Posted on 02/01/2011 3:27:02 PM PST by ventanax5
Whoa...holy cow! Every once in a while someone in the world comes along and reminds us what a true hero really looks like. A 35 year-old Gurkha soldier named Bishnu Shrestha was riding a train when he suddenly found himself in the middle of a massive robbery. 40 men armed with knives, swords and guns stormed the train and began robbing the passengers.
Bishnu kept his peace while the gang snatched cell phones, jewelry and cash from other riders. But then, the thugs grabbed the 18 year-old girl sitting next to him and forcefully stripped her naked. Before the bandits could rape the poor girl in front of her helpless parents, Bishnu decided he had enough.
“The girl cried for help, saying ´You are a soldier, please save a sister´,” Shrestha recalled. “I prevented her from being raped, thinking of her as my own sister.”
(Excerpt) Read more at logiccool.com ...
Must be - forty to one aren't great odds...
Former Chief of staff of the Indian Army, Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw once famously said about Gurkhas:
“If a man says he is not afraid of dying, he is either lying or is a Gurkha.”
There's nothing more effective than a stupid comment, to trivialize a heroic act.
I wasn’t aware of that.
AFAIK, Alexander’s campaign didn’t go much beyond the clash with Porus, which cost Alexander heavily, and forced him to quit pressing on into India proper (some say that the soldiers feared battle with the significantly larger, better trained Magadha army in northern India - especially considering the fact that Porus himself was merely a border tribal chieftan, while Magadha was an established empire). Nepal would be located far, far to the east of where Alexander encountered Porus - a separation of perhaps 1000 miles, or more.
Here’s my Gurkha story. A few years ago we had the contract to roof the new Hong Kong airport. The roof was all there was to the building really, but it was treacherous to lay the membrane. The whole surface was curved with no parapet or edge to it thanks to Sir Norman Foster’s design. We couldn’t get any roofers to walk that roof, but we finally hired Gurkhas who had no problem walking barefoot and carrying 40kg rolls on their heads. They all carried their knives too. Scared all the other workers silly.
Yeah...You don’t want to mess with a Gurkha....(esp. if they have their blade with them)....
I too wondered about the distance from Western India to Nepal but have seen that reference more than once so I guess it is correct.
I think you underestimate Alexander’s victory over Porus. It was hard fought but a complete victory for Alexander.
I also think the reason for Alexander’s men wanting to go home was far more about years and miles from home and family than any fear of India’s soldiers but that is just my opinion.
I too wondered about the distance from Western India to Nepal but have seen that reference more than once so I guess it is correct.
I think you underestimate Alexander’s victory over Porus. It was hard fought but a complete victory for Alexander.
I also think the reason for Alexander’s men wanting to go home was far more about years and miles from home and family than any fear of India’s soldiers but that is just my opinion.
Interesting stuff to research about, later!
BTW, Alexander’s army, after conquering Persia, was largely comprised of local mercenaries from those places.
Having maintained a deep desire to wet his feet in the “encircling ocean” that Alexander’s contemporaries believed to exist east of India, he could have simply used those newer, less homesick additions of his army to press on, but didn’t.
I probably spent more days in the Brother’s Grimm section of Germany versus days I watched TV in the past 5 years.
The “artwork” threw me. I should have noticed the 7 flies.
One of my favorite restaurants in the world is in the little town or the one right next to it where the brothers were from. It can be a little spooky at night - I see where he got his inspiration. Some of the children’s fairy tales in Europe were probably designed to scare the hell out of kids to keep them well behaved.
Too bad he didn’t have a squad of his fellow Gurkhas there to assist,8 of those guys would wipe out all 40 bandits.
Old joke about the Gurkhas:
Being deployed by the British in World War II, a group of Gurkha were being briefed about their mission. “You will be flown to your destination, at which point the airplanes will drop under the radar to 500 feet, at which point you will jump from the airplanes. Once on the ground . . .”
“Excuse me,” the leader of the Gurkhas said, “I have an objection.”
“What is it?” the British commander asked.
“I would like us to be dropped at a lower altitude,” he said.
“But the parachutes won’t have time to open if we go below 500 ft,” the commander said.
“Oh,” said the Gurkha, “we have parachutes. In that case, I withdraw the objection.”
During the Indian Mutiny I believe it was mainly the Sikhs and Gurkhas who remained loyal to the British.
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