DGAF = Don’t Give A Fuck
Category: Well I thought it was funny!
Gurkha who beheaded Taliban soldier in Afghanistan battle cleared to return to duty
A Gurkha solider who beheaded a Taliban gunman and carried his head back to base in a bag has been cleared to resume his duties.
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 last July.
The Nepalese soldier, who is in his early 20s, apparently made the decision to remove the head in a misunderstanding over the need for DNA evidence of the kill.
Cleared: A Gurkha has been returned to duty after he beheaded a Taliban gunman with his kukri knife – the curved blade seen being used in a demonstration by Gurkha soldiers in this file photograph
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.
However, Army sources revealed at the time that he told investigators he had unsheathed his kukri – the symbolic weapon of the Gurkhas – after running out of ammunition.
‘Thankfully he has been returned to normal duties having had a question mark hanging over his future for some time,’ a military source told The Sun.
KUKRI: REGIMENT’S PROUD SYMBOL OF VALOUR
The iconic kukri knife used by the Gurkhas can be a weapon or a tool.
It is the traditional utility knife of the Nepalese people, but is mainly known as a symbolic weapon for Gurkha regiments all over the world.
The kukri signifies courage and valour on the battlefield and is sometimes worn by bridegrooms during their wedding ceremony.
The kukri’s heavy blade inflicts deep wounds, cutting muscle and bone in one stroke.
It can also be used in stealth operations to slash an enemy’s throat, killing him silently.
‘This particular Gurkha is good soldier and has a good record.’
The Gurkha faced a court martial and possible jail sentence if he had been found guilty of a war crime.
However, the decision taken was that the soldier was fighting for his life and did not have time to reload his weapon as his victim attacked.
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 Afghanistan, who bury the entire body of their dead even if parts have to be retrieved.
British soldiers often return missing body parts once a battle has ended so the dead can be buried in one piece.
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Florida Man
The OH58 was such a cool little aircraft. Nimble and light on the controls,
you more wore the machine than flew it.
What sort of legacy might we leave once we’re gone? Some folks become unduly fixated on that subject. Not meaning to seem ghoulish, but some of that is dependent upon the circumstances surrounding one’s demise. For me, I just hope it isn’t anything terribly stupid.
As a soldier, gun writer and professional adventurer, I have invested a lifetime exploring the diaphanous frontier that demarcates normal life from that Really Bright Light. But were it not for the intervention of one epically overworked guardian angel, I might have inadvertently tipped over the edge. One of the more compelling episodes occurred back in the nineties in the skies over Oklahoma.
I have been rightfully described as the luckiest man alive. I cannot take issue with that. God has indeed blessed me well beyond my deserving. One handy example was a certain remarkable period in my Army aviation career.
It was scout pilot nirvana. We had four OH58 aeroscout helicopters and but two rated 58 drivers. We were therefore tasked to fly off our flying hour program lest we lose it for the next fiscal year. That meant my buddy and I got keys and a gas card several days a week with the directive to go forth and transform JP8 jet fuel into noise. If you were paying taxes during that time, sincerely and from my heart, thank you.
Flying an OH58 single-pilot with the doors off is much like driving a high-performance three-dimensional motorcycle. To unleash a 24-year-old American male on such a machine is the chemical formula for mischief. Don’t tell anybody, but I once flew from Fort Sill, Oklahoma, to Fort Chaffee, Arkansas, without climbing above 100 feet.
I became a connoisseur of all the greasy spoons across Oklahoma. My perennial favorite was Big Bob’s Bar-B-Q in Ada. I could land at the local airport and grab lunch while my airplane was being refueled. An extra fifteen cents at checkout landed me a Blow Pop for the trip home. Once I got to altitude I’d start sucking on that rascal.
Charms Blow Pops are a great way to wash down a greasy lunch. One of them once nearly killed me in a helicopter.
Eventually I’d get sufficiently far along in the process to free the cardboard stick. This I discarded into the slipstream. It was biodegradable, so there was minimal guilt. The value-added portion of the timeless Charms Blow Pop is the chewing gum center. On this fateful day I was in the zone and living large.
I pulled my mike boom away from my lips far enough to accommodate and, without conscious thought, began to blow bubbles. As fate would have it perhaps ten minutes out from the Fort Sill restricted area the unthinkable happened. An unexpected gust of wind zipped in the open door and burst my bubble…all over my microphone.
Now understand this was a big deal. The OH58 won’t fly without two hands on the controls. Additionally, before I could get to the airfield I had to obtain clearance through range control. Fort Sill is the home of the Field Artillery. At all hours of the day and night the airspace above Fort Sill is simply alive with stuff that explodes. I only had so much gas remaining. This was not cool.
I tightened the friction lock down on the collective and pinched the cyclic stick between my knees. From an initial altitude of about three thousand feet I then started scraping madly at my mike boom in a frenetic effort to remove enough chewing gum to make the cursed thing work. As I did so, the aircraft would gradually attempt to roll inverted. When the attitude grew alarming I would seize the controls once again, stabilize the helicopter, and repeat my performance. Each time I subsequently called out to the range control guys I got no answer. I feared I was doomed.
Sometime after the first, “Unidentified aircraft approaching the restricted area, say intentions” radio call I finally got enough of the gooey stuff off to talk back. I then landed the aircraft uneventfully. However, I had gum in my hair, all over my Nomex gloves, plastered across the front of my flight helmet, and mashed into my eyebrows. When I went to the Central Issue Facility to swap out my gloves the following day I pre-emptively stated, “I really don’t want to talk about it.” The supply guys had mercy on me and didn’t press.
“Died in a fiery crash while scraping chewing gum off of his mike boom” would have looked pretty darn stupid engraved on a tombstone.
Not everything that goes on in a place like this orbits around fixing people.
Unsplash photo by the National Cancer Institute.
The young woman walked into the labor and delivery suite of the University hospital unannounced. She carried a big red biohazard bag with the top tied in a knot. I inquired what we could do for her.
She reported that she had undergone an abortion that morning at a local clinic. Afterwards the doctor had given her the bag and told her to come see us. He had not told her why. She reported a little abdominal pain but otherwise felt fine. She seemed confused by the whole affair.
We made her comfortable in a labor room while we tried to sort this all out. A fellow resident and I took the bag into another room, put on some gloves, and opened it up.
Inside we found a dismembered baby. Amongst a little extraneous goo were two perfectly formed arms, two similarly perfect legs, and a miniature torso. It was a little boy. There was no head.
We reported all of this to our attending physician, a highly experienced gynecologist. He just sighed. He suddenly seemed very old.
“If you’re not willing to go all the way you shouldn’t be doing the job,” he said with resignation.
I asked him what he meant by that.
Is this a human being? It’s an important question. Think it through. A lot is riding on the answer. Unsplash photo by Jill Sauve.
This man had been the city’s sole abortionist for many years before he came to work at the university. He explained that he had performed the procedure more than five thousand times. He said that not infrequently when you are extracting the fetus it comes into pieces. It must be accounted for on the outside to ensure nothing was left behind that could serve as a nidus for infection. In this case the doctor who had performed the procedure had recovered what was in the sack but had been unable to retrieve the baby’s head.
I asked what was to be done at this point. He dispassionately explained that you prep the patient in the OR, dilate the cervix, and crush the head so that it will pass through more readily. He likened it to an egg. He said there was a tool designed specifically for that purpose.
This isn’t some grandiose moral or political statement. It’s not Left or Right. This isn’t Sunday School or church. I’m just telling you what abortion looks like up close. Make your own value judgments. Most folks marching and screaming haven’t actually seen what they’re screaming for.
Unlike most of the activists in this debate, I have diagnosed pregnancy in a twelve-year-old. I’ve seen the fear in those eyes. I appreciate both points of view. I really do. However, the contents of that sack changed me. Nothing could ever justify that.
There is literally nothing more innocent and defenseless than a human child.
Unsplash photo by Filip Mroz.
I knew some hard men when I was a soldier. One proper warrior killed a man with a knife in Vietnam. I served with a Blackhawk door gunner who had unlimbered his M134 minigun, the electric-powered Gatling gun used as defensive armament on Special Operations helicopters, on a crowd in Somalia. I met quite a few soldiers who had done their share of killing. I never knew anybody who had taken life on the scale this physician had.
What most shocked me was that at some point some doctor did that and called it medicine. As I beheld those little arms and legs I just couldn’t comprehend how anyone could not think that was anything but a chopped up little baby. I still frankly don’t understand it.
Killing is meant to be viscerally objectionable. However, packaging is everything. The Air Force pilot commanding a Predator drone can sit in an air-conditioned building in Nevada and launch a hellfire missile over Afghanistan while readily distancing herself from the practical results of her actions. The Army Ranger who shoots a terrorist in the chest at bad breath range while clearing a building is a great deal more emotionally involved. Regardless, both of those people are comparably dead. There are parallels here.
It is easy to pontificate about rights and injustice over coffee late at night in a dorm room or on the street corner during a protest. It is another thing entirely when you are physically sifting through the remains of what is clearly a dismembered headless human child. Even that seasoned physician, the veteran of more than five thousand abortions, cannot completely convince himself that what he did was not somehow innately wrong. The emotional baggage was patently obvious.
“If you’re not willing to go all the way you shouldn’t be doing the job.” Indeed.
