough by Lt. Co. Fairbairn: Get Tough
Fairbairn called his first system of defense, Defendu, and someone has created a Defendu channel on YouTube. It contains three WWII clips of cqc training, perhaps at the secret training camp in Ontario called Camp X. This link contains an invaluable resource of Canadian war time history.
1. Close Combat - Weapon Retention, Prisoner Marching
2. Close Combat - Gun and Knife Disarms
3. Fairbairn Teaching the OSS.
(The masks would indicate that these soldiers are being trained for behind the lines, undercover covert ops.)
These are enduring examples of the cqc system and attitude.
