Colonel A. J. D. Biddle's Do or Die: A Manual on Individual Combat - Illustrated Edition 1944 (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781474538015)

An all-time classic from 'The Master of the Bayonet' that has, for this revised edition, extensive full-page illustrations featuring Biddle himself, helping to clarify manoeuvres of his version of the deadly art of hand-to-hand combat.

Biddle was a pioneer of bayonet and hand-to-hand combat training in the US Marine Corps. He taught cadets the use of the machete, sabre, dagger and bayonet. He also taught the techniques of jiujitsu and the French punch-and-kick man-killing attack known as savate.

An exceptionally skilled fencer with sabre-type weapons, his 'big knife' techniques are both viable and historically interesting, in that his fencing method differs from the Shanghai method of both Fairbairn and Applegate.

Colonel Biddle's rugged schooling in this wartime manual covers both bayonet and knife fighting, then moves to jiujitsu and the deadly savate techniques, concluding with the intricacies of boxing and the principles of the 'killing shift'.