Kill Or Get Killed: A Manual of Hand-to-Hand Fighting

Kill or Get Killed by Col. Rex Applegate has always been considered one of the most influential books on close-quarters combat ever published. But most readers are familiar only with the revised 1976 edition, with the distinctive red cover. Few have had the opportunity to study the extremely rare 1943 edition, written as America and its Allies were fighting desperately across Europe and in the Pacific. Now, serious students of the evolution of modern battlefield skills have access to this combat classic. The original flap copy best captures the conception, spirit and intent of the book:

The grim reality of the present World War expressed in the title of this book is the best explanation for the fact that it has been written . . . Accepting as hard necessity the kind of war this is, there remains for us but one course: to be tougher and more dangerous than the enemy . . . This is not a book about "self-defense." It is a book about an increasingly important aspect of war as it exists today's offensive fighting at close quarters, with and without weapons. It is a book intended to be itself a weapon: a weapon to kill enemies and to save the lives of our own men that they may kill more enemies. That is what "total war" means: that is the challenge that our soldiers must meet.

When Kill or Get Killed was first released, British Army Capt. Eric A. Sykes - veteran of the Shanghai Municipal Police and one of Applegate's earliest instructors - wrote, "It is the first book, as far as my knowledge goes, to deal with the subject on sensible lines and without doubt will replace what I can only describe and always think of as peace-time methods."