PrairiePundit

Soldier of Fortune: An SAS soldier was in a standoff with IS fighters after they ambushed a factory in Fallujah, the Daily Star reported. He was engaged in a firefight with the IS fighters but ran out of ammunition. He had a kukri knife given to him by a British Gurkha soldier according to the report. “As soon as his ammunition was expended, the IS gunmen tried to storm him. As they went to grab him he unsheathed his kukri and began slashing away. “He decapitated the first gunman, slit the throat of second and killed another with a third blow. He then sliced away at three others. The IS gunmen fled in panic, allowing the SAS soldier to carry the injured men to safety.” “He expected to be killed but thought he’d take as many of the enemy with him. When he was reunited with Iraqi troops they thought the he was seriously wounded because he was covered in blood but he explained that the blood wasn’t his,” a source confirmed the incident to the International Business Times “He cle...

Strategy Page: In the last decade, the U.S. military has enlisted some 70,000 non-citizens, about five percent of all recruits. These foreigners made better soldiers than American citizens. The foreigners are tossed out during their first three months of service at half the rate of their citizen counterparts. After three years of service, 72 percent of citizens were still in uniform, compared to 84 percent of non-citizen troops. The foreign troops are more patriotic and work harder than their citizen counterparts. Non-citizen troops have another incentive, as they can apply for citizenship because of good service in the military. Any foreign recruit forced out for medical reasons (because of combat or non-combat injuries) can still obtain citizenship more quickly. Most foreign troops obtain citizenship as soon as they can while in the military, because many jobs require a security clearance and only citizens can get one of those.    In the last decade, some senior America...

Guardian: As scores of British Gurkha soldiers are made redundant by the British army and recruitment numbers fall, there is deep concern among Nepal's mountain tribes that their proud 200-year tradition could be under threat. It is recruitment season in the Himalayan foothills, a time when recruiters for the British army, locally known as "Galla walla", themselves former Gurkha soldiers, go from village to village looking for raw talent. But this year there is a chill in the air. More than 140 Gurkha soldiers were told of  their compulsory redundancy  by the British army this year. In Nepal, where army pay makes a huge difference to poor communities, this is a blow. "We hear more soldiers will lose their jobs. Recruitment is also down. I don't know if the British government wants to do away with the Gurkha regiments," said Mahesh Ale Magar, who, in August, sent his son Dip to try for this year's regional selection at the British army camp in Po...

Telegraph: Hundreds of RAF and Royal Navy personnel will also be made compulsorily redundant on Sept 1 as only half have agreed to take the voluntary package. A total of 17,000 personnel will be dismissed from the Armed Forces over the next three years. Only six Gurkhas have chosen voluntary redundancy out of the 150 demanded by the Ministry of Defence in the first tranche of sackings in September. A total of 1,000 across the Army are to be sacked, but this newspaper reported on Saturday that outside the Gurkhas there were double the number of voluntary applications, including from some of the “best and brightest” officers. It is understood that many of the Nepalese soldiers fear being unable to get work in Britain or having to take poorly paid jobs back home. Major David Owens, of the British Gurkha Council, said it would be difficult for Gurkhas to find employment in the poor economic climate. “This is just very sad that 150 Gurkhas who have loyally served this country a...

Image by Defence Images via Flickr Daily Mail: A Gurkha soldier who single-handedly fought off an attack on his base by up to 30 Taliban insurgents has been awarded the Conspicuous Gallantry Cross. Acting Sergeant Dipprasad Pun, 31, exhausted all his ammunition and at one point had to use the tripod of his machine gun to beat away a militant climbing the walls of the compound. The soldier fired more than 400 rounds, launched 17 grenades and detonated a mine to thwart the Taliban assault on his checkpoint near Babaji in Helmand Province, southern Afghanistan. Acting Sgt Pun was on sentry duty on the evening of September 17 last year when he heard a clinking noise outside the small base. At first he thought it might be a donkey or a cow, but when he went to investigate he found two insurgents digging a trench to lay an improvised explosive device (IED) at the checkpoint's front gate. He realised that he was completely surrounded and that the Taliban were about to launch...

Image via Wikipedia Logicool: ...  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.” Here's the part of the story that makes you cheer. He pulls out a kukri (i.e. a knife) and proceeds to kill 3 of them, injure 8 of them, and causes the rest to flee. During the battle, he suffered a severe knife injury to his left hand, fro...

Image via Wikipedia Telegraph: ... When the Japanese arrived, the two Gurkha companies were surrounded and their lines of communication cut. On the night of May 12, Rifleman Gurung was manning the forward post of his platoon almost 100 yards ahead of the main company. At 1.20am, more than 200 Japanese attacked the company position. The brunt of the assault fell on Gurung’s section and, in particular, on his post, which dominated a jungle track leading up to his platoon’s position. Had the enemy been able to overrun it and occupy Gurung’s trench, they would have secured control over the whole of the field before them. One grenade fell on the lip of Gurung’s trench. He quickly grabbed it and hurled it back at the enemy. Almost immediately another grenade came over. This one fell directly inside the trench. Again Gurung snatched it up and threw it back. A third grenade landed just in front of the trench. Gurung attempted to throw it back, but it exploded in his hand, blowing o...

Daily Mail: One of Britain's most famous Army regiments could be sacrificed under drastic defence cuts. Ministers risk being forced to take the axe to the Gurkhas in an attempt to save millions of pounds. One military expert warned that the 'writing was on the wall' for the Nepalese soldiers, who have been part of the Army for nearly 200 years. Chancellor George Osborne has ordered the Ministry of Defence to make cuts of between 10 and 20 per cent of its £36.9 billion budget as he attempts to claw back Britain's multi-billion-pound deficit. Public support for the Gurkhas was highlighted last year when actress Joanna Lumley spearheaded a successful campaign to force the Labour government to give retired veterans the right to settle in the UK. ... These guys are some of the best warriors in the world. It would be a mistake to cut them, but if the Brits do so we should give them an opportunity to join the US military. I am sure the Marines could find a use fo...

Daily Mail on Sunday: A Gurkha soldier has been flown back to the UK after hacking the head off a dead Taliban commander with his ceremonial knife to prove the dead man’s identity. The private, from 1st Battalion, Royal Gurkha Rifles, was involved in a fierce firefight with insurgents in the Babaji area of central Helmand Province when the incident took place earlier this month. His unit had been told that they were seeking a ‘high value target,’ a Taliban commander, and that they must prove they had killed the right man. The Gurkhas had intended to remove the Taliban leader’s body from the battlefield for identification purposes. But they came under heavy fire as their tried to do so. Military sources said that in the heat of battle, the Gurkha took out his curved kukri knife and beheaded the dead insurgent. He is understood to have removed the man’s head from the area, leaving the rest of his body on the battlefield. This is considered a gross insult to the Muslims of A...

They have always been terrific fighters and they are showing now that they can also do counterinsurgency. We should be recruiting these guys too.

Daily Mail: Leaning heavily on his carved walking stick, occasionally pausing for breath on the mountain track, the old Gurkha struggled on towards his goal - to hug his 'goddess', Joanna Lumley. And when the 84-year-old veteran of the Burma jungles finally came face to face with the actress yesterday, he brought tears to her eyes when she learned of his journey to give her his thanks. Harka Bahadur Pun's pilgrimage from his village in western Nepal to Kathmandu involved an agonising six-hour trek along stony tracks to a village where he could catch a bus for the 12-hour journey to the mountain republic's capital. 'You ask why an old man like me would want to do this,' he said. 'But before I die I made a promise to myself that I would come here one way or another to meet this wonderful woman called Joanna Lumley.' Miss Lumley, 63, is in Nepal to meet retired Gurkhas, many of whom now have the right to take up residence in the UK following her victory in ...

Guardian: Ministers were accused of "an act of treachery" today after rejecting demands for Gurkhas who retired from the army before 1997 to be given an automatic right to settle in the UK. Campaigners and opposition politicians accused the government of ignoring a high court judgment that said its policy towards the former servicemen should reflect the "historic debt" owed them by the British people. Gordon Brown said the new policy announced by the Home Office, which officials believe could lead to an extra 4,300 Gurkhas and 6,000 spouses and children being allowed to live in Britain, was "a big advance on where we were before". There are 26,500 ex-Gurkhas receiving a Ministry of Defence pension in Nepal, and until 2004 they were not allowed to settle in the UK. The ban was lifted for Gurkhas who retired after July 1997, when the brigade HQ left Hong Kong, but soldiers who retired earlier were only given the right to stay in Britain in very exceptional c...

AP /Houston Chronicle: Two centuries later, young men are still being drawn from their poverty-stricken Himalayan hills by the thousands to fight — and die — with legendary valor for another man's country far away. In an era when the world's armies are hard-pressed to fill their ranks, the Gurkhas are a recruiter's dream: Last year 17,349 applied to join the British military, and after grueling physical, medical and mental tests 230 were accepted — just one in 75. These warriors could be regarded as Britain's mercenaries: good money and adventure are major attractions. But ask almost any Gurkha soldier, and he is also likely to talk of history and upholding a tradition of being among the world's finest infantrymen. This reputation was first acquired in the 19th century, after the British thought it wiser to recruit rather than fight foes as they moved northward out of colonial India into Nepal. From those days, through the two world wars, to today's Afg...