Yeah no joke...when I was in the military I most certainly beat the crap out of every knife I had (I had lots of brands too, all the major ones you'll find in the more commercial stores) and most of them couldn't hold up to everything I needed/wanted them to do. A lot of the time in the field your knife becomes stuff other than a knife but you still don't want it to be near-machete length because then it gets to hard to move around with.

I broke countless knives and dulled them super fast (admittedly I abused a few of them pretty badly).