In
Vietnam, I had a fight with a sergeant in our company quarters one
evening, we all called him Crusher, after the infamous, wrestler, and
madman, "The Crusher," he was per near six foot tall, blond short hair,
and muscular, looked like a gorilla, as did the sergeant, they could
have been twin brothers, except for the age difference; perhaps of
Polish or Irish stock. We both had enough malt produced barleycorn in
us, this one evening, both half drunk, thereabouts. He told his friend I
used a trick when we fought one another in tearing off my opponents
face with my long fingernails, his face.
I had blocked his big
burley muscular fists, and forearms, and at each thrust, I had moved
quick enough to out maneuver him: I tried blow after blow to his face,
and torso, but they bounced off him, like rubber, as if he was a
danseur, nor did my elbows into his ribs move him one bit, and a good
solid kick to the groin did little to nothing, he had a cast iron,
whatever. And so I came to the conclusion, I couldn't beat him any other
way, and thus, I was limited to my selection of attacks, I had used
them all up, so I warped my body likened to wringing a wet rag dry, to
gain momentum, jumped up about five inches into the air, and on my way
down like a cat with his talon sticking out of his paws, my thorn like
fingernails multitudinously swept across his face, like hard nails
scratching through sandpaper, and he yelled bloody murder, and fell back
a foot! His face was damaged. And the fight was over, and the fight was
a draw.
It was no trick, not really, that was the purpose for the
long nails and the jump, and two years of karate practice; and if it
was a trick, it was a learned one for just that occasion, because I
never had to reuse this so called 'trick'; a strategy I prefer to call
it. And I consider that trick as legal as any kick in the groin, or
punch to the face or ribs, although sober I might not have used that so
called 'trick' I might not have thought of it. And here he was
sixty-pounds heavier than me, and three inches to four inches taller
than me, which was to his advantage-what did he expect-that was his
trick, he thought he could bully?
