Let’s see if we can
learn a lesson about toughening up in our own regimens, in our own quarantines,
hell, maybe just in day-to-day living in our often nothing more “jarring” than “Keith,
doesn’t share my opinion. Me sad.”
Our lesson is essentially,
“Go harder, go heavier” in the day-to-day than is expected or asked so
that you may laugh at any obstacle that the opposition or life has to offer.
The Legionnaire
Example
Flavius Vegetius
Renatus offers the following advice for the training of the formidable Roman Legionnaire.
“We are informed by
the writings of the ancients that, among other exercises was that of the post.
They gave the recruits round bucklers woven with willows, twice as heavy as
those used on real service, and wooden swords double the weight of the common
ones. They exercised them with these at the post both morning and afternoon…”—Military
Institutions of the Romans, [AD 378]
[My Rough ‘n’ Tumblers
this very “extra” weight tactic is what is used in The Black Box Project Tomahawk
“Dancing” methodology—and also why we consider mock weapons of lighter
weight so perniciously foolish.]
Renatus goes on to say
in a later passage…
“…this was the
method of fighting used principally by the Romans, and their reason for exercising
recruits with arms of such a weight was, that when they came to carry the
common ones, which were so much lighter, the difference might enable them to
act with greater security and alacrity in time of action.”
We also see this
carried forward to the 21st century special warfare maxim of
“Train Hard, Fight Easy.”
Handsome
Harry’s Red Shirt Tactic
We move along to the
1920s-1930s gangster era. The time of Baby Face Nelson, Pretty Boy Floyd, and the
dashing John Dillinger.
“Handsome” Harry
Pierpont, considered by many to be the real brains and dash behind the Dillinger
gang, seems to be the man who started the so-called “Red Shirt” movement within
Michigan City State Prison.
Any time he was tossed
into the “Hole” for an infraction, for an escape attempt [which was often] he
was left nude, and rations reduced to a loaf of bread per day.
Pierpont made it a
point to joke it up with the guards. Strip as if the unheated cell in northerly
Michigan was a treat. He would sing, tell jokes to himself and the guards outside.
He would purposely not eat the entire loaf of bread provided, tearing off portions
to fashion a pillow.
He observed, the first
three days are hell, but stay game and you settle into a comfortable rhythm.
His tactic was to show indifference or out and out jollity or celebration. This
was a strategy to place the self on a level plain with the guards, it was to
say, “This? Hell, this ain’t nothin’. A walk in the park. Boys.”
Other prisoners began
to take up Pierpont’s example, and those who became good at doing well with
even less than required were called Red Shirts. The origins of the name is unclear.
Here’s Carl Sifakis an
historian of penitentiaries on Red Shirts.
“Their secret was
that they found they were capable of punishing themselves more severely than
the establishment could.”
The
Pugilist Example of Red Shirts
If you are of the
opinion “The old fighters, now They were tough.”
Usually such a thing
is mere opinion, but when it comes from someone of authority who observed
changes in training at the upper echelons, someone like Jimmy DeForest who
trained such legends as Jack Dempsey, Stanley Ketchel, James J. Jeffries, Joe
Gans, George Dixon, Joe Walcott, Kid McCoy, Tommy Ryan, Philadelphia Pal Moore,
Jack Sharkey and Luis Angel Firpo.
I wager Mr. DeForest holds an opinion with a bit of evaluative heft to it.
Let’s turn the floor over to Mr. DeForest.
“[In the early days] the fighters came to the ring properly conditioned to
do their best for the particular distance they were required to go—six, eight,
ten, or fifteen rounds. For the most part they were fighters toughened by far
more rigorous training methods than are employed today, and able to battle hard
for fifteen rounds and be fresh at the finish.
“There were no ‘hot-house’ fighters a generation ago. The men didn’t have the
money for expensive camps and imported chefs. They trained in cold barns, and
when they wanted a shower, they stood under a big can in which holes had been
punched while someone poured in a bucket of cold water from above. Rigorous
treatment, but it made tough bodies. Men would go fifteen, twenty, and
twenty-five rounds and show scarcely a mark afterwards. Nowadays blood flows
freely in almost every six round go.”
Mr. DeForest penned
those words in 1930. This before the age of air-conditioning [or “air-cooling”
as it was termed then], efficient heating, or anything that we encounter in
even the least well-equipped commercial gym of today.
Imagine how much more
shade he would throw at today’s training environments.
In essence, he discusses the Legionnaire method, the red shirt method, you want
tough? Do more than is asked. Do more than is expected. Do so with a dashing
Harry Pierpont smile and easy laugh.
“I’m fine
out here, Ma’am.”
There are countless
tales in the historical record of woodsmen, rangers, pathfinders, go-getters of
all sorts who when they come across habitation are glad for the company and any
hospitality offered but often, there is still a reticence from these stalwart
folks to go all in with a wallow in luxury.
Often, after chopping
wood in barter for a meal, an offer to throw a bedroll down near the fire would
be greeted with, “Thank you, I’m fine out here, Ma’am.”
Whether this was politeness,
or a decision to always stay a bit Red Shirt hardened I cannot say, but it
occurs enough that one cannot help but think that there is indeed a bit of liberating
strategy in the hearty embracing of the tough.
It is an attitude seemingly
embodied by this toss off comment from James-Younger outlaw, Bob Younger…
“We are rough men
used to rough ways.”
From Legionnaires, to
Red Shirts, to the Wild Cat Lean & Men Boxers of Yore, and back again to outdoorsmen—Good
and Outlaw, the embracing of the extra mile in tough renders what is to come a
bit less than it may be.
And it is not a pose
of tough, it is a true toughness embodied in a relaxed convivial “Me? I’m
fine, this ain’t nothin’. How you doin?”
This charming Red
Shirt of toughness might not be a bad fit. A worthy goal of slimming down and
fitting into and wearing it with relaxed but toughened pride.
[For more Rough& Tumble
history, Indigenous Ability hacks, and for pragmatic applications of old school
tactics historically accurate and viciously verified see our RAW/Black Box Subscription Service.]
Or our brand-spankin’ new podcast The Rough and Tumble Raconteur
available on all platforms.
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