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Gunga Din
Gunga Din
You may talk o’ gin and beer
When you’re quartered safe out ’ere,
An’ you’re sent to penny-fights an’ Aldershot it;
But when it comes to slaughter
You will do your work on water,
An’ you’ll lick the bloomin’ boots of ’im that’s got it.
Now in Injia’s sunny clime,
Where I used to spend my time
A-servin’ of ’Er Majesty the Queen,
Of all them blackfaced crew
The finest man I knew
Was our regimental bhisti, Gunga Din,
He was ‘Din! Din! Din!
‘You limpin’ lump o’ brick-dust, Gunga Din!
‘Hi! Slippy hitherao
‘Water, get it! Panee lao,
‘You squidgy-nosed old idol, Gunga Din.’
The uniform ’e wore
Was nothin’ much before,
An’ rather less than ’arf o’ that be’ind,
For a piece o’ twisty rag
An’ a goatskin water-bag
Was all the field-equipment ’e could find.
When the sweatin’ troop-train lay
In a sidin’ through the day,
Where the ’eat would make your bloomin’ eyebrows crawl,
We shouted ‘Harry By!’
Till our throats were bricky-dry,
Then we wopped ’im ’cause ’e couldn’t serve us all.
It was ‘Din! Din! Din!
‘You ’eathen, where the mischief ’ave you been?
‘You put some juldee in it
‘Or I’ll marrow you this minute
‘If you don’t fill up my helmet, Gunga Din!’
’E would dot an’ carry one
Till the longest day was done;
An’ ’e didn’t seem to know the use o’ fear.
If we charged or broke or cut,
You could bet your bloomin’ nut,
’E’d be waitin’ fifty paces right flank rear.
With ’is mussick on ’is back,
’E would skip with our attack,
An’ watch us till the bugles made ‘Retire,’
An’ for all ’is dirty ’ide
’E was white, clear white, inside
When ’e went to tend the wounded under fire!
It was ‘Din! Din! Din!’
With the bullets kickin’ dust-spots on the green.
When the cartridges ran out,
You could hear the front-ranks shout,
‘Hi! ammunition-mules an’ Gunga Din!’
I shan’t forgit the night
When I dropped be’ind the fight
With a bullet where my belt-plate should ’a’ been.
I was chokin’ mad with thirst,
An’ the man that spied me first
Was our good old grinnin’, gruntin’ Gunga Din.
’E lifted up my ’ead,
An’ he plugged me where I bled,
An’ ’e guv me ’arf-a-pint o’ water green.
It was crawlin’ and it stunk,
But of all the drinks I’ve drunk,
I’m gratefullest to one from Gunga Din.
It was ‘Din! Din! Din!
‘’Ere’s a beggar with a bullet through ’is spleen;
‘’E’s chawin’ up the ground,
‘An’ ’e’s kickin’ all around:
‘For Gawd’s sake git the water, Gunga Din!’
’E carried me away
To where a dooli lay,
An’ a bullet come an’ drilled the beggar clean.
’E put me safe inside,
An’ just before ’e died,
‘I ’ope you liked your drink,’ sez Gunga Din.
So I’ll meet ’im later on
At the place where ’e is gone—
Where it’s always double drill and no canteen.
’E’ll be squattin’ on the coals
Givin’ drink to poor damned souls,
An’ I’ll get a swig in hell from Gunga Din!
Yes, Din! Din! Din!
You Lazarushian-leather Gunga Din!
Though I’ve belted you and flayed you,
By the livin’ Gawd that made you,
You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din!
A U.S. M109 Paladin howitzer drives off the vessel Liberty Peace during offloading operations at the port of Koper, Slovenia on December 28, 2024. This Reception, Staging, and Onward Movement (RSOM) operation in the port of Koper is bringing in 1-3ID, the next Regionally Aligned Force (RAF), into the European Theater. These forces will be then transported by the 21st Theater Sustainment Command to their forward operating sites across NATO where they will conduct interoperability training with Allies and partners. The intent of these RAFs is to assure our allies and deter all adversaries.
NATO’s June summit in The Hague will present a critical opportunity for America’s allies to reaffirm their commitment to collective security. The worsening security environment in both Europe and the Indo-Pacific can only be met by increased burden-sharing from all NATO members.
NATO: An Alliance Ripe for Change
Longstanding imbalances in defense expenditures and strategic responsibilities within the alliance have culminated in a vital need to undertake four reforms.
Reinforce Article 3: Commitment to Self-Defense
Article 3 of the North Atlantic Treaty requires NATO members to “maintain and develop their individual and collective capacity to resist armed attack.” There are legitimate concerns that many nations may not be fully capable of defending themselves, let alone aiding the collective capacity to support one another in conflict.
According to a recent analysis by the Heritage Foundation, America’s NATO allies have collectively underfunded their defense commitments by more than $827 billion. Notable shortfalls include Germany ($249 billion), Italy ($150 billion), and Spain ($150 billion). These shortfalls represent a decade of underinvestment in capabilities and maintenance. The end result is less-capable militaries
During this period, the U.S. averaged defense spending equivalent to 3.42 percent of GDP, while the average NATO member spent 1.59 percent—less than half as much as the U.S. spent and well below NATO’s 2 percent benchmark first articulated in 2006 and reaffirmed by all members at the 2014 Wales Summit.
Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and its invasion of Ukraine in 2022 exposed the consequences of decades of underinvestment. European nations have struggled to deliver on promised military support to Ukraine, with depleted stockpiles and limited industrial capacity—especially in munitions—undermining their ability to take the lead on military aid to Ukraine.
The 2 percent minimum has become a political bellwether in Washington, and fulfilling these obligations will strengthen transatlantic relations.
Raise NATO Spending Targets to at Least 3 percent
NATO’s current defense-spending target of 2 percent has proven insufficient to deter aggression. There are now growing calls for a 3 percent threshold—not as a new obligation, but as a necessary correction for more than a decade of underinvestment. In fact, most countries that have a deficit in spending will likely take until 2030 to 2035 just to reach the original 2-percent minimum target agreed upon in 2014.
This higher minimum threshold would accelerate rearmament in munitions production, military mobility infrastructure, and training. It would signal strategic resolve.
Reform the 20 Percent Equipment and R&D Requirement
The 2014 Wales Summit also set a target for NATO members to allocate at least 20 percent of their defense budgets “on major equipment, including related Research & Development.” However, many nations only met this metric by spending below the 2 percent minimum target, undercutting the policy’s intent.
For example, Spain has consistently met the 20 percent equipment requirement, but only spent 1 percent of overall GDP on defense. When looking only at the equipment expenditure target, Spain could claim to have overspent the minimum target by $1.3 billion since 2014. However, when considering that the target is to spend 0.4 percent of GDP on equipment—20 percent of 2 percent of GDP—Spain is down $28.4 billion on equipment since 2014.
Therefore, NATO could explore reforming its guideline by setting a floor on equipment spending that uses GDP as a reference. For example, a new standard could be to spend 0.6 percent of GDP for equipment—20 percent of a revised 3 percent GDP minimum. Given Europe’s travails in delivering military equipment to Ukraine on promised timelines, these conversations are both timely and germane. Further, implementing such a policy is prudent for any individual nation, whether or not it is formally codified in a declaration.
Address the Fiscal Realities of the United States
After decades of overspending, the United States is approaching its fiscal limits. Interest payments on U.S. national debt are set to exceed annual defense spending. Washington cannot afford to subsidize allies while bearing an outsized share of global security burdens. As China adopts an increasingly bellicose posture toward Taiwan, deepens ties with Iran, and provides support for Russia’s actions in Ukraine, NATO must grapple with global instability and embrace genuine burden-sharing . The most significant thing European NATO members can do to help America deter China is to provide the bulk of conventional deterrence in Europe so that U.S. forces can shift to the Indo-Pacific.
An F-35A Lighting II takes off for a Red Flag-Nellis 24-2 night mission at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, March 18, 2024. The presence of the F-35s offers the U.S., Allies, and partners a versatile and highly capable system, enhancing collective defense measures while reinforcing the NATO Alliance’s commitment to leveraging top-tier military capabilities for regional security and deterrence. (U.S. Air Force photo by 1st Lt. Jimmy Cummings)
NATO must use the Hague summit to recommit to Article 3; adopt a robust 3-percent-of-GDP defense-spending target; consider setting equipment-spending standards to 0.6 percent of GDP; and recognize the fiscal limitations facing the United States.
Failure to act now, individually and collectively, will increase the likelihood of future conflict. Decisive reform, however, will ensure NATO remains a credible force for peace and deterrence well into the 21st century.
About the Authors:
Miles Pollard is an economic policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis. Kyle Mendelson was a member of Heritage’s Young Leaders Program.
NATO is the very poster child of lost and forgotten mythical beings that only lived in the backs of closets under something you’d rather not shove out of the way to look under. This amusing site points out that our NATO allies are about as honest and forthcoming as one can expect from a group of terrified people on the brink of fighting a hopeless war against a terrible and powerful enemy that cannot fail to smash them into the dust………wait. I’ll go back.
Showing uncommon nonchalance in the face of a titanic evil superpower, the good people of western Europe cheerfully spat on America and woefully under-prepared for war by ignoring all the wisdom of the ages that shows the truth that if you fear war you should be prepared…..wait, I’ll start again.
Perhaps we should do our bit and tell the good people of Europe our history of waging war on that continent and they will understand their position a little more thoroughly then heretofore. In 1914 all the European twits lunged at each other with murder and mayhem in their hearts and tore each others guts out before we decided 3 years later to get involved.
In 1939 all European twits lunged at each other with murder and mayhem in their hearts and tore each others guts out before we decided 2 years later to get involved but only after one of the stupid bastards declared war on US.
So, when we say, “that you can count on us to save you from your silly little wars of the future,” consider how we mean those words. You guys fight on your own for a year or two and we’ll start thinking about getting involved in yet another one of your pointless, stupid, meaningless wars.
And who knows? The way things look now, Europe would be forced to surrender even faster than France or Belgium in the last war and we won’t have to fight at all.
On the other hand, it may well be that Europeans have finally woken up to the fact that if they maintain anything at all that even looks or smells like an actual army or navy they will be buried in politicians eager to use it to go commit murder and mayhem somewhere else in Europe. Maybe its best if they really did just disarm.
I know, how many of us can say Kellogg-Briand Pact with a straight face even now almost 100 years later?
You know it was a dream once that sane and mostly sober men could take away the fear and banish war just by making ready for it because they all understood the one single essential true thing about every war in history. Every single one of them started because some powerful fool thought, “this time, he could win!” Modernists over the last 170 years modified that charming nonsense into the newer and more powerful version that declared that every war would always be over by Christmas. You see? “A quick war that we will win”!
I see that President Trump et al is winding down his attempt at making a peace in Ukraine and accepting the reality that Zelensky is not the slightest bit interested in peace. All the idiots propping him and Ukraine up to continue a pointless war they cannot ever win has gone to his head and convinced him that he can just keep on fighting and to a certain point there is some truth in that. The thing is of course and what almost nobody in the world really understands is that neither side has actually been fighting any kind of war. It is all bloody theater.
Neither Putin nor Russia are fighting a war. They keep telling everyone that but nobody understands what is being said. Russia is fighting a Special Military Operation and to make it clear that means that Russia is very much waging a special operation whose entire purpose is to gut western Europe and NATO and destroy and level their economies. Everyone poopoo’s Russia as a gas station with Nukes but seriously, they grow more powerful every day and Europe only shrinks into less and less relevance anywhere.
Just try to think how would you go about destroying NATO as it was, if you had 60 years and special KGB Training to set it up?
-long march through the institutions turning them all against their own governments/peoples (done)
-fund the suicidal peace and anti-nuke cavalcades of dimwits all through the 60s, 70s and 80s (done)
-create out of whole cloth the Green Movement outside the COMINTERN to devastate the west (done)
-spark great friction between the allies over Treaty failures and unfair trade (done)
-gut the military through under-funding and public ridicule until nobody joins up anymore (done)
-continuously gut their economies by emphasizing free trade and globalization (done)
-have them import vast numbers (hordes) of people antithetical to everything in the West (done)
Create and cast the image of your nation as just a friendly and not so thuggish bear, sort of like Paddington. (done)
-Wage a mostly gentle and harmless special military operation that gradually consumes every $ and free Euro to pour into Ukraine’s bottomless pit of corruption instead of spending it on their own military and carefully manage one of the most fake wars since The Phony War to lure the idiots into thinking they were on the point of victory or triumph or at least nondefeat in spite of the facts on the ground. (in progress)
-Don’t shut down the gas lines, energy grids, don’t attack the gas lines, energy grids, don’t declare and enforce a naval blockade of Ukraine and don’t retaliate even after it is painfully obvious that the Europeans have crossed the line and are now co-belligerents with Ukraine in a war against Russia. Do not rile up the lib/progs in the US.
You see Putin and his guys understand something that is true now but we don’t know how much longer it will be true. “Nobody at all in the West is the slightest bit interested in fighting and dying for their country, way of life or anybody else’s and absent the Will, there is no Way.”
It kind of helps that the Arsenal of Democracy cannot make weapons in quantities necessary to fight even the most limited and harmless little war and the production lines are all gone or impossible to scale up to meaningful numbers. The arsenals and depots in the West are all empty. The old War Reserve stocks of vehicles and ammo is long gone.
The talking heads persist in thinking and saying that Russia is in trouble but failed to notice the BRICS and the loss of the $ as the world’s reserve currency. They kind of failed to notice the offshoring of all the critical components of our modern war machines such as the microchips and the rare earth metals. The thing is though, Russia can maintain this level of effort for decades. The West cannot.
According to [a] Reddit user … every tree between 1st Street and Wilshire Boulevard was cut down. However, a review of photos suggests a few remain standing.
Photos from Instagram show downed trees at the intersections of Olympic Boulevard and Hope Street, Olympic Boulevard and Figueroa Street, and Broadway and Cesar Chavez Avenue.
It was Easter weekend, so LA’s Urban Forestry Division didn’t answer calls from the media. LAPD also didn’t have any answers for the media. Apparently someone can cut down trees in the middle of America’s second-largest city without a single cop noticing.
