Combat: “Kill Or Be Killed” 1943 War Department World War II US Army Training Film 10min

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“Fighting Men: Kill or Be Killed – Department of Defense. Department of the Army… This military training film shows that there are no rules of sportsmanship or fair play on the battlefield. As expressed in the film: ‘Anything goes when the stakes are kill or be killed.’ Soldiers were encouraged to use any weapon that comes to hand which could be anything from a rifle, to a bayonet or hand grenade.”

US Army training film TF21-1024

Public domain film from the National Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and mild video noise reduction applied.
The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and equalization.

Hand-to-hand combat (sometimes abbreviated as HTH or H2H) is a lethal or nonlethal physical confrontation between two or more persons at very short range (grappling distance) that does not involve the use of firearms or other distance weapons. While the phrase “hand-to-hand” appears to refer to unarmed combat, the term is generic and may include use of striking weapons used at grappling distance such as knives, sticks, batons, or improvised weapons such as entrenching tools. While the term hand-to-hand combat originally referred principally to engagements by military personnel on the battlefield, it can also refer to any personal physical engagement by two or more combatants, including police officers and civilians.

Combat within close quarters (to a range just beyond grappling distance) is commonly termed close combat or close-quarters combat. It may include lethal and nonlethal weapons and methods depending upon the restrictions imposed by civilian law, military rules of engagement, or personal ethical codes. Close combat using firearms or other distance weapons by military combatants at the tactical level is modernly referred to as close quarter battle. The U.S. Army uses the term combatives to describe various military martial art combat systems used in hand-to-hand combat training, systems which may incorporate hybrid techniques from several different martial arts and combat sports…

Sometimes called close combat, Close Quarters Combat, or CQC, World War II-era American combatives were largely codified by William Ewart Fairbairn and Eric Anthony Sykes. Also known for their eponymous Fairbairn-Sykes fighting knife, Fairbairn and Sykes had worked in the Shanghai Municipal Police (SMP) and helped teach police officers as well as units of the U.S. Marine Corps and the Royal Marines a quick and effective and simple technique for fighting with or without weapons in melee situations. Similar training was provided to British Commandos, the Devil’s Brigade, OSS, U.S. Army Rangers and Marine Raiders. Fairbairn at one point called this system Defendu, and later publishing an instructional training manual on the system. Defendu was later revised into a method of “quick kill” hand-to-hand combat training for soldiers by Fairbairn which he called “gutter fighting”. The Fairbairn system was adopted and expanded by a U.S. military close combat instructor, Rex Applegate, for training U.S. military and paramilitary forces. Similar training was provided to British Commandos, the Devil’s Brigade, OSS, U.S. Army Rangers and the Marine Raiders. Applegate would later describe this method of training in his own book, Kill or Get Killed.

Other combat systems having their origins in military combat include European Unifight, Chinese Sanshou, Soviet/Russian sambo and Rukopaschnij Boj, Israeli Kapap and Krav Maga and Indian Bison System. The prevalence and style of hand-to-hand combat training often changes based on perceived need. Elite units such as special forces and commando units tend to place higher emphasis on hand-to-hand combat training.

Although hand-to-hand fighting was accorded less importance in major militaries after World War II, insurgency conflicts such as the Vietnam War, low intensity conflict and urban warfare have prompted many armies to pay more attention to this form of combat. When such fighting includes firearms designed for close-in fighting, it is often referred to as Close Quarters Battle (CQB) at the platoon or squad level, or Military Operations on Urban Terrain (MOUT) at higher tactical levels…