[Thanks to Fiddlstix for the heads-up!]
Posted on 06/23/2012 8:53:53 AM PDT by Doogle
I'm proud of her...
I'm proud of her...
[Thanks to Fiddlstix for the heads-up!]
I’m proud of her as well, but compared to everyday man fighting, 18 years of martial arts in her own family’s business seemed to have made her only adequate.
I know who the Gurkhas are and they have a very good reputation, I never have understood the tiny Sikh cult at FR though.
Like I said, my ultimate military units would come from the Western ranks.
Their reputation for fierce fighting first came against the Mughal empire. One cool part is that they not only fought for their own religious freedom, but that of other religions under the Muslims. The modern reputation was earned at the Battle of Saragarhi, where 21 Sikhs in the service of British India held off 10,000-14,000 Muslims at a small signaling post between two forts. Eventually the Muslims overran the post, killing all 21. Muslim dead were estimated between 180 (what the Muslims admit) and 450, with many more wounded, almost all through hand-to-hand combat. It was a modern Thermopylae.
Their bravery stalled the Muslims long enough for the British to get reinforcements to the next target, one of the forts, in time before it could be taken.
Yeah I have seen that stuff, and that battle for instance is hardly unique, you don’t have to go back to Thermopylae for that kind of 1800s bravery just look at everyone else, the Brits, the Texans the French at Camerone (a day I toast every April 30th), there are many such battles to the death.
I don’t understand why this little cult considers Sikhs to be some super soldiers, where do they rank with the crack Western units over the years, especially the last hundred?
Here is an example, the Brits did fine although incredibly, vastly outnumbered by Sikhs.
http://www.sikhphilosophy.net/history-of-sikhism/25278-battle-of-aliwal.html
The thing is it's in their religion. Among their primary beliefs are to fight for the rights of everyone, and to be ready to die doing it. It doesn't make them super soldiers necessarily, but it does make them very quick to fight to the death doing God's work. All baptized Sikhs carry a dagger, the kirpan, traditionally not for offense or even necessarily self-defense, but in case it is needed to defend someone from injustice.
Even the name for a baptized Sikh is a "saint-soldier" and he becomes part of the Army of God. This isn't a figurative army, such as spreading the word or such. They mean it literally, be ready to fight to the death to protect any of God's people (which to them means every human).
The Western soldier will fight to the death, but he is thinking all the way, he is always trying to win.
In the 1980s one of our Special Forces soldiers commented on how his South Korean Special Forces counterpart thought the best way to kill a tank was to leap onto it with explosives, in a suicide attack, brave, but backwards, simpleminded, and short sighted, and the way to lose to a race that fights like a relentless, focused machine dedicated to always thinking, always wanting to maximize gain from the death of it's well trained and intelligent fighting men.
As you know the British soldier often knew that when fighting against some, like the Sikhs or Africans it meant fighting to the death, but we still fight, we are willing to die, but try to avoid it, we are focused on winning the battles, the wars, the American GI during the generations of the Indian Wars knew that they did not take POWs but we still fought and prevailed.
The Sikhs were no match for the Western soldier and we know that from the wars that were fought.
I think the Japanese were incredibly stupid to fight as they did, and I see that simple minded way of dealing with fear, in many foreign warrior cultures.
The sound of either a Colt .45 or M16 slides cycling forward are just as scary
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