Style of the Week I: Defendu

Not long ago I was reading the book A Perfect Hell, John Nadler's history of the First Special Service Force. The FSSF was a joint American-Canadian force that pioneered a lot of the methods and organization of the special forces that were established later in the U.S. military. The Germans bestowed the name schwarzer teufel (black devil) on the FSSF soldiers, because they operated at night and were rarely seen.

The training of the FSSF included a style of hand-to-hand combat called defendu. Defendu was developed by William E. Fairbairn for the Shanghai Municipal Police between the World Wars. His protege Pat O'Neill taught the style to the FSSF members at their training base in Helena, Montana. Defendu was based on jujutsu, but apparently pared down to basic and deadly strikes that would allow someone with relatively little training to disable an attacker. Defendu was not a martial art that could be learned for sport fighting-- it's method were all about inflicting serious, disabling damage.

Fairbairn's original book on Defendu is apparently still available, but he later apparently wrote an updated version and renamed the book Scientific Self Defense. There's an excellent article on Fairbairn and Defendu by on gutterfighting.org.