Gurkhas, bravery, and the rules of modern warfare.

A Gurkha soldier from 1st Battalion, Royal Gurkha Rifles has been "sent back to England to face disciplinary action" because he removed

... the head off (sic) a dead Taliban commander with his ceremonial knife to prove the dead man’s identity

The soldier faces disciplinary action because ...

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.

The dead man's head was removed because ...

[The Gurkha's] 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 [unsheathed his kukri ... after running out of ammunition] and beheaded the dead insurgent.

It's an 'academic question' but, if the soldier had - because he'd run out of ammunition - used his knife to kill the Afghan this would probably be a story of great bravery and medals would be awarded.

But no, let's try to demoralise the soldiers even more by being 'politically correct' and culturally aware during enemy action, and conveniently forget the Gurkha's culture, and forget that the Taliban will happily behead hostages and record their actions to show the world what they did. The Taliban likes trying to frighten 'their enemy' into submission by doing things they know we westerners consider to be barbaric. Is it possible they will be amused to learn that one of our soldiers is being disciplined for beheading a corpse?

Mrs Rigby thinks it's important to remember that only three days ago we were mourning the loss of three soldiers of the 1st Battalion The Royal Gurkha Rifles. (pictures Mail)



Major James Bowman was shot dead whilst sleeping in his tent. Lieutenant Turkington and Corporal Arjun Purja Pun were killed when the murderer fired a rocket-propelled grenade into the shipping container used as the base's operations room. We have not been told of non-fatal injuries suffered by other soldiers.

And who did this? It was a 'rogue' traitorous soldier of the Afghan National Army - who has since been in contact with the BBC giving his excuses and attempting to justify his actions.

That 'soldier' is, apparently

... now the subject of a massive manhunt led by elite SAS troops.

Who will, Mrs R guesses, give him either a bunch of flowers or a box of chocolates when they find him, and maybe even offer him counselling to ease his trauma.

Ambush Predator has written about this. Mrs Rigby is only doing so because she spotted a link on All Seeing Eye to a poem. The poem offers an insight, showing the stark contrast in military 'ethics', and enemy action, between now and when Rudyard Kipling was earning his Nobel Prize for Literature. Kipling knew of the fierce loyalty of the Gurkhas, and how they might be expected to react to the death of one of their Officers - although this fictional poem is referring to the Indian Army of the time.

The Grave of the Hundred Head
by Rudyard Kipling

There's a widow in sleepy Chester
Who weeps for her only son;
There's a grave on the Pabeng River,
A grave that the Burmans shun;
And there's Subadar* Prag Tewarri
Who tells how the work was done.

A Snider* squibbed in the jungle,
Somebody laughed and fled,
And the men of the First Shikaris*
Picked up their Subaltern dead,
With a big blue mark in his forehead
And the back blown out of his head.

Subadar Prag Tewarri,
Jemadar* Hira Lal,
Took command of the party,
Twenty rifles in all,
Marched them down to the river
As the day was beginning to fall.

They buried the boy by the river,
A blanket over his face -
They wept for their dead Lieutenant,
The men of an alien race -
They made a samadh* in his honour,
A mark for his resting-place.

For they swore by the Holy Water,
They swore by the salt they ate,
That the soul of Lieutenant Eshmitt Sahib
Should go to his God in state,
With fifty file of Burmans
To open him Heaven's gate.

The men of the First Shikaris
Marched till the break of day,
Till they came to the rebel village,
The village of Pabengmay -
A jingal* covered the clearing,
Calthrops hampered the way.

Subadar Prag Tewarri,
Bidding them load with ball,
Halted a dozen rifles
Under the village wall;
Sent out a flanking-party
With Jemadar Hira Lal.

The men of the First Shikaris
Shouted and smote and slew,
Turning the grinning jingal
On to the howling crew.
The Jemadar's flanking-party
Butchered the folk who flew.

Long was the morn of slaughter,
Long was the list of slain,
Five score heads were taken,
Five score heads and twain;
And the men of the First Shikaris
Went back to their grave again,

Each man bearing a basket
Red as his palms that day,
Red as the blazing village -
The village of Pabengmay,
And the "drip-drip-drip" from the baskets
Reddened the grass by the way.

They made a pile of their trophies
High as a tall man's chin,
Head upon head distorted,
Set in a sightless grin,
Anger and pain and terror
Stamped on the smoke-scorched skin.

Subadar Prag Tewarri
Put the head of the Boh
On the top of the mound of triumph,
The head of his son below -
With the sword and the peacock-banner
That the world might behold and know.

Thus the samadh was perfect,
Thus was the lesson plain
Of the wrath of the First Shikaris -
The price of a white man slain;
And the men of the First Shikaris
Went back into camp again.

Then a silence came to the river,
A hush fell over the shore,
And Bohs that were brave departed,
And Sniders squibbed no more;
For the Burmans said
That a white man's head
Must be paid for with heads five-score.

There's a widow in sleepy Chester
Who weeps for her only son;
There's a grave on the Pabeng River,
A grave that the Burmans shun;
And there's Subadar Prag Tewarri
Who tells how the work was done.

Snider = British military rifle.

jingal = "... an 1880s enlarged copy of the Remington Lee Bolt action rifle (original calibre 45/70 or 43 Spanish)which were made in .60 calibre by Tientsin Arsenal, which also made the ammo ..."

samadh = can be directly traslated (sic) as shrine or death shrine

Subadar = An Indian Army mid-rank infantry officer equal to a Captain.

Jemadar = An Indian Army cavalry or infantry junior officer equal to a Lieutenant.

Shikaris = game hunter. Quote from e-book "Under ten viceroys; the reminiscences of a Gurkha" by Nigel Gresley Woodyatt.

"Every Gurkha is supposed to be a shikari. It would be much more correct to say ALL are shikar lovers, but only a very small minority has any real knowledge of game.
When you do get a shikari he is good, as good as they make them, and quite fearless. ..."

More about Kipling from Wikipedia

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Starry, starry nights?

The Mail has highlighted the 'fears' of an increase in road accidents when some motorway lights are turned off between the hours of midnight and five in the morning. Turning off some lights is meant to both save the environment and quite a bit of money.

According to the Campaign for Dark Skies the idea has already been trialled in some counties, with no increase in the number of road accidents and, where urban lights have been turned off it has been deemed a success ...

... "A year on year comparison for April 2006 to May 2007 [when street-lights were left on all night] and April 2007 to May 2008 [when street-lights were turned off at midnight] has shown that night-time crime has almost halved in Saffron Walden and reduced by over a third in Dunmow."

Mrs Rigby's experience is that, when it's raining and there are bright metal halide lights, it's almost impossible to see white road markings and also, at the end of a run of bright white lights, her eyes take a moment or two to adjust to the sudden darkness.

She has noticed that, in brightly lit urban areas, car headlights are almost invisible, and she thinks it's easier to see cars at night when there's no street lighting - simply because it's possible to see their headlight beams approaching a junction or from around a bend etc. etc.. It's because of this some of the unlit winding rural roads near Rigby Town seem safer to use during the darker winter months.

Mr Eugenides, however, spots an interesting conundrum

So we live in a society where head teachers make kids wear goggles to play conkers and policemen are forbidden from rescuing drowning people on health and safety grounds... and then they make you drive at 70mph in pitch darkness to save the polar bears?

Hmm, it almost makes Mrs R wonder who'll be first to trip over on a newly darkened motorway and then blame the lack of street lighting - and after that maybe all cars will have to be preceded by a pedestrian waving a red flag. Or did they do that once before?

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Carne Ross & Chilcot

... there was no deliberate discussion of available alternatives to military action in advance of the military invasion. There is no record of that discussion, no official has referred to it, no minister has talked about it. And that seems to me to be a very egregious absence in history, that at some point a government before going to war should stop and ask itself are there available alternatives.

As my testimony makes clear, there was an available alternative. All that argument about tightening sanctions and stopping illegal breaches to me amounted to a very viable, robust alternative to military action that would have had the possible effect of undermining the Saddam regime, and certainly would have prevented any major rearmament ... The fact that that deliberation, that consideration of alternatives, did not take place is, to me, a disgrace.

Taken from Mr Carne Ross*'s statement to the Chilcot Inquiry.

Please read other extracts from his statement over at the Guardian

*
Mr Carne Ross is ...

... the Foreign Office "whistleblower" who resigned after speaking out about the war. He worked as a British diplomat at the UN and, in a submission to the Butler inquiry (which was originally secret, but which was subsequently published in 2006), he said that officials did not regard Iraq's WMD programme as a threat to the UK.

His 17 page witness statement opens with a tribute to Dr. David Kelly.

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St Swithun's weather.

Hosepipe bans and cricket always seem to be the modern equivalent of a rain dance. Mrs Rigby can't deny that the gardens of Rigby Towers were in desperate need of more than a drop of rain because, despite regular dosing with watering cans, some of the larger shrubs were beginning to suffer what might be permanent damage.

And now, of course, it's St Swithun's Day. Stories tell us that the Saint had been buried in the churchyard outside the Priory Church of Sts. Peter and Paul and St. Swithun as he had requested, until some more serious folk decided he'd be better inside the rather splendid shrine they'd built for him - so they dug up his bones and moved him indoors. The saint wasn't, apparently, too pleased and so made it start raining and he made it carry on raining for 40 days.

British 21st century man, who is unlikely to mark the calendar by saints days, doesn't like this sort of tradition, so we're now told how 15th July is merely a marker for stuck weather systems and patterns and, because of the way these things work, the weather on that day could continue for the next few weeks - or not.

Mrs R thinks it's rather nice to know that St Swithun's verse ...

St. Swithun's day, if thou dost rain,
For forty days it will remain;
St. Swithun's day, if thou be fair,
For forty days 'twill rain na mair.

... is mirrored by weather traditions elsewhere in Europe. For example.

In France they say Quand il pleut a la Saint Gervais Il pleut quarante jours apres - If it rains on St. Gervais' day (19th of July), it will rain for fourty days thereafter.

In Germany the Siebenschlaefer or seven sleepers day (July 7th, after the Gregorian calendar) refers to the weather patterns of the following seven weeks.

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Unpleasant people.

Sometimes, when looking at other blogs, you learn about people whose behaviour make you wonder how they managed to end up being paid out of the public purse. More often than not, if you're anything like Mrs Rigby, you just shake your head and 'move on' - because that's what you're meant to do these days isn't it? And because, well, we've seen it, or something similar, all too many times before.

Some people somehow manage to 'get away with an awful lot' of unpleasantness, both online and in the real world. They seem to be able to 'get away with' a lot more than ... than most people. It's hard to work out why, maybe sometimes it's really because of 'who they are' and sometimes it's because of 'who they know' and who's looking after their interests. At other times it could be because they're so belligerent, so caustic, so full of themselves and so, errm, horrible, it'd be hard to choose which particular bit of behaviour or verbiage to target and condemn - so we leave them be.

One such person came to Mrs R's notice in this post at GrumpyOldTwat's blog. In amongst the comments is one from Subrosa, who says

Do you now believe if a red rosette was stuck on a monkey they'd vote for it? (Apology to monkeys).

It makes Mrs Rigby ask herself that if that particular person was the best choice of candidate for Local Government, then what were the worst like?

Anyhow, if you'd like to learn more about this individual perhaps you'd like to follow Mrs R's footsteps by first going to GrumpyOldTwat's place then stroll over for quite a surprising read at Harry's Place. Once you've picked your jaw up off the keyboard maybe you could take a look at a couple of posts at Corrugated Soundbite here and also here. (Don't forget to read the comments).

When you've digested all that, with the help of a cup of coffee or something a little stronger, perhaps you'd like to pop back to GOT's blog and follow some of the highlighted links - there are quite a few.

Oh, and a P.S. - you did remember to read all the comments belonging to all those blog posts, didn't you? If not, it's worth backtracking and doing so.

And to think, this man was elected to a position in local government. He helps shape local policies, he is a so-called public servant ... and, because of the way the last government 'sorted out' local funding, we all contribute towards the financial pot from which he draws his wages, even though he may not work, or live, anywhere near us.

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Ed Balls R4 interview

Reading this on Coffee House it would be easy to believe that Mr Ed Balls is a reincarnation of Mr Brown. Thing is, Brown's apparently alive and well, well, alive, and is mostly somewhere in Kirkcaldy where he's writing his memoirs and being paid to be an MP - except when he goes to the zoo.

Here's the beginning of the John Humphrys/Ed Balls radio 4 interview. You can read the whole thing over at the Coffee House

John Humphrys: There are two big questions in British politics, the 1st is whether the coalition can hold together; the second is whether the Labour party can hold together. It’s not quite that simple for the obvious reason that the coalition is two parties, and the Labour party isn’t, not officially anyway. But for years it was divided between those who supported Blair, and those who supported Brown. And the question now as the party struggles to decide who to choose for its new leader is whether it can heal that division. It hasn’t been helped by Peter Mandelson, Lord Mandelson’s, book about to be published, and he’s got a lot to say about it. Ed Balls is one of the leadership contenders and he was about as close to Gordon Brown as it’s possible to be and he’s with me. Good morning to you.

Ed Balls: Good morning John.

JH: Do you regret those years of division?

EB: I don’t regret at all the national minimum wage, three-and-a-half thousand Sure Start children’s centres…

JH: No, that’s not what I asked you, I asked you about the division.

EB: But, John, what we had in the last 13 years is a Labour government which achieved more for jobs and social justice, did more redistribution than any government since 1945. I think put our health service on a sound footing, transformed education, so we had the best generation of teachers ever. I think it was a profoundly successful government. And the fact is there were times when Gordon Brown and Tony Blair had disagreements and arguments, but out of that creative tension came some huge achievements and I think the Labour party is very proud of what was achieved in the last 30 years, 13 years and .....

Ever had that feeling of Déjà vu?

Read the rest, you know you want to!

(P.S. Edited to quote more of the transcript)

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Sham consultation.

It would appear that this site is as empty a gesture as was this one.

Mr Clegg has decided to close the debate on some issues. He has decided that he will not look at reviewing either the death penalty or the smoking ban.

Interesting sort of parallel really, pairing these two regulations or laws. We all know that, in reality, discussion about the death penalty in Britain is little more than empty words. However, we also know that many other EU countries have ensured that people and businesses have the freedom to choose whether to allow smoking on their premises - or not. Britain, and British people, are not to be allowed to even discuss the issue. The debate is, apparently, over - even before it began. It seems an astonishingly illiberal approach.

There is so much to say about this but Mrs R is taking the easy route of merely pointing to the eloquent opinions of :-

Dick Puddlecote
Leg_Iron
Freedon2Choose
Frank Davis

It's worth, as always, taking the time to read not only the posts but also the comments.

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Christian Professor’s hand hacked off for ‘blasphemy’

Christian Professor’s hand hacked off for ‘blasphemy’

A group of unknown assailants severed the hand and the right arm of a university professor accused of defaming Mohammed months ago. ...

According to the police, Prof. TJ Joseph, was returning with his family from Sunday service when a group of people in a Maruti Omni van drew up beside him stopping him close to home. After forcing Joseph to get out of his car, they attacked him with knives and swords, then cut off his hand and right arm throwing them away after about 200 meters.

The professor was immediately transported to a hospital in Muvattupuzha and then to another specialized in surgery, where doctors are trying to mend his severed hand. The professor has also suffered deep wounds to his body and is in need of plastic surgery.

Joseph ... a professor at Newman’s College, Thodupuzha, is free on bail. Last March he had prepared a questionnaire for examinations in the private college and according to the Muslims had included questions offensive to Muhammad.

Ugh! This is yet another thing that Mrs R can't write about without feeling nauseous, and having managed to discuss the case of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani she has to repeat her belief that such 'punishments', it doesn't matter who they're carried out by, are barbaric and should have no place in the 21st century world.

Britain and 'the western world' moved away from proselytism and doesn't think apostasy is such a big deal, because we're used to having the freedom to choose a faith, or not, and there are all sorts of national and international laws that enshrine the right to freedom of speech and expression - so it's awfully difficult to be classed as a heretic.

It's because of all these things that, when we hear or read about people being punished or threatened because of their religious beliefs, we're left almost open-mouthed. Very many people think it really is time the high-ups in some parts of the world caught up. It's time they learned from Europe's old mistakes and realise that sensible people don't look back at, for example, The Inquisition, with awe and wonder, we view it with contempt and are actually much more likely to turn to the release of humour - and think of Monty Python!



Human nature doesn't change that much. Humans are innovative and inquisitive, and often want to rebel against overbearing authority. It doesn't matter how powerful the particular individuals, theologies or organisations thought they were at the height of their power, historians will always, eventually, mock, belittle, deride and criticize bullies and thugs who abused their positions of authority - not least because it's also human nature to think something that has banned is interesting and appealing, and worth investigating to see what all the fuss is about. So being too pushy can be a bit counter-productive in the end.

Mrs Rigby knows that this incident is no joke. It's merely the latest of a long line of indefensible persecutions of Christians by power-hungry and intolerant Muslims who want to have their own way.

If you'd like to read more (and Mrs R really thinks you should) please stroll over to Real Street for more information and comment.

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Battle of, and for, Britain.

Between 10th July and 31st October 1940 a battle raged in the skies above Britain, mostly over England. Parts of the country were flattened by German blitz bombing, which is why the centres of some port towns and cities, for example Liverpool and Southampton, have so few ancient buildings.

During the 'Battle of Britain' the country was protected by "The Few",

'The Few' were 2,353 young men from Great Britain and 574 from overseas, pilots and other aircrew, who are officially recognised as having taken part in the Battle of Britain.

Each flew at least one authorised operational sortie with an eligible unit of the Royal Air Force or Fleet Air Arm during the period 10 July to 31 October 1940.

544 lost their lives during the period of the Battle, and these are marked by an asterisk (on The Battle of Britain Roll of Honour).

A further 791 were killed in action or died in the course of their duties before the wars end ...

In a speech to the House of Commons on 20th August 1940 Churchill praised these young men

"Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few".

Some today would have us forget those times, and forget the astonishing and selfless bravery of those 2,927 men. Mrs Rigby can't forget, because she wasn't alive then, but she is very aware of the importance of those battles and is also aware of what might have happened to Britain had we lost the war.

Some say we are still fighting a battle for Britain, others say there's no point because politicians have surrendered our sovereignty to Europe. But, well, this is Britain after all, and we don't take kindly to takeover bids, no matter how subtle they may be.

So let's remember those brave Airmen, and their ground crews, and the men in the factories who worked long hours to make the planes, and the munitions workers who made the bombs and bullets. Let's also remember the men and women of the Civil Defence and all other non-combatants who 'did their bit' when called upon to protect this country from harm - and they did it without computers too!

We Rigbys would like to say, "Thank you," and would like to share these two videos.

This is a "Battle of Britain. Tribute to the Few" with music 'Conquest of Paradise' by Vangelis.




This is an extract from the film "Battle of Britain"



(P.S. Edited to add link to Roll of Honour)

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Standing room only?

Sometimes reporting errors can make you smile.

From this BBC report about a fire near Heathrow, where "50 firefighters are containing the scene". The report tells us that

More than 200 people were evacuated from the area

Mrs Rigby thinks they must have been living in remarkably cramped conditions because

A five metre exclusion zone is in place

Five metres?

That's about, oh, (5x3) +10% = 16ft 6 inches.

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