Sweat, Exhaustion, Pain

Szolnok, helicopter base, 8 o’clock in the morning. The personnel arrive in front of the gym in a regular military formation. The soldiers in camouflage uniform hold their sneakers in their right hand during the briefing. Half the team starts in the close combat room again, and the others will be sweating in the gym for hours. "Fall out!" – comes the command, and everyone goes to the gyms. A day in hand-to-hand combat camp ’Pegasus’ begins.

As always, the first step is changing shoes because only gym shoes can be worn in the rooms. So boots off, sneakers on, uniforms on hangers: the soldiers already know that soon they will be hot even in their green T-shirts…

While we are waiting for the ’barely’ three-hour morning training to begin (it is worth mentioning that there is also another, similarly long training waiting for the guys in the afternoon) we try to find the exact definition for the expression hand-to-hand combat. According to retired Lieutenant Colonel Dr. Zoltán Zöllei, an internationally recognised expert of Hungarian military hand-to-hand combat, "hand-to-hand combat is a special type of close combat, an engagement between two or more persons with bare hands or cold weapons in changing envirronment, often under extreme circumstances, the purpose of which is the defeat of the enemy and survival." The definition on the close combat-hand-to-hand combat website we also says that "every hand-to-hand combat is close combat, but not every close combat is hand-to-hand combat. Therefore it is necessary to differentiate between the term close combat with infantry weapons, and military hand-to-hand combat with bare hands and tools (so-called cold weapons) based on the techniques of self-defence and martial arts."

While the participating soldiers are busy with the warming-up exercises – the sight of which makes the pulse of an average man race – we engage in a conversation with Lieutenant Colonel Dr. Bálint Varga, the chief of staff of the battalion. He tells me that it is not a coincidence that the two-week camp was named Pegasus, for the winged horse is in the crest of the corps and in the past years it has become the trademark of the battalion. Whenever it is possible, they name their events Pegasus.

– In the life of a military organization the physical preparation of the personnel is especially important, and one of the most emphatic element of this is close combat training. And at the ’light mixed’, as a result of our basic function, we give even more priority to close combat than other corps do – says the lieutenant colonel who also tells me that they organized the first hand-to-hand camp last autumn, it was only a three-day event. But after seeing the success of the camp and the achievements of the troops they decided to have a two-week course next time.

The camp has been organized for the troops of the 25/88 battalion. Eighty soldiers signed up from the combat units – the maneuver companies – but due to various assignments only forty could regularly attend the trainings. Which were held by the instructors of the Military Physical Education and Close Combat Methodology Division of the HDF Central Training Base in Szentendre. Lt.Col. Varga tells me that the aim of the camp is to teach the personnel the fundamental tactics and techniques they can use in a live situation, in the course of hand-to-hand combat. The objective is to disable the enemy, which sounds terrible to an outsider but it is absolutely natural for soldiers… According to plans, there will be a hand-to-hand combat camp in Szolnok next year as well – the chief of staff tells me – where they would like to utilize the experiences of the current course.

In the meantime the intense warming up finishes – it lasted almost half an hour and included every body part and muscle group. There is hardly enough room for twenty-one people – the twenty ’students’ and their instructor – in the close combat room in the basement of one of the buildings, all the windows are open but the air is still heavy with the smell of sweating bodies. "Sweat accompanies a good training" – I remember the favourite line of my one-time sergeant while I’m watching the soldiers facing each other. Their task is to bring the other down to the ground by using various techniques. Bone-cracking holds, huge throws, dynamic trips, soft thumps – what I see would deserve at least a ’rated 12 circle’ if it was a television programme. But this is not television but reality itself, where adversaries try not to cause serious injuries but otherwise they don’t spare each other. I do not envy them, there is a lot of sweat and pain too, of course… Even if it isn’t manifest on their faces most of the time…

The trainer shows a new combination of moves. How can we make our opponent lose his balance? The attack is terribly fast, the ‘outsider’ tries to follow the events but all he sees that the one who just tried to attack is now laying on the ground with his arms twisted behind his back and a face distorted by pain.

– It is not magic, it can be learned easily – says Second Lieutenant Sándor Zagyva, the training officer of the Central Training Base in Szentendre. His duty is to teach the techniques of ground fight to the participants during the hand-to-hand combat camp. In other words, he teaches them how to bring the opponent down to the ground with the help of various methods, for example throws and trips. Once he is down, it is easier to disable him.

In the opinion of the young staff officer ground fight used in hand-to-hand combat borrowed its moves from wrestling and judo, therefore those who are good at these two sports can be winners in the battlefield as well. It is not a coincidence that he has been assigned the task of teaching ground fight, since Lieutenant Zagyva took up wrestling more than twenty years ago. Since then, he has won a silver and a bronze medal in the Hungarian championship and was a member of the national team. Then he joined the army and with his trainer’s diploma he teaches the techniques of hand-to-hand combat to soldiers

In the gymnasium of the corps the guys are practicing hitting and kicking tecniques. Their trainer is Sergeant Tamás Tar, who is a non-commissioned training officer at the Military Physical Education and Close Combat Methodoloty Division in Szentendre and besides that, he is a world champion and has a brown belt in kempo.

– We try to teach the participants various types of standing combat. In other words, how to overcome the enemy with one’s bare hands or with the help of stabbing weapons. These techniques cannot be linked to a single branch of martial arts, they borrow elements from a number of them – says the sergeant, then he shows the guys another combination. He helps every pair, corrects the mistakes. "Try to do your best, a ninety-nine per cent performance is not enough!" – he is inspiring the guys, who really try to comply with the orders of the trainer: the fighters of the ’light mixed’ are ’spinning’ faster and faster, they perform the exercises in an almost ecstatic state…

Fortunately, there haven’t been any serious injuries so far. The guys who were treated in the sickroom had minor strains only – adds First Lieutenant Róbert Róka, the physical education officer of the corps and one of the leaders of camp Pegasus, who has been watching the events from the entrance.

With the permission of the ‘two-star’ officer we can talk to one of the pairs in the break between two exercises. Private First Class Árpád Varga and Private Zsolt Rafai are perhaps even a bit happy that they have an ‘unplanned’ rest, but naturally, they say that they can still take the ordeals well. And they don’t need sleeping pills in the evening because the two three-hour trainings wear them out. Árpád used be into martial arts as a civilian, boxing and thai box were the closest to him. In Camp Pegasus he had the opportunity to learn techniques he didn’t know before. As opposed to that, Zsolt started the camp as a ‘zero-kilometer’ student, meaning that he hasn’t been to any type of combatives training before. He said in the past two weeks he has managed to learn the basics on which he can build in the future.

Unfortunately, we have to finish our conversation because Sergeant Tar is looking for the boys. For there is no stopping, the training continues and 11 o’clock, when the morning training finishes, is a long time away …