1ak... here's a pretty good link on E.A. Sykes (click on top link for PDF version), a guy as mysterious and enigmatic today as is Fairbairn.
http://72.14.209.104/search?q=cache:5OA4m5T9UQAJ:www.manfamily.org/PDFs/EA%2520Schwabe%2520Essay.pdf+eric+anthony+sykes&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us
The life and times of Sykes seems to begin and end in mystery...
All that anyone seems to know (or is written about in books) is that he was Fairbairn�s Instructor partner � one half designer of the famed F-S Fighting knife and an Instructor to Special Forces and Secret Agents during World War Two.
As a researcher into the Combative Arts and their Instructors I firmly believe that none of the Instructors suddenly appeared out of �no-where� to serve the Allies in their time of need.
Their service was given freely, of much use and many of the trainee�s who undertook Instruction by those much needed persons stated that that owed their very lives to their teachings.
With this in mind whenever I research an Instructor I ask myself the questions: who was this man, where did he come from, why have we allowed his memory to be so dishonoured that we know so little about them to this day?...
I cannot allow let the memory and life�s work of Eric Anthony Sykes and his teachings to fade into the obscurity it has met thus-far, to not allow his legacy the respect and debt of thanks it deserves would be criminal.
On the same topic, some years back there was a British website that offered free in pdf format Syke's and Fairbairn's knife-fighting manual, complete with illustrations of where to cut an opponent to best inflict debilitating wounds. IIRC the pdf file was later taken down, according to the website at the request of Fairbairn's surviving family members.
It seems reasonable to conclude that this preference for anonymity was also characteristic of Fairbairn himself, and which may account for why it was a full 45 years after his death before a biography appeared.
One thing is for sure, with their at that time rare first-hand knowledge of Asian martial arts combined with an expertise in the use of firearms that was well ahead of their times, both Sykes and certainly Fairbairn were likely man for man, among the most lethally capable warriors the world has ever produced.
The British Empire has produced no shortage of "Gentlemen" skilled in brutality over the years, of the sort entering such units as the Black and Tans in Ireland during some of the same years that Sykes and Fairbairn were in Shaghai. I had been wondering if Fairbairn and Sykes were cut from the same cloth.
The evidence I hae read thus far indicates to the contrary, that both Fairbairn and Sykes were moral men, in short, numbered among the good guys
Birdwatcher
