this is a great story! win the hearts and minds by not
supposedly desecrating the dead while taliban are into beheading
anyway, or strike fear into the hearts of the enemy! that gurka
kicks ass..and takes heads!
As a Gurkha is disciplined for beheading a Taliban: Thank God
they are on our side!
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1296136…
By Robert Hardman
Last updated at 1:56 AM on 20th July 2010
Just picture the scene as a soldier returns from hunting an
arch-enemy. Commanding officer: ‘Did you get him?’ Soldier: ‘Yes,
sir.’ Commanding officer: ‘Are you sure?’ Soldier: ‘Yes, sir.’
Soldier reaches into rucksack and places severed head on table.
Commanding officer: ‘**!’ If it happened in a
Hollywood movie, the audience would either laugh or applaud. But
there was no laughter the other day when this happened for real in
Babaji, Afghanistan, current posting for the 1st Battalion, Royal
Gurkha Rifles.
The precise circumstances will not be determined until an
official report has been completed, but reliable military sources
have confirmed that a Gurkha patrol was sent out with orders to
track down a Taliban warlord described as a ‘high-value
target’.
Kukri lessons: The Gurkhas display their traditional weapon of
choice
Kukri lessons: The Gurkhas display their traditional weapon of
choice
Having identified their target, a fierce battle ensued during
which the warlord was killed. To prove that they had got their man,
the Gurkhas attempted to remove the body for identification.
Further enemy fire necessitated a fast exit minus corpse. So, an
unnamed soldier drew his kukri – the standard-issue Gurkha knife –
removed the man’s head and legged it.
Ten out of ten for initiative. Nought out of ten for
diplomacy.
Nato forces are supposed to be winning ‘hearts and minds’ and
bolstering the fledgling Afghan National Army. This incident,
however, has apparently appalled Afghans on all sides, not least
because it offends the Muslim tradition of burying the dead with
all body parts, attached or unattached.
It transpires that the Gurkha soldier has been removed from
operations and sent back to his barracks in Kent pending further
investigations. Ministry of Defence sources have been quick to
emphasise that the British Army is appalled by what has happened.
According to one: ‘There is no sense of glory involved, more a
sense of shame. He should not have done what he did.’
I can already hear Ministers, diplomats and top brass echoing
similar pieties. It is, of course, a gruesome business. All
societies have taboos about desecrating the dead. It’s even in the
Geneva Convention.
But the Army had better be careful before attempting to demonise
this unnamed Gurkha in order to polish its own halo. If the man was
trophy-hunting or disobeying orders, then that is one thing. If,
however, he was simply following them too assiduously for liberal
tastes, that is a different matter.
And away from Whitehall, among the broader Gurkha family, the
general response which I encountered yesterday could be summed up
as follows: ‘What’s all the fuss about?’
As one put it to me: ‘This man was only doing what his
grandfather and father would have done before him.’
The general response which I encountered yesterday could be summed
up as follows: ‘What’s all the fuss about?’
‘The Gurkhas are the ultimate professional soldiers,’ says Major
Gordon Corrigan, military historian and a Gurkha officer for 29
years. ‘They are not brutal or bloodthirsty. They treat prisoners
honourably. But if their CO says, “That is the enemy. Go and attack
him”, they will not flinch. And do not be surprised if their weapon
of choice is the kukri. It is their sidearm. But they kill in hot
blood – not cold.’
Having seen his former comrades decapitating cattle, goats and
buffalos at a single stroke, he has no doubt that the Babaji
episode would have been a swift and clinical affair.
At Winchester’s Gurkha Museum, curator Major Gerald Davies
points out that Gurkhas were positively encouraged to bring back
evidence of enemy kills during World War II.
‘The intelligence officers would want to see proof,’ says the
veteran of 33 years with the Gurkhas. ‘The men started coming back
with Japanese heads, but when that became unwieldy, they took to
cutting off ears. It might sound appalling to society today, but
that’s what war was like in the jungle.’
Major Corrigan says the Gurkhas followed a similar policy during
the Malayan Emergency. ‘They were told to bring back terrorists’
bodies for identification, but you could hardly carry one of those
through heavy jungle so they would come back with heads,’ he
explains.
‘Finally, someone had the bright idea of issuing them with
cameras, although I’m not sure the results were up to much.’
The Gurkhas have had a formidable reputation in the West ever
since the Anglo-Nepal War of 1814-16. Having failed to conquer them
– which is why Nepal has never been part of either the British
Empire or the Commonwealth – the British did the next best thing,
which was to sign them up. Since then, they have proved exemplary
comrades for two centuries.
Their conduct is, perhaps, best summed up by Rifleman Lachhiman
Gurung, who found himself under repeated Japanese attack in Burma
in 1945. With his comrades badly injured, he fought off 200 enemy
troops single-handed – literally – having lost an arm and eye.
When a relief force found him the next morning, his position was
littered with 31 Japanese corpses. The 169 survivors had run away.
Rifleman Gurung – who now lives in Middlesex – became one of the 26
members of the Brigade of Gurkhas to win the Victoria Cross (there
would, undoubtedly, have been more but the VC was not extended to
Gurkhas until 1911).
Their success is, in part, down to sheer guts. But it also
derives from their reputation. As they found – to their
disappointment – in the Falklands War, their fame precedes
them.
When British forces embarked for the Falklands in the QE2, the other regiments pointedly lined the upper decks
to cheer them aboard
‘By the time they arrived on Mount Tumbledown, the Argentinians
had seen pictures of Gurkhas sharpening their kukris and read all
these stories about them eating their prisoners,’ says Major
Corrigan. ‘So when the Gurkhas actually appeared, all they found
were empty trenches.’
Our national respect and affection for them runs deep – as amply
demonstrated by Joanna Lumley’s campaign to secure a better pension
and passport deal for retired Gurkhas.
Whenever I have been at the Cenotaph on Remembrance Sunday, I
have noticed that the applause always rises noticeably for two
contingents – the Chelsea Pensioners and the Gurkhas.
It’s a view shared within the Army itself. When British forces
embarked for the Falklands in the QE2, the
other regiments pointedly lined the upper decks to cheer them
aboard.
Stories of the Gurkhas are legion. My favourite is the tale of
the Gurkha sergeant being told his men would be jumping into enemy
territory. He returned next day to say the men would rather jump
from below 500ft on to marshy ground. ‘But your parachutes won’t
open,’ said the Colonel. ‘Ah,’ said the sergeant. ‘No one mentioned
parachutes.’
Apocryphal? Probably. But among the documented accounts is that
of the U.S. Air Force’s Colonel John Alison on meeting
uncharacteristically anxious Gurkha troops preparing for a glider
assault on Japanese positions.
‘We aren’t afraid to go,’ a Gurkha sergeant told him solemnly.
‘We aren’t afraid to fight. But we thought we should tell you that
those “planes” don’t have any motors.’
So, ask yourself this. Now that the story of the head-hunting
Gurkha of Babaji has gone global, do you think that the insurgents
of the world will be more inclined or less inclined to pick a fight
with the British Army?
