The Power of a Knife by T.M

I’d like to tell you guys a true story about how knives have saved my life. Now I know what your thinking. “What did you single handedly take out an entire unit of taliban with just a knife and a ferro rod ?”. Or maybe its “Did you save a dashing blonde from the arms of a criminal, while you where being held hostage at gun point, with a knife throw from fifty feet?”. While that would make a good book/movie/ drunk guy at the bar war story, this isn’t one of those. My story is gonna start at the age of 21, when I deployed to Iraq as an infantryman. We arrived in the beginning of 2006 and Iraq was still a very dangerous place to be for US military personnel. In fact our first mission that my team ran, was just a simple escort our battalion commander from the main base where we landed, to the forward operating base from which we will be living and operating from for the next year. On the way to the base our Stryker vehicle( an armored tank like vehicle, that has 8 wheels instead of tracks, and carries a squad sized element inside) was hit by an EFP( explosively formed projectile) road side bomb. Luckily whoever placed the IED, aimed it slightly to high and nobody was killed, but a few us sustained some pretty bad injuries and our vehicle was out of commission. A terrible way to start your first mission in Iraq…Through the whole tour many things like that took place, since our job was to kill or capture high value targets. Of course the insurgents viewed my unit as a threat and did everything possible to kill as many of us as they could…Fast forward 7 years later to me getting out of the service and having many tours like that one in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Now you have a guy that was use to combat and the military life and I had no idea what to do in the civilian world. I had trouble relating to my old friends and pretty much anyone else so I became a recluse. Soon I became very depressed, had horrible nightmares from what I seen and did and turned to drugs and alcohol. I had trouble keeping a steady relationship with my girlfriend and my life just got on this spiral downwards fast.I lost all my friends because of my behavior. I lost a relationship with my ex girlfriend and couldnt see my daughter because of it. Had no money left, and lost my job.I was alone and broke and addicted to drugs and had to move back in with my parents…One day I was watching a Youtube video from just searching around there and came across a guy that was talking about bushcrafting skills and the importance of the tools you need to survive in the outdoors. For some reason this really caught my interest and I started to look for these tools for myself to start practicing these skills. I started scrounging around the garage for old tools I could use. It really gave me something positive to start doing as a hobby and I soon after I quit doing the drugs and alcohol and became focused on that…. Now one of the most important tools to have doing that is a knife. This really peaked my interest and I wanted to learn all there was to know about knives. From the different knife makers, to the different types of steel, and all the variations of grinds, etc..I started to think about the knives I carried overseas like the Spyderco Tenacious, and CRKT Hissastsu and how they got used alot more then my machine gun did. So that let me see just how important knives really where. I now recently just started designing and making my own knives and want to start my own business with it…So to sum my story up I really can say that knives have saved my life. Here are some pictures of my first knife I ever tried to make. I took an old kitchen knife and turned it into a skinning knife/utility knife. Thanks for taking the time to read my story.