Don't know anything about the Brit.
Everybody probably should, he’s one of those guys who’s life reads like improbable fiction.
Born in 1885, A Royal Marine at 16, he leaves the Service to take a job policing the means streets of the Shanghai slums and is promptly beaten nearly to death for his trouble. He responds by becoming one of the very few Westerners of his day to study Martial Arts; 25 years under a Japanese juijistu sensei.
Gets to practice what he learned when he was on the job rising through the ranks, also learning from his Chinese and Sikh policemen. More than 500 altercations, many involving knives, more than sixty involving firearms.
Develops the first modern system of combat handgun training, also teams up with a former British big game hunter named Eric Anthony Sykes to for the first de-facto SWAT teams and sniper units.
World War II breaks out and he returns to England to train the first Commando squads, him and Sykes designing the famous Sykes-Fairbairn commando dagger.
Him and Sykes have a falling out after Sykes blows the whistle on the then nearly 60 year old Fairbairn’s plans to sneak over to combat in France with his Commando protégés.
Sykes dies of a heart attack, Fairbairn is sent over to Canada to train agents for the Office of Strategic Services, at this time he meets Rex Applegate who will go on to to co-opt many of Fairbairn’s teachings after the war. It was at OSS that Fairbairn impresses a young Navy Lieutenant and future spy novelist; Ian Fleming.
After the war, Fairbairn , still on Her Majesty’s Secret Service, was assigned to Ceylon, IIRC much of the stuff he did is still classified.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_E._Fairbairn
