Cross Post from the Armour Archive:
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This is purely my opinion, and is not meant as some kind of blanket statement from my Brothers.
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Here’s the bottom line, my friends. What is not evident in the videos is the overall accepted risk, and the level of pure violence necessary to take that particular list field. I love SCA rattan fencing. At its best, it is an elegant martial sport. When it is used to its potential, it can be a vehicle for self-realization and improvement. But you should never have a decent chance of going home in a puff chair.
It should never be a test of fortitude to the level that HMB style combat is. It just shouldn’t. Frankly, we only need one of those, and it should only be used for those who are driven to do so.
To be honest, if you are thinking you want to do this, just “cause it will be fun”, you really need to stop for a second, and think.
Perhaps a few stories will get across the accepted level of risk I am talking about.
It is the first day. Due to not being able to talk any of the languages, the whole USA team had been standing in armor, in the sun, for three hours. My heart rate had been steady at round 150 bpm for at least one of those hours. I had completely lost the ability to shed heat. We wound up being the sixth fight of the day. We had seen three guys get carried off on backboards already, and shuttled off into the three ambulances they had on rotation. The fight just before ours finished, and they moved one of the ambulances to the entrances of the list. The fourth guy they pulled off wasn’t moving…. At all… They were rushing to shove him in the ambulance so they could get it out of the way for us to take the field. You know those gladiator movies, where they plunge the hook into the dead guy to pull him off the arena? Yeah, that’s what it felt like.
I will never forget the look that passed between Brad and Myself. The reality of it slammed home to all of us. They closed the ambulance doors on the unmoving man at arms, and it was our turn…..
In Felix’s first one on one fight, He was fighting a Dane. Felix was doing really well. The fight ended when Felix cut the end of the Dane’s finger off. Later that day, The Dane proudly gave Felix the fingernail from his severed finger as a Martial souvenir, and promised to send him Video of the surgery.
One of the Belarusians, (I think) had his finger cut off. It was hanging on by a flap of skin and the tendon. They did not want to take him in to the hospital for such a minor injury, as they needed it for the “actual” injuries. They set the bone, and sewed it up there in site.
There was blood everywhere. At one point, I looked down on my buckler and it was smeared with blood from God know’s who or what. It became very commonplace for my companions to wash the insides of their helmets to get the blood out, so they could be ready for the next bout.
My dear friend Rudy had his moment in “deep waters”, as three men tried to beat him to his knees. He passed his test, and won the respect of every man at arms there at the cost of a broken shoulder blade, and the muscles literally torn from the bone.
Every time I went out there, I put myself in the hands of the Divine, quite literally. In the last fight, I was beaten unconscious into the dirt for the second time that day. It took much longer for me to wake up the second time. I woke up with a Russian looking at me, smiling, and embracing me as a brother would.
One of us was a hair’s breadth from going to the hospital and having a hole cut in his skull to relieve the pressure.
This has NO PLACE on an SCA battlefield… Period… I never want a requirement for SCA combat to be an up to date Last will and testament.
If you are driven to do this by the Divine, by the rage in you, by your Chivalry, by whatever it is, than use that as fuel, and be tested. For without a doubt, that is what it is.
If all this sounds heavy handed, and melodramatic…… then good. If it makes you stop and think, than it’s done its purpose.
HMB/BoTN rulesets should not be allowed to affect rules of the martial sport of SCA rattan fencing. Now, if it inspires some Future man at arms to seek noble deeds of arms, in whatever context, than THAT is an influence to be wished for.
With Respect and humility
Rob
