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The best fight is the one never fought
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Posted by editor Thu May 31, 2007 09:24:26 PDT
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0 responses 0 comments Tehachapi’s martial arts world had a grand visitor on May 12, a grand visitor and a trained warrior. Grand Master John Pellegrini paid a visit to the Tehachapi Martial Arts Center to present a seminar, but to also deliver a message.

“The martial arts were designed for war, but basically the training over the centuries has evolved to the peaceful warrior mentality,” said Pellegrini. “We learn techniques we hope we never have to use.”

Pellegrini came to Tehachapi, invited by his old friend and student, Master Ivan Jadric, of the Tehachapi Martial Arts Center, to perform a seminar. It was an opportunity that many students never have a chance to experience. Pellegrini is a ninth dan [degree] black belt and Grand Master of the International Combat Hapkido Federation [ICHF], and a Grand Master of International TaeKwonDo Association [ITA].

“I was the first American to receive a ninth dan from a Korean organization,” he said. The honor was bestowed upon him by his Grand Master, In Sun Seo, one of the highest ranking martial artists in the world.

Pellegrini was also in Tehachapi to bestow on Master Jadric the honor of California State Director of the International TaeKwonDo Federation. Jadric is already the State Director for the International Combat Hapkido Federation.

Jadric said the directorships are great honors.

This was Pellegrini’s first visit to Tehachapi and he found the area very impressive.

“The area from a geographical standpoint is absolutely spectacular,” Pellegrini said. “I was so impressed with the natural, unspoiled beauty. You go to a place like Tehachapi and you feel like you’re in the countryside of Toscanini.”

It wasn’t the same feeling for Pellegrini in June of 2006 when he landed at Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan. He was met by 110-degree weather and strong winds full of dust and sand.

He was in the war zone because he had been training the U.S. Army Third Brigade (Spartans), Tenth Mountain Division, an elite group of soldiers in combatives [martial arts] based at Fort Drum in New York for the past two years.

When the elite group deployed to Afghanistan in February 2006, Pellegrini offered his services to assist with training, in-country.

“The military needs good combatives [martial arts] training,” Pellegrini said, “You have to understand that the mission of our troops has changed considerably in the last few years. We do a lot of policing, including walking the streets, interviewing civilians, arresting and detaining people, manning checkpoints and road blocks.”
He said they (the soldiers) try to capture the bad guys alive to retrieve vital intelligence from them. The soldiers also attempt to capture the hearts and minds of the people.

“That exposes the soldiers to non-traditional warfare. They don’t always shoot at the enemy from 100 yards away. It exposes them to the people face-to -face, within arms length,” he pointed out.

He said the soldiers are asked many times to squelch disturbances and minimize civilian injuries. The use of combatives is useful in these situations and Pellegrini said these skills were traditionally not taught to the military.

While in Afghanistan, Pellegrini traveled from one Forward Operating Base (FOB) to another, not only training Americans, but also members of Coalition Forces and the Afghan National Army. Most of his trip was spent in the rugged mountains on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Pellegrini described the landscape there as, “Literally hundreds of miles of desolated rocky mountains, with many caves and forests. It would take 10 million people to walk through that area and  find every nook and cranny. That’s why it is so hard to find Bin Laden.”

Pellegrini’s tour in Afghanistan lasted three weeks and he has now returned to a rigorous schedule of touring the different schools within the ICCH and the ITA, training students in the brutality of the martial arts he is a master of, yet teaching peace through the strength that the skills of the arts give the student.

“We don’t believe in violence, we are probably the most peaceful people in the world,” Pellegrini said. “The reason is, we know what violence is all about.”
Pellegrini saves the final five minutes of each seminar, when his audience is most captive, to share with them the enormous sacrifice he has seen the fighting men and women of the U.S. make.

He shies away from the politics of the wars, shies away from whether they are right or wrong or if declaring the wars was the right thing to do. He just sees the reality of the soldiers.

“At this point, we have 150,000 troops there and it is our responsibility as a nation to support them, to love them, to respect them, to admire them, and to do everything we can to make their sacrifice bearable and worthwhile.We cannot do to them what we have done in the past, to other veterans,” he said.

“While they are there they deserve us as a nation to be behind them.”

Pellegrini knows all he can do is pass that message on, sharing it one person at a time.

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