He Brought a Knife To a Gunfight

Fortunately for him, he's a Gurkha.

And when a Gurkha has to draw his kukri, it's Military Cross time:

Acting L/Cpl Gurung, who serves with the Royal Gurkha Rifles, was on duty at Patrol Base Sparta, in Nahr-e Seraj, at 4am on March 22 when he spotted two Afghans running towards his sangar, or watchtower.

When he challenged them to stop, the insurgents opened fire with an AK47 assault rifle.

One of the rounds struck him on the helmet, knocking him to the ground. Groggily getting to his feet, he saw a grenade bounce into the tower.

Fearing it would explode, the married Gurkha picked it up and hurled it away a split-second before it detonated, the force of the blast throwing him to the floor.

But as the dust and debris settled, Acting L/Cpl Gurung came face-to-face with one of the Taliban who was climbing into the 3 metre high sangar.

Lacking room to aim his rifle, the soldier drew his 18inch kukri and tenaciously took on the insurgent in hand-to-hand combat.

> During the fight, the pair plunged to the ground outside the base. In a life-or-death struggle, Acting L/Cpl Gurung continued to lash out with the blade.

He said: ‘He was quite a bit bigger than me. I just hit him in the hand, body, I just started to hit him. ‘I just thought, “I don’t want to die. If I am alive I can save my colleagues”.
‘I thought, “Before he does something I have to do something”. I was like a madman.’

Faced with his ferocity, the Taliban turned and fled. Acting L/Cpl Gurung’s citation said he had displayed the ‘highest levels of gallantry and courage’.

He looks like one squared-away soldier, don't he?

Birds Gotta Fly, Fish Gotta Swim...

...and Gurkhas gotta chop off heads.

A Gurkha station in Afghanistan who chopped off the head of a Taliban casualty to prove identity has been cleared of wrongdoing.





Trivia: blog post title came from the title of a Gilligan's Island episode. Sherwood Schwartz, producer of Gilligan's Island, obviously got the title from the song shown above.

1 Gurkha, 30 Taliban: Gurkha Wins, Of Course

You expected differently from a Gurkha?

My only disappointment is he didn't decapitate the SOB's with his Kukri.

You Should Give Him A Medal, Instead, You Bastards

Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, a Gurkha is in trouble for beheading a Taliban commander in battle with his kukri knife.

The circumstances are that the Taliban in question was a high-value target and had to be positively identified in order for the Gurkhas to be given credit for killing him. Unfortunately the Gurkhas came under fire while trying to transport the Taliban's body, so an enterprising Gurkha soldier, realizing that positive identification could be made from facial features (and DNA), and that he had a great big razor-sharp knife available to him, beheaded the Taliban and transported the much lighter head to the rear.

And, as you might expect in these more politically correct times, that's a Bad Thing. Never mind that that's exactly what the Taliban do to captured NATO soldiers; never mind that this is war, and war is hell; the only thing that matters is that beheading a Taliban is wrong, because it's offensive to the Taliban.

It's crap like this that makes you yearn for the Ripley solution: