Iron Monger Jim

Back more years that I care to remember, with Bob Cornett, I attended many science fiction conventions. Our original plan was to meet the editors so that when we submitted a story or book, they would know who we were. We hoped that it would give us a leg up as they were evaluating the manuscript.

Of course, we toured the Hucker’s Room and met with a number of the vendors in there. One was Iron Monger Jim. He had a huge supply of blades and knives of various sizes, shapes and uses. One of those was a wonderful survival knife.

The picture doesn't do it justice. The knife is much cleaner and polished that 
it is here.

I tell you all this because, I took that survival knife, that we had traded a mention in one of the Vietnam Ground Zero books for the knife, to Iraq. It might be the only knife that he made that was taken into a combat zone. For those interested, I never used it in combat because I was never closer than a hundred or two hundred yards from the bad guys.

However, the knife was quite useful in a number of other tasks. In the most mundane, the battalion commander used it to slice bread. No, I was never in a survival situation where it would have been the deciding factor, but there were times that I was glad that I had it with me.

I thought this might be the best way to let the Iron Monger that one of his knives had been in a combat zone. And to thank him for the knife that I found to be useful in Iraq (and, of course, in many other tasks since I received it).