The collecting of military theater made knives of World War II is one of the fastest growing fields of collecting in America today. These knives are very historical. They were individually handmade by people who wanted to contribute to the war effort, as well as the service men who used them. Most of these knives differ in style and have very colorful handles. This is the only book available that donates its entire contents to the collecting of theater made knives and their values.
This book has the widest array of international fighting knives ever assembled! Compiled by three of the most recognized names in historical military knives, Knives of War presents detailed line drawings, rare historical photos and fascinating facts and anecdotes about the edged weapons used by both sides during World Wars I and II, as well as contemporary fighting knives since World War II. A number of World War II veterans who used these weapons on (or behind) the front lines in elite units enthusiastically shared inside information with the authors, and it is presented here for the first time. Of particular interest is some previously unknown information about the U.S. Marine Raider Gung Ho Knife and the Gerber Mark II Combat Knife, as well as a wealth of details on the most famous fighting knife of all, the Fairbairn-Sykes. Among the other edged weapons examined in this book are big knives; knuckle knives; folding and gravity military knives; bayonet and sword conversions; ceremonial hangers; and trench clubs.
This book is a color celebration of the pocket knives of the United States military, and features both U.S. and foreign-made models. It is a historical chronology beginning with the first folders of the early 1800s and ending with the high-tech knives of the twenty-first century. There are nearly 400 color photographs showing hundreds of different issue pocket knives--single-blade, multi-blade, and multi-tool--including many that have never been shown in a publication before. Clear, up-close images present manufacturers' marks in great detail. This is a book that will be opened time and again just for the pleasure of viewing. It is a book that has something for the beginner as well as the advanced collector and others interested in the cutlery history of the United States military.
Marching armies, cavalry raids, guerilla warfare, massacres, towns and farms in flames—the American Civil War, 1861-1865? No—Kansas, 1854-1861. Before there was Bull Run or Gettysburg, there was Black Jack and Osawatomie. Long before events at Fort Sumter ignited the War Between the States, men fought and died on the Prairies of Kansas over the incendiary issue of slavery. “War to the knife and knife to the hilt,” cried the Atchison Squatter Sovereign. “ Let the watchword be ‘Extermination, total and complete.’” In 1854 a shooting war developed between proslavery men in Missouri and free-staters in Kansas over control of the territory. The prize was whether it would be a slave or free state when admitted to the Union, a question that could decide the balance of power in Washington. Told in the unforgettable words of the men and women involved, War to the Knife is an absorbing account of a bloody episode soon spread east, events in “Bleeding Kansas” have largely been forgotten. But as historian Thomas Goodrich reveals in this compelling saga, what America’s “first civil war” lacked in numbers it more than made up for in ferocity. War to the Knife is a riveting story of blood, fire, and death. It is also a story with an impressive cast of characters: Robert E Lee, William Tecumseh Sherman, Sara Robinson, Jeb Stuart, Abraham Lincoln, Horace Greeley, Julia Lovejoy, William F. Cody. These and more step forward to tell their tale. And casting his long, dark shadow over al is the strange, haunting figure of John Brown—hailed as a prophet by some, denounced as a madman by others.
This first-ever publication offers the reader a colorful and interesting guide to Randall knives spanning WWII, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War, which involved American Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines. Randall Fighting Knives in Wartime contains many never-before-published full color photos of rare Randall-made knives. Pictured alongside the knives is a range of distinctive militaria, separating this book from other publications. A descriptive narrative and specific technical data"" accompanies each photo, linking the Randall knives throughout each war in the book. A Collector's Value Guide rounds out this book, giving the reader an at-a-glance comparison of the value of each knife.""
Knives and military - a topic that interests not just knife collectors and historians. Today many knife manufacturers advertise that their products are used by military forces and special units. With the aid of authentic photos, this book documents for the first time which knives, bayonets and tools are actually carried in action by the soldiers - U.S. Marines and other troops from different countries. The unique photographs that illustrate the book were taken in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Balkans. Dietmar Pohl provides a detailed description of each of the eighty knives that appear in the book, along with technical specs and background information.
From one of the most important army officers of his generation, a memoir of the revolution in warfare he helped lead, in combat and in Washington When John Nagl was an army tank commander in the first Gulf War of 1991, fresh out of West Point and Oxford, he could already see that America’s military superiority meant that the age of conventional combat was nearing an end. Nagl was an early convert to the view that America’s greatest future threats would come from asymmetric warfare—guerrillas, terrorists, and insurgents. But that made him an outsider within the army; and as if to double down on his dissidence, he scorned the conventional path to a general’s stars and got the military to send him back to Oxford to study the history of counterinsurgency in earnest, searching for guideposts for America. The result would become the bible of the counterinsurgency movement, a book called Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife. But it would take the events of 9/11 and the botched aftermath of the Iraq invasion to give counterinsurgency urgent contemporary relevance. John Nagl’s ideas finally met their war. But even as his book began ricocheting around the Pentagon, Nagl, now operations officer of a tank battalion of the 1st Infantry Division, deployed to a particularly unsettled quadrant of Iraq. Here theory met practice, violently. No one knew how messy even the most successful counterinsurgency campaign is better than Nagl, and his experience in Anbar Province cemented his view. After a year’s hard fighting, Nagl was sent to the Pentagon to work for Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, where he was tapped by General David Petraeus to coauthor the new army and marine counterinsurgency field manual, rewriting core army doctrine in the middle of two bloody land wars and helping the new ideas win acceptance in one of the planet’s most conservative bureaucracies. That doctrine changed the course of two wars and the thinking of an army. Nagl is not blind to the costs or consequences of counterinsurgency, a policy he compared to “eating soup with a knife.” The men who died under his command in Iraq will haunt him to his grave. When it comes to war, there are only bad choices; the question is only which ones are better and which worse. Nagl’s memoir is a profound education in modern war—in theory, in practice, and in the often tortured relationship between the two. It is essential reading for anyone who cares about the fate of America’s soldiers and the purposes for which their lives are put at risk.
