The Last Warrior Knight of England

I enjoy listening to the Moth on NPR on Sunday evenings. This evening a Londoner read his story about holding off a violent intruder who was breaking into his home. Now the United Kingdom is very strict on firearms ownership. Therefore, this man didn’t have recourse to firearms like we do in the United States for home defense. The guy wasn’t totally unarmed however. He had once collected historical swords. Although he divested himself of the majority of his cutlery, he still possessed a Napoleonic era cavalry saber.

The burglar had picked up a length of wood from a pile of timbers in his back garden. So it shaped up to be quite a fight. Fortunately, the drugged up burglar didn’t like the sound of the blade ringing as it was drawn from the scabbard, and turned about fleeing for the garden again. Worried that the burglar was doing damage in his garden, the householder took his sword outside. The burglar suddenly gathered his fortitude, returned with the length of wood, and proceeded to attack this man with a nineteenth century cavalry saber.

Now most collectors tend to learn how to use the items they collect, and this householder was no different. Even though the blade was a ceremonial parade sword with no edge, a meter and a half of Sheffield steel in the hands of a reasonably competent wielder can do enormous amounts of damage to the unarmored human body, and no burglar in Britain feels the need to wear body armor. So this man’s main worry was how to not do enormous damage to the burglar while all the while appearing to try to do just that, for the purpose of intimidation.

The incident was reported in an international magazine, the householder was severely criticized for holding back his lethal hand. The criticism came from the United States (the most bloodthirsty place West of the Jordan River). Some Americans questioned the man’s courage. Let me tell you from experience, it takes real courage to stand before a man bent on doing you serious bodily harm, knowing fully how to end his life with little effort, and not kill. Anyone can take a life. A real warrior can preserve it.

The United States Marine Corps is trying to teach this concept to the young men and women who enlist in the Corps through the Marine Corps Martial Arts Program (MCMAP). They are calling this the philosophy of the Ethical Warrior. It is a good philosophy to hold in all human conflict. Many, even most, Marines ignore it from day to day when bragging about the lethality or destructiveness of the Marine Corps to their civilian friends. But I want to brag about the fact that Marines are being trained to fight to preserve life, not end it.

My hat is off to this British man for his clearheaded courage in a stressful situation. He never said if he had any military training. But I see him as a true warrior after the tradition of the British knights of the Twelfth Century. In the words of my own warrior tradition, OORAH!