So it is considered extremely offensive to Taliban Muslims? I am so very concerned about that aspect of his actions…
A close relative served with the Gurkhas in the anti-communist-terrorist war in Malaya in the 1950s. The CTs were absolutely terrified of them, for very good reason. It strikes me, given the demand of the MOD for positive identification, the man should be given a medal for using his initiative, not suspended. Had he chopped his head off in face-to-face combat, presumably that would have been fine, and it is splitting hairs, to my mind, to make a fuss in the circumstances, when he was dead, given the demands for a positive ID. He didn’t scalp the man as a trophy: He detached his head from his body to supply the ID demanded. They can send the head back in due course, when they are finished with it.
Boadicea's Chariot 
It seems he acted perfectly professionally, so I don’t understand what all the fuss is about.
CWJ,
They probably did exactly the same sort of thing in Malaya as well? I’m sure I read somewhere about cutting off hands for fingerprint identification. I am surprise that a photo ID wasn’t used.
Sending a Gurkha unit to the Falklands in the eighties taught the Argies a thing or two. They didn’t like it up’em one little bit.
Excellent soldiers!
I suspect we can rely on Joanna Lumley to stick it to them if there is a move towards any more politically correct nonsense…
Perhaps if we send the head back terry taliban will return all the arms and legs that they have blown off with their bombs.
Yeah, yeah, yeah! Gung ho! Jolly good show! Teach the wogs a lesson or two! Gurkhas are jolly good chaps, what? The fact is it is not British military practice to chop heads off prisoners, alive or dead. Rules is rules. So put away your medals and get real.
They were the Demo Battalion in Brecon in the 70’s (probably still are.) Being dug in and defending a reverse slope, when dawn broke and the silence was shattered by the sound of Chinese bugles closely followed by 200 hundred of the scary little buggers dressed in black combat kit and carrying Soviet weapons cresting the skyline seemed very real!
I had the privilege of being part of 48 Gurkha Brigade Hong Kong and spent three years with them. Best posting I ever had.
Sorry Guys but I’m with Janus on this one.
It goes against every rule in the book to defile a corpse on the battlefield. We simply don’t and must not ever do it.
Just because the scum we are fighting doesn’t care, it does not give us carte blanche to stoop to their depth. If we act like them we are no better than them.
I gave my doc a DNA sample once, he used a swab not a Kukri FFS!
Janus, it’s not a question of teaching the “wogs” as you call them, a lesson or two.
It is whether he used his initiative in meeting the demand for positive ID. It appears that he did, and is now being suspended, probably more over concerns of how this will play to the home audience of fellow believers.
Do you imagine that Gurkhas are equipped with kukris to clean their fingernails?
What leads you to suppose he was a prisoner before his head was removed? He was certainly dead.
This was not published as a gung ho rant, and it shouldn’t be turned into one, however much some of you may enjoy a bloggish punch-up on the subject.
Calm down Janus, you sound as if you are need of a bloody good holiday, as that comment is way over the top.
We have a lot to be thankful for where the Gurkhas are concerned. They have never let us down. It is a matter of national shame that we can not say the same.
Toc, I defer to my learned friend, Furry. No, I don’t need a holiday and it is not OTT to point out that we have standards woth preserving.
Janus,
Let’s not lose our heads about this.
Didn’t know his Kipling, did he?
How rude! The colour is lacking in masculinity.
Toc,
You should be bothered chum. Look at this from a military view, once the indignation clears you will see clearly that beheading a corpse on the battlefield is just plain wrong. Pure and simple.
There is no excuse for it, a simple wipe around the teeth with a fresh field dressing would have provided all the DNA evidence necessary for a positive ID. A picture might have worked too. To come strolling back into base with a severed head is from the days of Atilla the Hun.
I think this is a fuss about very little. I side with Araminta. When you’re dead you’re dead, after all.
Ferret
The flaw in the DNA route of course is that you have to match it with DNA already identified as his, unless you consider it likely that his parents or siblings will cooperate in providing a sample to cross-check probability. The photoshoot, I would have thought would have been a possible route, but then again, in the heat of battle and under fire, and without your mobile phone or DSLR to hand, a sharp kukri would be the first thing you might reach for as a Gurkha, trained in its use, since childhood.
I take your earlier point on board about “defiling” corpses on the battlefield, but in my book, that would be acts like tossing them in the latrines’ trench or something equally offensive. Anyway, in due course the MOD will no doubt come up with some form of judgement – and until it does, there seems little to be gained from Boadicea’s Boys getting themselves all stirred up about it! I had no intention of triggering WW III in raising the matter…
Oh Amicus you little tease,
So let’s imagine you have a teenage son in the Army and he is killed in Helmand.
The C17 touches down at Lyneham, and all those right minded folk line the streets of Wootton Bassett to pay their respects to yet another fallen hero. You trundle along to the chapel of rest to see your flesh and blood laid out for the funeral only to discover he has no head.
Do you still fail to see what the fuss is about?
CWJ,
Yes DNA needs a reference, but what can you tell from a severed head? Certainly not the basics like height. Drained of blood and life I might suggest a head takes on a totally different look to that when it was attached. I refuse to believe that not one member of the patrol was capable of recording an image. Hell you should see the sophisticated kit they go on stag with these days.
One Ghurka got it wrong, I am not saying he should be shot. But he must be disciplined and the example should be set that this is NOT acceptable behaviour for our troops. Barbarism should be left to the uncivilised.
As for defiling, CWJ I put the same question to you as I did to Amicus. How would you feel?
Ferret
Do the families get to see the bodies? But we are talking about us doing it to them.
Ferret, I understand your point, but generally staff at mortuaries and undertakers would not permit relatives to view corpses that were badly mutilated, as is frequently the case in road accidents and war. Frequently heads and limbs and bodies are blown to smithereens. I am aware that Jews and Muslims are particualarly concerned on religious grounds, that as many of the scattered parts as possible are reassembled for interment. (One wonders, in idle moments, if they have some doubts about whether their version of God is capable of reassembling them, himself.)
On a personal basis my immediate family members have all donated our corpses in our Wills to medical research, so we are entirely content to be sliced up and kept in different bottles, skinned to help burn victims, and to have various parts used in whatever manner can help the living. So perhaps I don’t have the hangups that others have, about a missing head…
Furry.
I appreciate what you say and I absolutely agree that it is unacceptable to “stoop to their depths”.
For purposes of identification of the target, it seems that it is usual practice to remove the whole body. This wasn’t possible in this instance. If, after an enquiry, trophy hunting turns out the be the reason for the removal of the head then I agree he should be disciplined.
My understanding from what little we know, is that it was done for identification purposes.
Having thought again, I can see how it is right to show respect to a fallen foe.
Minty MBE,
I don’t agree that the mutilation of dead soldiers is acceptable whatever the reason. Identification indeed.
If our soldiers are encouraged to disregard common decency and hold zero respect for war dead then we are no better than the lawless scum we ae trying to eradicate.
CWJ,
Firstly, the cadaver was fine but for a bullethole or two. Different story if the head is missing though.
Good for you on the donation front, I am exactly of the same mind. If any of my components are of any use what-so-ever, medical science is more than welcome to them. That is my choice however, it was not made for me by some bloke with a bugger-off knife.
Ferret, my little furry cyber mate. My toilet humor was directed at Janus’s reply to my comment about calming down and was brought on by his rather provocative use of these words:-
“Yeah, yeah, yeah! Gung ho! Jolly good show! Teach the wogs a lesson or two! Gurkhas are jolly good chaps, what?”
That is what my OTT remark was all about.
If you take the time to read back through my comments, you will see that I have not expressed an opinion one way or the other Johnny Gurkha’s actions to secure a positive ID. All will become clear when as I’m sure it will he goes to trial. Then we will have the prosecution trying to have his head served up on a platter and his defense trying to save his head. I will keep my powder dry until then.
Like most, I do watch the TV and try and understand what is going on out there. Last night it was the turn of the Green Howards to tell their story. What did it tell me? It told me that our troops are fighting a ruthless and determined enemy (who of course have not signed up to The Geneva Convention) and will stop at nothing. Our own troops are just young men doing their very best in horrendous circumstances and are witness to sights that no 18 year old should be seeing. I’m not sure if their SOP’s deal with the taking of DNA samples in what was possibly a 360 degree firefight or indeed whipping out a camera? I would like to think, that the Gurkha in question had the very best of intentions. We will see.
Toc,
I watched that too. That was some frightening stuff. Those ANA are lunatics. What a complete liability. That monkey Lt who decided IED disposal was a piece of cake, he lasted 2 weeks. Did you see the way he was swinging that metal detector back and forth on the jog? He couldn’t have detected a Cheiftain tank with those drills.
Still I see our boys have learned to let the ANA go first, as good as any IED detector but messy.
The present Afghan (Jirga) conference causes me to regurgitate Kipling, from a hundred years ago:
“His Royal Highness Abdur Rahman, Amir of Afghanistan, G.C.S.I., and trusted ally of Her Imperial Majesty the Queen of England and Empress of India, is a gentleman for whom all right-thinking people should have a profound regard. Like most other rulers, he governs not as he would, but as he can, and the mantle of his authority covers the most turbulent race under the stars. To the Afghan neither life, property, law, nor kingship are sacred when his own lusts prompt him to rebel. He is a thief by instinct, a murderer by heredity and training, and frankly and bestially immoral by all three. None the less he has his own crooked notions of honour, and his character is fascinating to study. On occasion he will fight without reason given till he is hacked in pieces; on other occasions he will refuse to show fight till he is driven into a corner. Herein he is as unaccountable as the gray wolf, who is his blood-brother.
And these men His Highness rules by the only weapon that they understand—the fear of death, which among some Orientals is the beginning of wisdom. Some say that the Amir’s authority reaches no farther than a rifle bullet can range; but as none are quite certain when their king may be in their midst, and as he alone holds every one of the threads of Government, his respect is increased among men. Gholam Hyder, the Commander-in-chief of the Afghan army, is feared reasonably, for he can impale; all Kabul city fears the Governor of Kabul, who has power of life and death through all the wards; but the Amir of Afghanistan, though outlying tribes pretend otherwise when his back is turned, is dreaded beyond chief and governor together. His word is red law; by the gust of his passion falls the leaf of man’s life, and his favour is terrible. He has suffered many things, and been a hunted fugitive before he came to the throne, and he understands all the classes of his people. By the custom of the East any man or woman having a complaint to make, or an enemy against whom to be avenged, has the right of speaking face to face with the king at the daily public audience. This is personal government, as it was in the days of Harun al Raschid of blessed memory, whose times exist still and will exist long after the English have passed away.”
I would suggest to you that not a whole lot has changed in that godforsaken neck of the woods, over the past 100 years…
Let’s not forget that these are the people who brought us the mutilation by battery acid of young girls whose crime was to go to school. Zero respect is exactly what I, personally, have for any such thug. Do I give a tuppeny fig for any such corpse? Nope.
CWJ – “I am aware that Jews and Muslims are particualarly concerned on religious grounds, that as many of the scattered parts as possible are reassembled for interment. (One wonders, in idle moments, if they have some doubts about whether their version of God is capable of reassembling them, himself.)” If Allah cannot reassemble a man whose head is missing how is he going to manage one who has blown himself up with a bomb or even a Boeing 737?
My problem with this teatime tempest is, as CWJ says, that it is not as if the soldier removed his head for any other reason than he was asked to bring back proof. (Or so we are lead to believe.) Had he done it as an act of vengeance on the Muslim people, then one could perhaps understand the concern. The failure lies with his superiors in that he was not told what sort of evidence would suffice. In any event, why are are Gurkhas given that sort of weapon in the first place. Do other troops use them? If not one can only surmise they are a traditional piece of equipment, in which case lets abide by their traditions, not Western or Muslim? While I think gratuitous mutilation of dead bodies reflects worse on the mutilator than the dead man, I am also of the feeling that, once you are dead, you are dead. It makes little difference whether your body is lying in “cold, dark earth”, burning to ashes in a fiery furnace or merely nailed to a perch. Its not as if you are simply pining for the fjords. Tell the Muslims to stop blowing us up and we will stop chopping their heads off. After all, we are not attacking all Islam, only those few extremists who don’t really represent Islam at all, apparently. What is sauce for the goose, is sauce for the gander. Speaking of farmyard animals, I have always thought that the best way to fight the buggers would be to attack them with water canons filled with pigs’ blood.
Bravo, I agree totally.
Worth a read:-
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1296136/As-Gurkha-disciplined-beheading-Taliban-Thank-God-side.html
Spot on, Toc.
🙂
They are tribesmen from mountainous Nepal, not Staff College graduates!
Sounds like one of those cases where someone in authority should have given more specific instructions…
… be careful what you ask for, because, in this case, you’ve got it….
As I said Bravo,
They can be as primitive as they like, my issue is with our conduct.