Gurkha Khukri Knife.
Those Gurkhas are some tough hombres.
The title said Nepali and the first thing I thought of was a Gurkha. Those guys are awesome!
If this had happened in America - the liberals would charge him with carrying a dangerous weapon after saving her.
“Hand me my Kukri, it is the one that says Bad Mother F*$%@# on it.”
Courage and honor. Values we could teach in our schools instead of tolerance and submission.
Gurkha Khukri Knife.
It was six or seven last week.
Now it’s 40?
Next week, this guy will be holding off at the Alamo.
I recall a British officer many years ago being asked about the Gurkas he had commanded.
He said he absolutely loved them. They were terrifying to their enemies but really pleasant with their friends.
Don't mess with Gurkhas.
One Gurkha against 40 thieves and robbers. Not a fair fight...the thieves and robbers were outmanned.
TOUGH dude! All honor to him — he is indeed a hero!
Bravo to that brave warrior!
I bet they don't like seeing their little sister stoned to death either huh?
Bishnu Shrestha, a brave Gurkha soldier in the Indian Army who defeated 40 train robbers while returning home after voluntary retirement, is going to be awarded with the Sourya Chakra bravery award and the Sarvottam Jeevan Raksha medals, during the Indian Republic Day celebrations on January 26.
Gurkhas are absolutely not to be trifled with. Fearless, loyal and tough as nails.
Back in the day when Hong Kong was still British, the Ghurkas would always win the yearly “Trailwalker” - a 100 km race for a 4 person team, across the mountains and valleys of Hong Kong’s New Territories. The one year I raced (our team didn’t finish), one of the Ghurka teams won with a time of <36 hours.
My father’s light machine gun company was attached to the Canadian 5th Armoured Division, which was part of the British 8th Army in Italy in 1944, when it broke through the Germam lines southwest of Monte Cassino and opened the road to Rome. There was a Gurkha unit fighting with the Canadians. Dad said they weren’t much for open combat, but were deadly night fighters because of their stealth and skill with knives. They terrorized German sentries.
Now if only General Clark had cut off the retreating Germans instead of diverting the Anzio breakout to Rome for purposes of personal vanity, the Italy campaign would have ended 6 months earlier and saved another 200,000 Allied casualties (not to mention free up hundreds of thousands of Allied troops to help clear the Germans out of France more quickly). Alas, that is a story for a different thread.
God bless him!!!
That said:
After 200 years, UK army set to axe Gurkha Regiment
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2579861/posts
LONDON: The world-famous Gurkha Regiment, part of the British army for almost 200 years, may be among those axed unless the ministry of defence’s demands for more money to fund the replacement of Trident nuclear missile submarines are answered.
Last night, hopes for extra funding were fading as chief secretary to the treasury Danny Alexander rejected demands for extra money from Tory defence secretary Liam Fox and insisted the £20 billion cost of replacing Trident had to be met fully by the MoD, The Observer reported.
Quoting an expert, the report said the increasing costs of running the regiment following actress Joanna Lumley’s high-profile campaign last year to improve their rights, added to the sense that the “writing is on the wall” for the Brigade of Gurkhas, which has 3,640 members.
The Gurkhas have been an integral part of the army since 1815, when the British East India Company signed a peace deal allowing it to recruit Nepalese soldiers.
Legends of Gurkha Bravery
Gurkhas’ Reputation for Bravery Precedes Them
It was a series of bloody conflicts fought in the great hill ranges of northeastern India in the early 19th century that saw big battle losses and grudging admiration on both sides for their respective foes.
Since 1812, the British East India Company, rapidly gaining ground across the subcontinent and eager to tame the tribes along the Himalayan foothills, had fought a series of battles against the fierce Nepali tribes.
But in 1816, the Nepali defense of the hill fortress of Kalunga in the Himalayan foothills so impressed the British that in the terms of a peace treaty signed with Nepali King Prithvi Narayan Shah, the British shrewdly included a clause under which the Gurkhas could serve in the East India Company’s army.
That was the start of a long, illustrious military alliance between the British and the Gurkhas, a term loosely used to describe men of Nepal who serve as soldiers in the armies of Nepal, India or Britain.
Drawn mostly from the Magar, Gurung, Rai, Limbu and Sunwar hill tribes — tribes the British considered fit fighters — the term “Gurkha” is an Anglicization of the Gorkha district, the birthplace of King Prithvi Narayan Shah, who is considered the father of modern Nepal.
Ayo Gurkhali!
With their battle cry “Ayo Gurkhali!” — “Here come the Gurkhas!” — the hardy Nepali hillsmen gained such a reputation as fighters that stories of enemies fleeing their positions upon hearing rumors of their advance abound.
During the Great Indian Mutiny of 1857, when local Muslim sepoys revolted against their British officers, a rumor running through the northern Indian town of Simla that the Gurkhas had joined the sepoys so frightened the resident British that they panicked and fled the town, some men even abandoning their wives and children.
But the Gurkhas stayed loyal to the British and did not join the mutinying sepoys, passing their first test of loyalty.
Many years later, after Argentina’s surrender to Britain in the 1982 Falklands War, Argentine troops told reporters that rumors of the Gurkhas slitting the throats of 40 Argentine soldiers in single strokes and of Gurkhas jumping into enemy foxholes with live grenades gave them the jitters and seriously shattered their morale.
It’s hard to tell where the legends of Gurkha ferocity spring from and how much of it is true. Many of their deeds have been recorded in official military dispatches, but many more have been gleaned from diaries of British officers through the centuries, and historians argue that many of these entries may have been liberally embellished.
Blood Thirst of the Blade
Certainly the most pervasive myth of Gurkha ferocity fans from their famed wielding of the kukri, or the curved Himalayan knife.
Legend has it that once a Gurkha unsheathes his kukri, he must draw blood with it. When a Gurkha unsheathes his weapon in a noncombative situation, he must then nick himself to satisfy the “blood thirst” of the blade.
With a motto that says, “Kaphar hunnu bhanda marnu ramro” — “Better dead than live like a coward” — Gurkhas are known to be brutal in battle, but they can also be charming and delightfully childish in peace.
During their World War I operations in the Arabian Peninsula, British officers recorded the Gurkhas’ delight when they encountered the sea and camels for the first time.
When a Mule Kicks a Gurkha
Stories of the toughness of Gurkha skulls also do the rounds, with one story going so far as to claim that if a mule kicks a Gurkha’s head, the Gurkha may suffer a headache, but the mule will certainly go lame.
But among all the legends surrounding the Gurkhas, the ones that have the greatest ring of truth are stories of the Nepali fighters’ discipline and literal performance of orders from military superiors.
One particular diary entry talks about how an Indian army doctor once went up to a British officer and told him that a wounded Gurkha would surely die unless he displayed some “will to live.”
The officer, the story goes, stormed into the hospital room and barked the order: “Live!” The wounded Gurkha obeyed.
The Gurkha equivalent of “One riot, one Texas Ranger”