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Friends,
I am pretty sure I remember in at least one Fleming novel that Bond carries a knife on his person. I'm not talking about FRWL's briefcase knife. I could swear I remember Bond describing the knife he keeps on him, I just can't remember where I read it. Does anyone recall this?
Other than a "Commando" knife of the type made by Wilkinson during the war (read Sykes-Fairbairn) used by Bond to swim to the Isle of Surprise in the novel "Live and Let Die", and a knife he uses to get into the Fish and Bait operation in the same novel, outside of the attache case knives in "From RUssia with Love", Bond really doesn't carry a personal "blade".
However in the SMERSH dossier on Bond, it it noted that he "ocassionally carries a knife strapped to his left forearm"
Which novel referenced the "knife in the heel of his shoe?"
Didn't he keep one stashed in there?
Duh!
I knew I was forgetting something. The heel knife features prominently in "On Her Majesty's Secret Service", I believe it also gets a mention in another of the novels - prehaps "Goldfnger" but too much egg nog is leaving me with a big blank right now!
I'm back home with the family, and while I was packing in Boston I glanced at my paperback copy of OHMSS and didn't take it with me! Curses!
I'll need to check it out when I get back and try to figure out what type of knife it was. I'm guessing flat and thin - stilleto?
I'm willing to bet that Fleming picked this up (stashing it in a shoe) from his intelligence work...
We'll have to figure out how this is possible. Perhaps a heel that slips off, and the blade slides into the area between the bottom of shoe and the outer sole? Sounds like a project for some of our creative members!
It's seems there were more references to Bond carrying/using a knife than I thought. It struck me as very Fleming when Craig pulled out his knife in QOS. That moment made me think back to the novels and those times where Bond carried one. 
That bloddy shoe knife has always given me fits, as Fleming's description do not make clear exactly how the knife is concealed in the shoe.
Wasn't there also a reference in the novels to him being an expert at knife throwing? Maybe in the dossier the enemy had on him in FRWL?
I would love to see that in the next film!
Last edited by Red Indian (28th Dec 2008 23:15)
I am certain that in one of the early novels there is a reference to Bond being an expert with weapons in hand to hand combat and as having great skill with throwing knives.
After watching OHMSS last night, Bond is quite the knife thrower when he enters Draco's office... I decided to check out the OHMSS novel for knife references, and here are some quotes I pulled:
Ch1 -- "James Bond's right hand felt for the comforting knife in his pocket and ran his thumb across
the razor-sharp blade."
Ch4 -- "In Bond, the only warmth was in his contact with her back and his hand on the haft of his knife.
James Bond nursed the knife...
Bond fingered his knife...
Bond's right hand was already grasping the hilt of his knife in his trouser pocket. Now he put out his left hand and, in one swirl of motion, leaped through, kicked the door shut behind him and crouched, the knife held for throwing. Behind him he felt the guard throw himself at the door, but Bond had his back to it and it held. The man, ten feet away behind the desk, within easy range for the knife...
There was a calendar hanging on the wall beside the man. Bond wanted to let off steam against something, anything. He said,' September the sixteenth,' and jerked his right hand forward hi the underhand throw. The knife flashed across the room, missed the man by about a yard, and stuck, quivering, half-way down the page of the calendar. The man turned and looked inquisitively at the calendar. He laughed out loud. 'Actually the fifteenth. But quite respectable. I must set you against my men one of these days. And I might even bet on you. It would teach them a lesson'...
James Bond, to cover his confusion, walked across to the calendar, verified that he had in fact pierced the fifteenth, pulled out the knife and slipped it back in his trouser pocket."
nice reference, but what type of knife? i'm going to assume it to be a folding blade, and that it isnt a diveing knife, probably smooth with no jagged edges for severing a rope, but other then that... fleming is just to vague, as usual. 
Last edited by j.blades (10th Jul 2009 20:46)
The quotes are from OHMSS, the knife is from the heel of Bond's shoe.
yes i know, i was just trying to narrow down what type of knife it may be.
Your imagination is all you have to go on now!
That bloddy shoe knife has always given me fits, as Fleming's description do not make clear exactly how the knife is concealed in the shoe.
Bond's knife also features quite prominently in 'Golfinger'. Bond prepares himself on two occassions for close quarters combat by transfering the knife from his shoe heel to his belt. The first time when the fake Red Cross train enters the Fort Knox area and the second time when he sets out to stab the perspex window beside Odd Job's head, forcing the plane into an emergency landing in the end.
Fleming gives a somewhat hazy description when Bond takes stock of his situation after waking up in Goldfinger's New York headquarter:
"He got up, conquering dizziness, and took a few steps in the room. He had been lying on a ship's type bunk with drawers under it. The only other furniture in the room was a plain deal table and an upright wooden chair. Everything was clean, functional, Spartan. Bond knelt to the drawers under the bunk and opened them. They contained all the contents of his suitcase except his watch and gun. Even te rather heavy shoes he had been wearing on his expedition to Enterprises Auric were there. He twisted one of the heels and pulled. The broad doublesided knife slid smoothly out of its scabbard in the sole. With the fingers wrapped round the locked heel it made a workmanlike stabbing dagger. Bond verified that the other shoe held its knife and clicked the heels back into position."
When Bond prepares for whatever he has to face in Fort Knox (he cannot know his message has been delivered to Leiter) he uses the train's lavatory:
"Once inside, Bond took off his right shoe, slid out the knife and slipped it down inside the waist-band of his trousers. One shoe would have no heel, but no one was going to notice that this morning."
From this we learn that Bond actually carries two knives, one in each shoe, and that the heels double as knifehandles for these weapons. It would seem to me that both these knives need the heel to be attached to the blade in some way after retrieving them from the sole. Also it's noteworthy that the knife (knives) in 'Goldfinger' is never referred to as 'throwing-knife' nor is it used in this way.
Compared to the relatively easy way Bond extracts one heel knife in OHMSS and throws it at Draco's calendar I think it's safe to assume he's wearing a different type of knives in OHMSS than he did in 'Goldfinger'. Perhaps an updated version that offered the added advantage of use as a missile if necessary. And that didn't come with the drawback of needing the heel as makeshift handle.
Just my 2 cents.
Your imagination is all you have to go on now!
as do we all. 
Fleming's description reminds me of the old "push dagger" that has survived from old west days. Only in Bond's case the handle is a shoe heel instead of the most traditional push dagger handle.
I would imagine the shoe heel would make the knife a rather ungainly weapon. I sure wouldn't want to try knife fighting with one (or both) heels missing from my shoes..... but then we are talking fiction.
The photo above is from this website for those of you who want more informatiion on the use of such a weapon:
http://www.themartialist.com/pecom/pushdagger101.htm
Bond's heel knives are typically WWII Commando/Guerilla warfare stuff. A last resort weapon for cases where the operative gets disarmed of his principal and/or secondary weapons and is taken prisoner, but wasn't yet stripped of all his possesions (as he would be in a prison or KZ). Hidden wires/strings for makeshift garrottes would fall in the same category.
The general idea here is not to fight for any length of time with these weapons, but to quickly use them in time before one gets deprived of any chance for initiative at all i.e. either kill a sentry to create the chance for escape and/or take the sentry's weapon to fight on.
In many of the cases though, these hidden weapoins were used by operatives against themselves to prevent them from breaking under torture.
Fleming's description reminds me of the old "push dagger" that has survived from old west days. Only in Bond's case the handle is a shoe heel instead of the most traditional push dagger handle.
I would imagine the shoe heel would make the knife a rather ungainly weapon. I sure wouldn't want to try knife fighting with one (or both) heels missing from my shoes..... but then we are talking fiction.
The photo above is from this website for those of you who want more informatiion on the use of such a weapon:
i can deffinetly see that resting in the heal of a mans shoe, in bonds case the handle of the push dagger would be the back of the heal and when removed the handle could swing around and make it a regular knife, good enough to through with the advantage of the flat blade.
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