“...eyes and hands first. Impaired vision and slippery hands....”
After his stint in the USMC in the battle of Okinawa and China occupation, my father finished out his service as a hand-to-hand combat instructor at Great Lakes Naval Station.
As a kid growing up, he spent a lot of time showing me how to fight and defend myself because I was smaller than most boys my age. One of the first things he taught was what you said: blinded eyes, broken bones & slippery hands.
FWIW, many times, he tried to get me to actually slash & stab him with a knife....you could forget it....he would take it and mock kill ya with it so fast it would make your head swim. I guess practice makes perfect, and Uncle Sam’s USMC meant serious business back then: Kill or be killed.
:) After my first couple of schoolyard scraps, nobody messed with that “little kid” anymore. He taught me well, and I kept quietly to myself never starting trouble...and do so even to this day at the ripe old age of 69.
Hw sounds like a wonderful instructor and Father.
I told a retired Drill Instructor that “my Daddy taught me how to fight with a knife.” Dad was a corporal in the III Amphibious Corps Signal Battalion, and landed on Okinawa. I gave some detail of what I had learned.
The DI laughed and said, “Your Dad did NOT teach you how to fight with a knife. He taught you how to kill a man with a knife!
So true...