Thursday, July 29, 2010

Jai Mahakali, Ayo Gorkhali!

Dear England:

You hired the Gurkhas

You knew what they were like--it's why you hired 'em.

Because they scare the bejezzus out of everyone you send 'em up against; they've been doing it for nearly two hundred years now.

You are were so proud of their, um, scrappiness and pluck

I guess don't admire "pluck" anymore, do you?  After all, it might offend people who are liable to kidnap you and saw your head off, live, on the telly.

I suspect--and can only celebrate--that my ancestors saw this coming and emigrated as soon as possible.

Sitting on the sidelines--way on the sidelines, in Korea--when NATO was making faces at Slobodan Milosovic, I had, in my platoon, an NCO who was working on his Masters in History, and a young man whose ethnicity was recorded as "East Indian."  One morning in the hangar, reading the Stars and Stripes over coffee, I read aloud that planning for the invasion of Yugoslavia was going to be spearheaded by the US Army Rangers, Norwegian Mountain Commandos, and the Gurkhas. 

We agreed that as soon as "Slobo" learned that the Gurkhas were about to be unleashed, he'd cave.

He did.

Law Dog has more, oh so much more, to say on the subject.  "And the problem is ... what, exactly?"

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