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While fighting the Japanese during World War II, the Americans believed that their
enemies had skillful martial arts expertise and guarded cultural secrets in their fighting style.
The military then sought help from several martial artists such as boxers,
wrestlers, and even knife-fighters, to teach hand-to-hand combat to American soldiers.
Still, there was one eccentric personality that stood out among them:
François D’Eliscu. Both a piercing intellectual and a fierce warrior,
D’Eliscu’s mentality changed the way soldiers trained in the US.
He once wrote: (QUOTE) “Our enemies have been toughened,
seasoned, and experienced to jungle fighting for a long time. They have been preparing for
war - we have been enjoying a Utopian peace of mind. [...] The French learned this too late.”
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Learning the Ropes
Milton François Eliscu was born in New York to a French businessman and a Romanian mother
on November 10, 1895. His younger brother, Edward, became a famous Hollywood songwriter
who later portrayed the young François as: (QUOTE) “an introverted, buck-toothed loner.”
While working at a public library in Harlem, François was beaten up and returned home with
torn clothes and a bleeding forehead. The incident would affect him immensely.
François then signed up for a cross-country race at DeWitt Clinton High School and,
to everybody’s surprise, finished first. He would then join the Savage School for Physical Education
and began forging an entirely different persona, even growing apart from his family.
His transformation went as far as adding a ‘D’ to his last name in true French nobility fashion.
The young man graduated in 1917 and was a high school football coach until joining the US Army.
His brother would later recall seeing him at
a military parade: (QUOTE) “marching as though the war depended upon him alone.”
Though he didn’t fight during World War I, François supervised sporting activities at
Fort Gordon in Georgia. When the war ended, he returned to studying and got a bachelor's
degree in Education and a master’s in Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, then another
master’s in Science from Columbia University, and finally a doctorate from New York University.
While D’Eliscu continued his coaching duties at several collegiate sports,
he also had a side career as a radio personality, hosting daily exercise programs.
Once, he almost lost his life while attempting to host an episode from the bottom of the ocean.
One of his weighted shoes came off and the current nearly dragged him away.
He recounted that: (QUOTE) “When I came up, I found out that everybody
thought I was dead. It seems that the main tube from the microphone broke,
and I was there talking away, and all that came out for the broadcast was glug-glug-glug-glug.”
In the late 1920s, François moved to Honolulu, where he managed the Olympic swim team that
included star swimmer Johnny Weissmuller. He then traveled to Tokyo along with the swim team
and was invited to judo exhibitions. He gave a demonstration of Western wrestling techniques and
then asked the head of the school to teach him some of their most complicated holds in return.
The teacher then taught him many tricks that
we would pass on to American soldiers for over a decade.
Fighting Techniques
D’Eliscu was over 40 when World War II broke out,
but he rejoined the military to train elite Army Rangers in Fort Meade, Maryland.
François was 5 feet 5 tall and weighed 136 pounds, and thus became known as ‘The Little Professor.’
He also had a shiny balding head, an intense gaze, swift gestures, and a brawny constitution.
His favorite weapon was an innocuous 6-foot-long sash cord which became a lethal
object in his hands. François would develop over two dozen techniques for strangulation
and predicted that a cord like his own would one day be part of the soldiers’ standard equipment.
One of his standard moves was to kick the enemy on the belly
and quickly tie the cord around his knees while he was on the ground,
then loop the rest to his neck and leave the subject to strangle himself.
The process could even be sped up by sitting on the enemy’s face and pushing his knees forward.
According to D’Eliscu, there were no rules and no clean fighting in actual combat. He wrote: (QUOTE)
“Our attitude and personal feelings in regards to sportsmanship and fair play must be changed.
Strangling and killing are remote from our American Teachings, but not to our enemies.”
Most Americans had probably never known of this type of fighting.
R. P. Harris, a columnist for the Baltimore Evening Sun, stated: (QUOTE)
“Most of us still think of the American soldier as a two-fisted man who wouldn’t
think of hitting below the belt, much less letting fly a kick to the crotch.”
D’Eliscu also created an extreme fitness program.
He pondered that: (QUOTE) “Our soft luxurious living has undermined our physical powers,
and we are now realizing more than ever the need for more vigorous training
in order to carry on the responsibility of command, and leading men into battle.”
Every day, his students had to run for 2 miles and cross a 600-yard obstacle
course that included a challenging 15-foot-deep trap with smooth sides.
The professor could claim that: (QUOTE) “If they can’t get out, let ’em stay there.”
D’Eliscu would be known to step on his trainees’ abdomen to boost fortitude.
There were also uncensored confrontations and bare-knuckle boxing,
and an exercise that required the soldiers to crouch and fight from that position.
And although D’Eliscu liked boxing, he was skeptical about its use on the battlefield.
Instead, he prompted his students to use a range of unorthodox tactics to disable the enemy:
(QUOTE) “Swing your right elbow like this, to crush his windpipe.
Slap him with your other hand. Then follow through with the knee or abdomen.”
In 1943, D’Eliscu was sent to Hawaii, where he
opened another school that was presumably more grueling than the one in Fort Meade
and would prepare the soldiers for the jungles of the Pacific.
The secret training site’s location was never disclosed, but it was somewhere in the mountains.
The school consisted of a three-mile course through the hillsides,
water hazards for navigation maneuvers, walls to climb, and a greased metal slide to run up
before crawling for another half mile. To make the scene more realistic,
the teacher would employ actual flamethrowers and similar hazards:
(QUOTE) “Fire and gas are a little unorthodox, but then, so is war.”
During other exercises, the teams had to repeatedly lift a 1,000-pound log
through a steep hill and engage in fighting drills immediately after.
The students learned to bury explosives and use real guns with live ammunition while in training.
During the first months, there were injuries in the thousands, but D’Eliscu argued that: (QUOTE)
“better to have a few men hurt now, than to have them killed needlessly later.”
R. P. Harris questioned D’Eliscu’s techniques by pointing out that he was far superior in speed,
skill, aptitude, and coordination.
But the Little Professor didn’t excuse himself. He claimed that: (QUOTE) “I went through every
test with the men, never asking them to do a thing I wouldn’t or couldn’t do.”
Legacy
D’Eliscu would briefly put his techniques to
the test during real combat in the Gilbert Islands in November of 1943.
When he and his men were pinned down by Japanese snipers, D’Eliscu fired at one of
them up in a tree. The enemy then fell to the ground, and D’Eliscu swiftly disarmed
and finished him in a blink. He would later receive a Silver Star for his heroic actions.
D’Eliscu returned to the US half a year later and
was then sent to France to organize training courses at Fontainebleau.
While there, he was appointed a member of the Legion of Honor and awarded the Croix de Guerre.
D’Eliscu would go on to publish the book ‘How to Prepare for Military Fitness,’
and the manual ‘Hand to Hand Combat’ about his techniques and individual fighting style.
He also served in Turkey during the Korean War by
training the locals as part of the foreign aid program,
and eventually returned to the US to continue his teaching at Fort Bragg in North Carolina.
D’Eliscu retired from the Army in 1954
and resettled in Siesta Key, Florida, with his wife, where he passed away in 1972.
He would be remembered for changing the Army’s mindset, and his contributions
to hand-to-hand combat would continue to be used and upgraded for decades to come.
As Yank magazine pointed out, thanks to D’Eliscu: (QUOTE) “The Rangers actually
know more about judo than the average Japanese.”
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