Why my fascination with the WWII crowd? OK!
Here is the inside dirty laundry!
Back in the 1990’s I wrote an article for some magazine and I cannot recall which one. It might have been Black Belt, and for interest they asked me to hit upon a few different topics and talking points and they asked me to make sure I talked about Rex Applegate! OK, I said. I spoke well of him.
In this article, I was quite proud that so much of the military, WWII combatives material came from two cops, Shanghia’s Sykes and Fairbairn. Being an ex-cop, I felt like that was quite an accomplishment. I said something in this article like… “remember, it all came from just cops.” Words like that. It was a message that the world had better listen to us “little-old” cops about fighting because we know some things. Hurray for the police for having all this effect-was my message.
I immediately got a little hate mail. Who was I to even dare to write about Rex Applegate?…was the theme. (Actually, Tom Barnhart and I have met Applegate and have spoken with him, a total of maybe three hours. Tom much longer. We grilled him on many subjects. Months later, he died.)
A few years later I was cruising the internet and came upon a article actually titled-“Just Cops.” It was about the positive accomplishments of Sykes and Fairbairn. I thought maybe someone had picked up the ball I started and ran with it. I read the whole thing, thought it was interesting, and never thought about it again. (Little did I realize that the article was actually written in retaliation to me.)
Then through the years later I discovered that I was literally hated by some WWII followers. Some of my certified instructors, who also did WWII systems, sent me letters of resignation, along with apologies, as they were forced by social pressures to disavow me. One WWII guy went absolutely berserk on a popular forum, tearing me apart. It was so full of hatred, curses and inexcusable remarks they banned him from that forum and others.
I began to get coustic emails informing me that I couldn’t/shouldn’t use the word combatives because I was not an official, WWII Sykes/Fairbairn practitioner. “You do not do Close Quarter Combatives,” they warned me, “it must come from Sykes and Fairbairn.”
This ugliness went all the way down to New Zealand. I was mysteriously baffled about the sheer hatred. I just had to chalk it up to typical business competition. I seem to fall in and out of the graces of many groups through time. But usually I can put a finger on the problem. This time I couldn’t.
Then someone sent in an email to my friend Steve Zorn a few years ago and quoted to him the sole, out-of context, excised words from that 10-year-old article calling Sykes and Fairbairn “just cops.” Hock said this! Hock said this! He dared call them “just cops.” Zorn told him I meant exactly the opposite. But…it was way too late!
When Zorn told me this, I then I realized that years ago, some insecure knucklehead, (possibly the aforementioned, banned guy?) had misunderstood, misconstrued or purposely changed the meaning of the article by excising that one phrase or line, and then gone on a internet world wind telling every WWII guy on the planet that I had talked bad about their heroes. From Zorn's converstaion, I then understood the "Just Cops" web article, the resignations, the resentments-everything.
And just a month ago, in a foreign country, a man told one of my instructors at a seminar that he simply could not forgive “Hock for calling Sykes and Fairbairn
just cops.” Our man tried to explain to him what I have said here...
a) It was complimentary, positive story.
b) Least we forget
-I am an ex-cop- I am proud of them and that they had such a positive effect. To call them “just cops” in bad way is too call me “just a cop” and belittle me!
I don’t know what insecure bubblehead started all this lasting trouble for me. He was either too stupid to understand the entire article, or too insecure and afraid someone else might be able to talk about his gods instead of him? Maybe I insulted them by not declaring Sykes and Fairbairn super cops! And by saying
just cops instead of
super cops I made people 10 years worth of mad? Ten and still counting…I just don’t know.
Still, my name, courses or anything about me is still banned conversation on many WWII talk forums. Which is fine. I don't fit. I do an evolved version of things 60 years old. Anyway, since then, I am mildly fascinated by what motivates the core WW II people. Most of them could care less about me one way or the other. But there lurks a few…
No doubt I will receive more hate mail from this. (
HockHoch@aol.com) and I will be happy to share the immature babbling with you here as it comes sailing in, hit and miss…in WWII-like sorties, quite unlike the modern, precision bombing we have evolved into here in the 21st Century.
(Sorry, I guess we'll try to get back to the gun topics ASAP)
Hock
