Blade Use by Soldiers.

[arnisador]

These are stories on knife, sword, or bayonet use by soldiers, but are not necessarily related to the FMA.

Salvadoran soldiers praised for Iraq role (http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20040503-115511-7092r.htm)

An soldier from El Salvador uses a knife in combat. "In one of the only known instances of hand-to-hand combat in the Iraq conflict, Cpl. Toloza stabbed several attackers swarming around a comrade."

War 'not over' in southern Iraq (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/3731635.stm)

A 2004 story on the British actually using bayonets in the war in Iraq:




The British returned fire and in the end they mounted old fashioned frontal assaults - their troops even fixed bayonets, the first time they have carried out a "bayonet charge" since the Falklands war in 1982.
It is an indication of how bloody the "war" here has become. This is sometimes brutal, almost hand-to-hand fighting.

[arnisador]

Canadian Soldier Injured by Ax-Wielding Afghan Youth (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/05/international/asia/05cnd-afghan.html?ex=1143003600&en=63f11a6998a4875b&ei=5070)
Second Canadian soldier dies of injuries in Afghanistan (http://www.thepeninsulaqatar.com/Display_news.asp?section=World_News&subsection=Philippines+%26+South+Asia&month=March2006&file=World_News200603061358.xml)

These are both stories about an attack against a Canadian lieutenant by an Afghan youth.

[Rich Parsons]

Canadian Soldier Injured by Ax-Wielding Afghan Youth (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/05/international/asia/05cnd-afghan.html?ex=1143003600&en=63f11a6998a4875b&ei=5070)
Second Canadian soldier dies of injuries in Afghanistan (http://www.thepeninsulaqatar.com/Display_news.asp?section=World_News&subsection=Philippines+%26+South+Asia&month=March2006&file=World_News200603061358.xml)

These are both stories about an attack against a Canadian lieutenant by an Afghan youth.

These and other stories were covered by the Canadian Press while I was in Canada a few weeks a go. I really like the Canadian Press. They give you the data, and not afraid to show some emotion, as in upset about a death or happy about someone living. They also have and deliver good natured stories about their troops in Iraq and Afganistan.

[arnisador]

At Dusty Outpost in Iraq, Cake Is Cut for Marines Young and Not So Young (http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/11/world/middleeast/11marines.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1)



Five times, the cakes were cut with bayonets and pieces handed out.
Lance Cpl. Elijah D. Henry, from North Carolina, came for his cake. He wore a big knife. Its handle was carved from the antlers of the first deer he killed, a six-point whitetail he shot at his uncle’s deer camp in southern Georgia.

He is half Irish and half Cherokee. In his pocket was a small leather bag with more charms, 100-year-old tobacco — grown by the oldest living Cherokee, he said — along with a pinch of sage, a ruby, dirt from every country he has ever visited and a shell from the 21-gun salute for his late grandfather, who was a P.O.W. in World War II.

[arnisador]

U.S. Marine discharged over Iraqi soldier's death (http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=200880113003)



A U.S. Marine convicted of negligent homicide in the 2006 stabbing death of an Iraqi soldier was sentenced on Friday to a bad-conduct discharge and reduced in rank to private.

An older story on this;
U.S. Investigating Marine in Iraqi Policeman’s Death (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/20/world/worldspecial/20iraq.html?ref=world)


A United States marine is at the center of an American military investigation into the death on Monday of an Iraqi policeman from what appears to have been a knife fight between the men at a base jointly staffed by American and Iraqi forces in Anbar Province, a military spokesman said.
[...]
While emphasizing that the investigation is still “in the initial stages,” Major Pool said that “the incident appears to have resulted from an argument escalating into a physical altercation.” In e-mailed responses to questions on Wednesday night, he said the marine and Iraqi policeman each received “knife wounds.” The policeman “died from his wounds,” Major Pool said, and the marine was eventually taken to a military hospital for treatment, though his wounds were not life-threatening.
[...]
A military jury at Camp Pendleton in California convicted Lance Corporal Holmes, a 22-year-old from Indianapolis, on Dec. 13 of negligent homicide and making a false official statement over the stabbing death of the Iraqi soldier, Munther Jasem Muhammed Hassin. But he was acquitted of the more serious charge of unpremeditated homicide after his lawyers argued that he had acted in self-defense after getting into a fight because the Iraqi had exposed them to sniper fire by opening his cellphone and lighting a cigarette.

[arnisador]

Turning Tables, U.S. Troops Ambush Taliban With Swift and Lethal Results (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/17/world/asia/17afghan.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=stabbed&st=cse)


Sergeant Reese gave his rifle to another sniper to cover him while he tried to cut away a Taliban fighter’s ammunition pouches with a four-inch blade. The fighter had only been pretending to be dead, the soldiers said. He lunged for Sergeant Reese, who stabbed him in the left eye.

Also, about the Maersk Alabama:
Ship’s Crew Describes Ordeal of Pirate Attack (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/17/world/africa/17pirates.html?scp=1&sq=stabbed&st=cse)


Instead, most of the crew members secured themselves in a stifling, darkened engine room, where they later managed to lure a young pirate named Abdul. In a scuffle, they stabbed the pirate in the hand and then tied him down.

"I held him, I tied his hands and tied his legs,” the ship’s engineer, A.T.M. Zahid Reza, told The Associated Press in an interview. “He was fighting me."

Describing the confused scene, Mr. Reza said: "There was a lot of yelling shouting and screaming. I was attempting to kill him. He was scared. He said he was planning to ask for $3 million. I told him, ‘You’re a Muslim and I’m a Muslim.’ "

Another crew member, Miguel Ruiz, told The A.P. that when the pirates first boarded the ship, he grabbed a flashlight and a knife and thought to himself, "If I die, I’m going to take someone else with me."

[arnisador]

Stalemate
A single company of U.S. Marines is slugging it out with the Taliban in Afghanistan’s toughest ghost town. The battle shows how limited troop numbers have hurt the war—and why the U.S. is changing its strategy. (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203771904574179672963946120.html)


“I guess way back in the day this used to be a thriving town,” said Lance Cpl. Raymond Cardona, 20, from Ormond Beach, Fla., sharpening his fighting knife recently in a guard post built on the ruins of a small store. He and Lance Cpl. Daniel Wescovich manned a machine-gun-like grenade launcher that can spew explosives into Now Zad at a rate of hundreds per minute.