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BADASS SOLDIERS PART 1

The 21 Sikhs versus 10,000 afganis

The ball-busting defense of the tiny-yet-critical British fortress at Saragarhi is one of the most storied and famous tales of skull-crushing bravery in the already-badass military history of the Sikh people. The middle-finger-u-death response of the ferocious 21 men who bravely held their ground against impossible odds is often held up as the ultimate example of Sikh badassitude, which is really saying something considering that these balls-out Indian hardasses have stories about shit like the dude who ran around pureeing enemy soldiers apart even after being mostly decapitated by a broadsword to the throat. Yet despite this epic showdown being the basis for a national holiday among Sikhs and a valiant, head-cleaving last stand worthy of the Spartans at Thermopylae, this insane tale of 21 warriors going Horde Mode against roughly the entire male population of Central Asia in a single battle remains largely undocumented in Western military histories. This is their tale.

The story starts near the end of the 19th century (or, as the British like to call it, "The Good Old Days", when the British Empire stretched from sea to shining sea and the Queen convinced one-quarter of the world's population that drinking tea at 4pm was "totally fucking bodacious" and/or "off the chain" (they used lots of outdated terminology back then). The British Raj was ruling over India, providing enlightened governance and guidance in exchange for shiploads and shiploads of valuable natural resources, and the Empire oversaw the defense of the subcontinent thanks to a series of awesome mountain fortresses positioned along the border between present-day Pakistan and Afghanistan. While it wasn't particularly well-fortified or heavily-garrisoned, the outpost at Saragarhi was a seriously critical communications relay position between two major British forts. It played a crucial role in the first line of defense of British India against the tribal warriors of Central Asia – the Orakazai and the Afridi – and these guys knew that if they ever wanted to wreak havoc on the subcontinent and punch the Rajah in the Crown Jewels they were going to need to get past this defensive outpost first.

On the morning of 12 September 1897, signalman Gurmukh Singh of the 36th Sikh Regiment looked out into the horizon and, to his surprise, he saw regimental battle flags. Like, a shitload of them. A massive sea of colors, swirling dust, and more enemy soldiers than you could shake a Kirpan at, even if you'd built some kind of mechanical rig designed for the sole purpose of shaking Kirpans at things. Unable get his Rain Man on and count how many troops were in the sheer horde of rampaging warriors marching his way, Singh just quickly tallied up the regimental flags and signaled the alarm. When he rushed down from his tower and found his commanding officer – a lowly Havildar (Sergeant) named Ishar Singh – he put the estimate on the number of assailants at somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 riflemen. Oh, plus an unknown amount of heavy artillery. And probably some other shit too.

Havildar Singh called his garrison together for an emergency meeting. Standing before him in the tiny courtyard of this small, mud-and-stone garrison was the entire detachment of the 36th Sikhs assigned to the defense of this critical strategic outpost – all 20 men of it. Calmly, honestly, with no fear in his voice, the non-commissioned officer told his troops that they were most likely the last and only bastion of defense between that teeming throng of blood-thirsty warriors and the heart of India herself – these 21 soldiers were the only thing even remotely in a position to slowing down a coordinated tactical strike that was guaranteed to take the British and Indian defenders by surprise and wreak havoc across the land. He also told them that even though he knew how much lay at stake here, he wasn't about to order his men to their deaths in a hopeless battle they had no chance of surviving. The men had a choice to make – stand here and defend India against this invasion, hold back the assault as long as possible, and die valiantly in battle, or abandon their position and retreat to the nearby Fort Lockhart where a more sizeable British force was stationed. He put it to a vote among the men. Since they were all going to fight, serve, die, or flee together, they needed to stand as one.

All twenty men voted to stay.

Gurmukh Singh relayed word of this ungodly massive sneak-attack to a nearby British fort as the doomed Sikhs fortified their mud-walled fort as best they could and braced themselves for the onslaught. At 9am, the first of the enemy came into range of their weapons. Havildar Singh issued the order to fire at will, and the 21 men of the 36th Sikhs began to bust out one of the most epic last stands in history.

The Orakazai and Afridi did the sort of thing you'd expect from an overwhelmingly-powerful force assaulting a tiny podunk outpost garrisoned by a force they outnumber roughly 500:1 – they charged balls out, Emperor Xerxes-style, looking to overrun the defenders by hurling wave after wave of their own men at the walls. It didn't work out so hot for them. This gigantor ridiculous horde of ass-kicking maniacs thought they were going to completely bulldoze the Saragarhi Sikhs like a Ford F-350 mega-extendo-cab pickup truck being dropped out of a plane onto a bucket of plastic green army men, but the admittedly-hardcore Orakazai quickly realized that these weren't any chump douchebags manning the defenses here – these were gnarly gnarlington high priest Vatican assassin warlock F-18s ready to deploy their ordinance to the ground, and all these Sikhs came here to do was WIN. On two separate attacks the Orakazai hurled themselves at the walls of Saragarhi, climbing the walls on ladders, laying heavy rifle and cannon fire into the fortress, and on both occasions the 21 defenders shielded themselves with their giant bulletproof balls, kicked down the ladders, and barfed out enough rifle fire to drive the attackers back. This is completely fucking insane, especially considering that the Sikhs didn't exactly have access to heavy machine guns or assault rifles back in 18-fucking-97 – these out-of-their-mind warriors were basically using damned bolt-action rifles, and were somehow firing them so retardedly fast that 10,000 trained warriors with guns somehow found themselves unable to push their way through this ridiculous curtain of leaden deathy evilness. Meanwhile, when he wasn't taking potshots from the signal tower with his scoped rifle, the garrison's signalman, Gurmukh Singh, was operating his signaling equipment and informing the nearest British outpost (just barely visible in the distance beyond the ridge) exactly what was going on, how many men the enemy had, and what sort of equipment they were carrying. No sweat, right?

While the Vegas books probably would have set the over/under for the duration of this fight at about fifteen minutes, five hours into the combat the Sikhs were still managing to hold out against all odds. Sure, they'd taken a few hits here and there, but even the wounded men were propped up on the battlements laying down fire on the attackers as best they could. Completely surrounded by a massive mob of troops, these guys continued to dish out withering gunfire with ball-destroying accuracy. Eventually, while the Sikhs were completely overwhelmed by attacks on all sides, a team of Orakazai sappers breached through a particularly lightly-defended section of the outer defenses, snuck in, and set fire to the fort. Their positions concealed by the smoke and flames, and the Sikhs concerned with extinguishing their burning fortress, the rest of the enemy troops managed to charge in and break through the outer walls of the fort, rushing into the courtyard.

With their own fortress walls crumbling and smoldering around them in an inferno of shittiness, the Sikhs continued to stand by their initial assessment of, "You bleeps Are Only Getting Through Here Over Our Dead Bodies". Havildar Singh ordered his men to fall back to the inner section of the fort, barricade the walls, and continue laying down fire on the attackers who were now swarming over the walls. Singh himself didn't make it back– in an effort to buy his men time to fall back he drew his Kirpan dagger, charged into the horde, and died valiantly in hand-to-hand combat against an impossible swarm of rifle-swinging tribesmen.

So even now, seven hours into the battle, with their commander dead, their ammunition dwindling, and their fort burning down around them, the Sikhs continued to stick it to the Orakazai with everything they could muster. It didn't take long for the enemy to find the weak point in the inner defenses – a rickety wooden gate that was already on fire – yet still, even when the tribesmen shot up the gate, stormed the wall, and breached through to the main building of Saragarhi, they blitzed through only to find a determined handful of pissed-off Sikhs standing there with fixed bayonets and vicious scowls. There wasn't going to be any Gandalf the White riding in on a hurricane of fireballs this time... these were going to have to take matters up into the points of their blades and finish this like men.

Seeing enemies inside the tower, signalman Gurmukh Singh issued his last communications to the British, dropped his signal gear, and took up his rifle, laying down sniper fire on the enemy troops swarming over his friends below. He is credited with killing twenty men by himself, and it is believed that when he ran out of bullets he fixed his bayonet and charged down into the frayshouting the battle cry of the Sikhs – "He who cries 'God is Truth' is ever victorious." When British troops reached the position later, they found 21 dead Sikhs and somewhere between 180 and 800 dead tribesmen. The number is debated because when the British showed up there was a second round of fighting over the fort, and it was difficult to say how many enemies were killed between the two fights, but we do know that nearly every single Sikh rifleman was completely out of ammunition. They had started with 400 rounds each.

The balls-out defenders of Saragarhi were slain to the man, but they had held their position all day and well into the evening, delaying the massive onslaught just long enough for the British to get their shit together and reinforce the position. After Saragarhi, the Orakazai moved on to the nearby Fort Gulistan, but the delay at Saragarhi had cost them the element of surprise – the men at Fort Gulistan were ready for them, and they held the attack back while freshly-arrived British heavy artillery dropped a few hundred high explosive shells right into the middle of the enemy horde.

When the story of the Sikhs at Sargahiri was recounted to Parliament, it received a standing ovation from every member of the British government. All 21 Sikhs received the Indian Order of Merit, the highest military award available to them at the time, and their families each received a plot of land and 500 Rupees in cash (the current exchange rate lists 500 Rupees amounts as being equal to about $10.85 USD, but it was probably worth a lot more back in 1897... though I'm only basing this on the fact that in 1987 500 Rupees is nearly enough to buy two Blue Rings, and those were by far the most expensive items in The Legend of Zelda.) The tale was mentioned by UNESCO as being as one of eight great stories of collective bravery in human history, and to this day, every September 12th the people of India celebrate Saragarhi Day.

credit :http://www.badassoftheweek.com/21sikhs.html

BADASS SOLDIER PART 2

Rifleman of 4 Garwal, Jaswant Singh Rawat - the guardian ghost of India’s Eastern Border

Sometime before first light fell over the mountains, they’d begun their ascent into Arunachal Pradesh once again.

This was the Chinese Army’s fourth assault, in the last charge as a final insult - they’d chopped off the hand of the Buddha Statue in Tawang and carried it away, but something was different this time.

As the sun rose over the Eastern Himalayas around 5 am and the Chinese troops mounted another assault, this time through Sela top – something was different – the Delta company of the Garwal Rifles or specifically a Rifleman of the 4 Garwal - Jaswant Singh Rawat was in their way.

Sometime before first light fell over the mountains, they’d begun their ascent into Arunachal Pradesh once again.

This was the Chinese Army’s fourth assault, in the last charge as a final insult - they’d chopped off the hand of the Buddha Statue in Tawang and carried it away, but something was different this time.

As the sun rose over the Eastern Himalayas around 5 am and the Chinese troops mounted another assault, this time through Sela top – something was different – the Delta company of the Garwal Rifles or specifically a Rifleman of the 4 Garwal - Jaswant Singh Rawat was in their way.

Jaswant Singh Rawat

In a battle that started on 17th November 1962 and continued for the next 72 hours, Jaswant Singh alone held the post, firing from different bunkers, constantly on the lookout for the Chinese. By the time he was done, more than 300 Chinese soldiers had been killed.

Even though the Chinese soldiers managed to capture a heavily wounded Jaswant Singh and hang him, by then Indian Army’s reinforcements arrived, stopping the Chinese progress into Arunachal Pradesh. This was the battle of Nauranang.

This was India’s final stand; the ray of hope in what had otherwise been a disappointing war. The stand that propelled Rifleman Jaswant Singh Rawat from being a mere mortal to a legend, a god even. Locals have even constructed a Buddhist temple at the spot.

Even though Jaswant Singh was decorated (posthumously) with a Mahavir Chakra, the Indian Army continues to treat him with the fanfare of a serving officer.

A hut constructed over the spot where he was martyred, houses a bed which is constantly made by one of the five army jawans posted at the post, his shoes are regularly polished and letters by his well wishers are presented to Jaswant Singh every day and taken away the next day after he’s gone through them.

The army rather succinctly draws up the military actions that lead to the final stand. Indian troops had withdrawn from Tawang and 4 Garhwal Rifles was deployed to guard Sela, one of the vital installations in the Area.

An attempt by the Chinese to infiltrate, dressed like local monpas, had already been thwarted. The Chinese followed up the attack with two more attacks on the same day – this time supported by artillery, mortars and MMGs. Indian army though continued to hold their ground. According to Indian Army accounts, it’s the fourth attack that gave rise to the legend of the immortal Baba Jaswant Singh who guards India’s borders in the East.

The fourth attack by the Chinese Army on 4 Garhwal was probably the deadliest. Hell bent on capturing Nauranang, the Chinese managed to move an MMG (Medium Machine Gun) close to where 4 Garhwal was, bringing them under immense fire.

This also prevented the men of 4 Garhwal from using their Light Machine Guns and it’s here that Lance Naik Trilok Singh, Rifleman Jaswant Singh and Rifleman Gopal Singh undertook a suicide mission – they crawled through rocks and bushes under heavy enemy fire to take out the Chinese MMG with hand grenades. They succeeded too – lobbing grenades from as close to 15 yards. Jaswant Singh snatched the MMG from the wounded Chinese soldier who still clung on to it and crawled back to his trench.

It would have probably been a very different story if he’d succeeded – but just as he was about to reach the trench – he was shot in the head. But by then the enemy had already been delivered a big blow and Gopal Singh managed to drag the MMG back to Indian trenches.

This 15 minute act of self-sacrificing bravado changed the course of the Battle Of Nauranang, Indian LMGs came alive and beat the Chinese back – Arunachal Pradesh could never come under Chinese control.

But locals have a somewhat different version of Jaswant Singh’s actions on November 17th, 1962. While his company had fallen back, Jaswant Singh remained at his post at an altitude of 10,000 ft.

Jaswant Singh along with the help of two local Monpa girls Sela and Nura who worked as porters managed to set up weapons at separate spots and maintained a huge volume of fire on the Chinese. This led the Chinese to believe that they were facing an entire battalion, and not just one man.

It’s said that Jaswant Singh managed to kill more than 300 enemy soldiers before the Chinese captured the man supplying him rations and told them about the lone rifleman who opposed them. While Sela died in a grenade attack and Nura was captured, Jaswant Singh sensing that he was about to be captured, shot himself with the last bullet.

It is alleged that the Chinese carried Jaswant Singh’s severed head back to China till a Chinese Commander who was impressed by his valor returned it. The Chinese Army even had a brass bust of the soldier commissioned which now sits at the site of the battle.

Regardless of what the real story of Jaswant Singh was, for locals, the jawans who are posted for his upkeep and all travellers who pass by – he remains the guardian ghost of India’s Eastern Border – the man who saved Arunachal Pradesh from the Chinese. The silver lining in what was otherwise a disappointing battle.

For their work in the field, 4 Garhwal Rifles was awarded the battle honour ‘Nauranang’ the only one bestowed during the 1962 war. Jaswant Singh’s comrades Lance Naik Trilok Singh Negi (posthumously), Rifle Man Gopal Singh were awarded the Vir Chakra.

BADASS SOLDIERS PART 3

Baba Deep Singh

I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume that the majority of my readers aren't exactly experts on Indian history, so it's probably a safe assumption that you're not familiar with the story of the Sikh martyr Baba Deep Singh. Well, it's time to get educated -- because this dude is one of the most hardcore freedom fighters to ever live, and a guy so extreme balls-out in his insatiable quest for vengeance that something as inconsequentially-trivial as being fucking decapitated couldn't stop him from crushing his enemies to death with his nutsack.

Deep Singh (Baba is a term of reverence roughly equivalent to "Saint" was baptized a Sikh in 1700, and quickly got busy training in badass martial skills like swordfighting, hand-to-hand combat, horsemanship, resisting torture, circle-strafing, and punching people in the crotch with enough force to blow a hole in a brick wall. In case many of you out there aren't down with Sikhism, it's pretty much one of the most badass religions this side of Valhalla -- practioners are given a goddamned sword when they are baptized, and they are bound by their religion to carry this implement of pointed death with them everywhere they go. They also have to grow super-long awesome beards and badass Rollie Fingers-style handlebar moustaches. After going through a rigorous and intense initiation training so hardcore that it makes ancient Spartan initiations look like Home Economics Merit Badge Day for Girl Scout Troop 666, Baba Deep Singh retired to a nice quiet life studying the teachings of the great hallowed Gurus, hand-scribing copies of the Sikh holy scriptures, and fighting in large-scale revolutions against the oppressive and tyrannical Mughal Empire.

See, dudes like Babur and Akbar were pretty badass in their own right, but the Sikhs weren't really down with being ruled over by some godless heathen Muslims, and if there's one thing you should take from this article it's that you should generally try to avoid fucking with the Sikhs whenever you get the chance. One of Baba Deep Singh's homeboys kicked off a revolution in the Punjab region of India, and it was on like neckbone. BDS and his dudes jacked up the Mughals and chased them out of their homelands.

But whatever. This website is full of folks who threw off the yoke of oppression by lopping off their enemies' heads with hacksaws and then suplexing their decapitated corpses onto a bed of hot coals. What separates Baba Deep Singh is his mad desire for righteous vengeance, and the lengths he would go to accomplish said feat. It all got started in 1757, when the Mughal warlord Ahmad Shah Durrani started launching a bunch of raids into India. He busted in, pillaged, plundered, etc., sacked the city of Delhi, and began triumphantly processing back to Mughal-ville with a newly-acquired trove of plundered goods, stolen religious artifacts, and hot, screaming, kidnapped Indian babes. Bleep that. Baba Deep wasn't going to let that shit fly. He and his men launched a guerrilla raid on the Mughals while they were on the march, ambushing them, kicking their asses and pulling out their tracheas with their bare hands. The religious artifacts (and hot babes) were all returned to their rightful locations, and all seemed well with the world once again.

Not so fast.

The Mughals are descended from a dude named Genghis Khan. Maybe you've heard of him. Well motherfuckers with a pedigree of ultimate extreme asskickings don't take stuff like this lightly. Ahmad Shah Durrani, despoiled of all of the shit he worked so hard to steal from teeming throngs of unarmed defenseless peasants, took out his revenge the best way he knew how -- by seriously jacking up the Golden Temple of God in the city of Amritsar; the holiest and most hallowed site in the Sikh religion.

The Mughals first blew the shrine up with their cannons, then they slaughtered a bunch of cattle and filled the sacred pools of the temple with cow blood and guts. Now, most Sikhs don't hold cows sacred like the Hindus do, but you don't need to worship at the altar of a bovine god to agree that this is still pretty disgusting and obnoxious. A large force of soldiers hung around to defend the shrine and prevent the Sikhs from reclaiming the desecrated temple, and the douchebag Mughal ruler picture-messaged pictures of the carnage to Baba Deep Singh's cell phone.

Our man Baba Deep Singh was seventy-five years old at this time, but he hadn't lost a step -- the only thing his excessively old age did for him was give him a totally awesome beard. As soon as he heard that the Golden Temple had been profaned and destroyed, he pulled his old, beat-up, thirty-pound Khanda sword off the wall and started walking towards Amritsar. Along the way, he stopped in at every village he came across, recruiting a huge mob of pitchfork and torch-bearing warriors ready to go Dr. Frankenstein on those Mughal bastards who bleeped up their holy monument. These dudes set out to avenge their temple Bruce Lee-style, and nothing was going to stop them.

The improvised peasant army hurled themselves at the hardened Mughal warriors, and insane bloodshed ensued with the unholy realness. The Mughals were a well-trained force of asskickers, but the Sikhs were super omega ripshit pissed off, and they were flipping out like assassins on those poor bastards, tearing them new assholes with daggers, tridents, and cordless power drills. During the fighting, however, Baba Deep Singh launched himself at the commander of the Mughal garrison and both men delivered terrible blows at one another, kind of like the intro to Ninja Gaiden on the old-school Nintendo. The Mughal's head slid off of his neck onto the floor with a disgusting squish. Baba Deep Singh didn't fare much better -- his head had been almost completely severed from his body. The only thing holding his cranium upright was his left hand.

Baba Deep Singh, however, was a Mughal-killing madman, and he didn't even give a shit. He kept fighting, holding his barely-attached head onto his torso with one hand and hacking people in half with his other. The sight of this dude, sword in one hand, bloody head in the other, must have been pretty goddamned unnerving to the dudes facing him, and the Sikhs cut a swath through the Mughals, driving them from the halls of the sacred temple. Some legends claim that Baba Deep's head actually came off at one point, and that he held the disembodied head in his left hand while he fought -- sort of like how a chicken with it's head cut off continues to run around for a while, vengeance was so ingrained into the very fabric of this guy's being that his wild post-mortem twitching involved lopping off appendages and stabbing people in the brain.

With the Mughals defeated, Baba Deep Singh died on the floor of the Golden Temple of God. The temple was re-consecrated by Sikh priests, and the spot where Singh fell is now a shrine where pilgrims come from across India to pay their respects to one of their religion's greatest martyrs.

credit : http://www.badassoftheweek.com/babadeepsingh.html

BADASS FEMALE SOLDIERS PART 4

Mai Bhago

If there's one thing I hope this website has taught you about the Sikhs, it should be that they don't really get along with the Mughals. I'm not an expert on Indian history, but it may have something to do with the descendents of Tamerlane rolling into town, conquering the hell out of everything, subjugating the people, and actively trying to exterminate all traces of their religion. The fact that the Mughals had a standing cash bounty on severed Sikh heads probably didn't help diplomatic relations much either.

Well in 1704 the Galactic Mughal Imperial Empire decided that they were going to wipe out Sikhism once and for all. They freaked out, crushed a couple soda cans on their heads, and dispatched the Mughal Darth Vader to surround the city of Amritsar, lay siege to the Guru of the Sikhs, and destroy the entire religion by killing it's head honcho in a ridiculously over-the-top violent manner.

(The fact that there are currently 20 million Sikhs in the world should give you some indication of how successful the Mughals were in their endeavors. It just took them a while to realize that you don't Bleep with these people unless you want to be on the receiving end of a Macho Man Randy Savage-style top-rope elbow drop to the nutsack.)

Now the afore-mentionedleader of Sikhism was a man named Guru Gobind Singh. Think of this dude kind of like the Sikh Pope (though perhaps the Sikh Buddha would be a more appropriate analogy). There are only ten Gurus in the entire history of Sikhism, so yeah, you can be pretty sure that this guy was a pretty big deal. He was a pretty serious assbeater in his own right, but to make things worse for the Mughals he was also constantly surrounded by a badass bodyguard of fighters known as "warrior-saints". These dudes were kind of like the Apostles, only if Saint Peter went around shooting sword-swinging Centurions in the balls with RPG launchers and liberated his people from the chains of the Roman Empire. These righteous soldiers were like Sikh Paladins with muskets and totally sweet beards, and they sure as shit weren't going to just let the Mughals waltz into Amritsar and decapitate the Holiest man in their religion. They took up arms, fortified the city, and dared the Mughal Empire to step to them.

This battle that ensued was completely off the chain. It was like the Alamo with turbans. The Mughals hurled wave after wave of soldiers at the walls of Amritsar, but failed to break through the ranks of the battle-hardened Warrior-Saints and their wide assortment of pointy death-instruments. After several days of increasingly brutal fighting, however, the Mughals slowly began to wear down the town's defenses. Eventually, a small group of shell-shocked, war-weary Sikh soldiers decided they'd had enough. Forty once-stalwart soldiers called it quits, publicly renounced their faith, and peaced out to the nearest place that didn't have pissed-off Muslims stabbing people in the faces with scimitars every ten seconds.

Well there was one badass chick that wasn't going to stand for that weak sauce bullshit. Mai Bhago was a tough-ass babe from a town near Amritsar who had spent most of her adult life training in the fine arts of awesomeness and studying about badassitude, and she wasn't about to just sit around and let a bunch of ex-Sikh warrior-saints slack off in the facial destruction department - especially when they could be out there dishing out chokeslams and shooting arrows into peoples' eyes with enough velocity to puncture plexiglass. Almost immediately upon hearing that there was a group of guys heading towards town who had "gotten bored of fighting the Mughals" and decided they "didn't feel like" slicing peoples' necks in half anymore, she go super-pissed off and rode out to meet them.

Mai Bhago came across this sad, disgraceful group of ex-Sikhs not long after she left her town. As soon as she saw this sorry lot moping around mumbling shit like, "Game over man - game over!", she jumped off her horse, confidently strode up to the closest guy, and then, out of nowhere, she hauled off and open-hand love-vendor-slapped the dude in the face really really fucking hard. While the rest of the astonished group stood around with their mouths hanging open, she looked each of them in the eye, one by one. Then, in a tone of voice that only thinly veiled her seething rage, she said something to the effect of, "If you're going to act like bitches, then I'm going to fucking treat you like bitches." Then she spit, kneed another dude in the junk, and told everybody they needed to sack up and start conducting themselves like the fucking badass Sikh warriors that they were.

Through a delicate, subtle mix of taunting, insults, and hardcore professional wrestling-style pump-up speeches, Mai Bhago made these jerks realize that they had a job to do, and they just needed to pop a couple Zoloft and fucking get out there and do it. The Guru was badass and all, but he wasn't exactly going to flash-fry the entire Mughal army by firing a matching set of Proton Torpedoes into the exhaust port of the Taj Mahal while screaming overhead at Mach 2 - he needed his warrior-saints at his side; not to bail out on him right when he was in the middle of what could potentially have been his last stand.

After getting slapped around verbally, physically, and emotionally by our take-no-bullshit, fresh-to-death heroine, the forty ex-Sikhs realized that they needed to snap out of it and get back to the business of violently lacerating the tracheas of their much-hated enemies. Of course, Mai Bhago wasn't the sort of hardcore warrior-chick who was just going to be happy to go back to town knowing that she'd done her good deed for the day - no, she fucking put on her wargear, grabbed a sword and a musket, and rode out there at the head of this company of Sikh hardasses to cause a little estrogen-fueled havoc of her own. She was going to show these guys how it was done.

Well without forty of his toughest hombres, the Guru's situation in Amritsar eventually became untenable. He (and what little was left of his bodyguard) withdrew from the town, and decided to make a mad, desperate dash for safety. The entire Mughal Army pursued them across India for a couple days, harassing them at every turn, and shit was looking pretty fucking bleak for Guru Gobind Singh and the proponents of Sikhism.

It was at this point that the Guru saw Mai Bhago riding up at the head of a small battalion of re-devoted tough-as-shit Sikh warriors.

Mai Bhago led her men out past the Guru, and right into the face of the entire fucking Mughal Army. At the Battle of Mukhtsar in 1704, she and her warriors charged into the enemy lines, hacking, slashing, and popping peoples' heads off with muskets at point-blank range. Even the Guru got in on the action, sending a golden shower of auric-tipped arrows down on the enemy from a sniper's nest on a nearby hill. Mai Bhago herself was credited with taking down something like a half-dozen dudes herself in the exceedingly bloody fighting that ensued. Like I said, this chick meant business.

I came across several conflicting reports of how the battle transpired, ranging from "The Mughals got tired and ran away" to "God came down and smote the entire Imperial army", but the outcome is always the same - the Mughals were driven from the battlefield, the Guru lived to fight another day, and every member of the Sikh contingent was killed in action. Well, every Sikh except Mai Bhago. When Guru Gobind Singh went down to survey the epic carnage, he found her lying on top of a heaping pile of dead Mughals, barely clinging to life. The Guru forgave the forty Sikhs for their moment of weakness, and was so pumped up about how hardcore Mai Bhago was that he gave her a healing potion, restored all of her Hit Points, and brought her into his service as one of his personal bodyguards. She spent the rest of her life traveling with the Guru, serving as a warrior-saint of the Sikh Religion, and the Sikh Joan of Arc is now revered among her people as a holy warrior who offered disgraced warriors a chance at redemption and fought bravely in the defense of her people.

To this day, the Sikhs still celebrate the anniversary of the battle.

CREDIT:http://www.badassoftheweek.com/index.cgi?id=44522685331

DONT MESS WITH THE GURKHAS

Just picture the scene as a soldier returns from hunting an arch-enemy. Commanding officer: 'Did you get him?' Soldier: 'Yes, sir.' Commanding officer: 'Are you sure?' Soldier: 'Yes, sir.' Soldier reaches into rucksack and places severed head on table.

Commanding officer: ' ****!' If it happened in a Hollywood movie, the audience would either laugh or applaud. But there was no laughter the other day when this happened for real in Babaji, Afghanistan, current posting for the 1st Battalion, Royal Gurkha Rifles.

The precise circumstances will not be determined until an official report has been completed, but reliable military sources have confirmed that a Gurkha patrol was sent out with orders to track down a Taliban warlord described as a 'high-value target'.

Having identified their target, a fierce battle ensued during which the warlord was killed. To prove that they had got their man, the Gurkhas attempted to remove the body for identification. Further enemy fire necessitated a fast exit minus corpse. So, an unnamed soldier drew his kukri - the standard-issue Gurkha knife - removed the man's head and legged it.

Ten out of ten for initiative. Nought out of ten for diplomacy.

"If a man says he is not afraid of dying, he is either lying or is a Gurkha." -Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw

BADASS SOLDIER PART 5

Lachhiman Gurung of the 8th Gurkha Rifles

There are plenty of seriously hardcore warrior associations out there, but as far as I'm concerned it doesn't get a whole lot better than the Gurkhas. From as early as the 19th century, these sack-tearing hardasses from rural Nepal have been like Britain's personal detachment of borderline-sociopathic serial killers. They're so disarming it's unnerving – they've got big, easy smiles, they're quiet, incredibly polite, respectful, and never really bother anybody. They just want to chill out and drink some beers. While none of this really screams badass through a truck-mounted megahorn, it's the deadliest, most insane motherfuckers who don't need to get all up in your face and talk a bunch of shit about how awesome they are. These are guys who know they can turn you from a rampaging dumbass to an eviscerated carcass in about two seconds if they want to, and they're confident enough in their abilities that they don't need to go all macho-man about it just because they're secretly worried that other people think they have small dicks or something. Despite the cool, calculated exterior, though, when it comes time to flip out, the Gurkhas are some motherfuckers who seriously FLIP THE FUCCCCK OUT:

On the night of 12 May 1945, Lachhiman Gurung of the 8th Gurkha Rifles was part of a small forward platoon dug into trenches defending a position in Burma, when all of a sudden his tiny unit came under a massive attack from a couple hundred Japanese soldiers looking to punch through these defenses and then punch a few holes into his torso so that they could tear out his large intestines and strangle him to death with them. The idea of this was not very appealing to Lachhiman.

The marauding Japanese first decided to soften up the Gurkha positions by chucking three full dickloads of hand grenades and various explosive materials into the Allied trenches and then face-shooting the bejeezus out of anyone who tried to dive out of the trench or otherwise escape their imminent fragmentation-related demises. Gurung summarily developed an ingenious third option – one which didn't blow him up and didn't result in exposing himself to an enfilade of enemy fire – he just snatched the fucking live grenades up from the floor of the trench and chucked them back at the Japanese. His tactic of hurling insults and incendiaries at the enemy whenever the opportunity presented itself worked out well for a while, and he sent two flying explosive middle-fingers back at his assailants, but the third time proved to not be the charm for Lachhiman – his timing was a little off and the grenade ended up detonating in his hand. In the military, this is what they refer to as, "bad".

The frag blew off a couple fingers, destroyed his right arm, and nearly took off half his face. He was left bleeding, partially blinded, crippled, and seriously bleeped up in general, but despite having half of his body blown into something vaguely like Two-Face from Batman, Lachhiman Gurung was sure as Bleep not going to stop resisting this onslaught as long as he was capable of sustaining basic life functions. Half-dead, bloody, and badly wounded, Gurung drew his kukri knife – the ultimate symbol of Gurkha badassitude – jammed it point-first into the ground before him, and defiantly yelled into the darkness, "No one will pass here today!"

Then he grabbed his rifle, chambered a round, and shouted, "Now come and fight a Gurkha!"

With every other man dead or dying around him, Lachhiman Gurung never stopped shooting every Japanese person he could see. This dude, by himself, loaded, cocked, and fired his fucking bolt-action rifle for four hours of non-stop combat, fighting off wave after wave of attackers like a wounded wolverine tearing his own leg off with bullets. His tactic for success was to lie down in the trench, not get shot, wait until he could hear the enemy soldiers nearly right on top of him, and then pop up like a murderous, rifle-toting whack-a-mole and smoke some dude in half at point-blank range with his left hand. Then he'd reposition the rifle, chamber a new round (lefty), shift it back, and blast another guy apart. How the Bleep he managed to hold off 200 gun-toting, battle-hardened Japanese soldiers using this technique is completely beyond me, but the authors of the Victoria Cross citations aren't usually in the habit of making shit up off the tops of their heads.

By the time the smoke cleared the next morning, Gurung had been fighting for over four hours straight. 31 Japanese soldiers lay dead in the field before him. He'd single-handedly kicked all their asses, and I of course mean single-handedly in every possible meaning of the word.

Gurung obviously had to be hospitalized, mostly for for extreme blood-hysteria and obscenely high levels of deathtosterone, but also because half his arm had been blown off by a grenade and explosive shrapnel had blinded him in the right eye. He never regained use of his right arm, but this guy ripped so many balls with his off-hand that they let him stay in the service and finish out the war with his unit. He refused to be sent home anyways, and if there's one thing about Lachhiman Gurung, it's that you can't fucking make this guy move anywhere he doesn't want to go, so his superiors were just like, "forget it dude, whatever you want is bitchin' with us."

After the war, Gurung moved back home to Nepal for a while, but then eventually emigrated to Britain. Even into his significantly more decrepit years, this guy continued staying true to his people and never forgot his roots – in 2008 when Gurkha soldiers were told they weren't allowed to live in Britain because they had "failed to demonstrate strong ties to Britain", the 91 year-old Gurung hauled ass out to the High Court out there decked out in about a million medals and told the judicial system to take their bullshit law, crumple up the paper it was printed on, and jam it up their own urethras. Everyone was so impressed that they ended up repealing the stupid law. Damn straight.

CREDIT:http://www.badassoftheweek.com/index.cgi?id=183349929891

nemesis2u:
porn continues

front view , side view , back view, all kinds of view

If I have this in Africa, I'll piss off alot of country's radar station, interceptors etc

nemesis2u:
drdo research for using aerostats for cruise missile defence etc

Seems DRDO has 3-4 times more projects than DARPA. however, DARPA projects seems to be cutting edge and futuristic like etc.

tdayof:
Seems DRDO has 3-4 times more projects than DARPA. however, DARPA projects seems to be cutting edge and futuristic like etc.

lol darpa is 40-50 years ahead of drdo if not more

i am talking about "original research"

drdo strength is low developmental cost and importantly street smart innovation / improvisation (Indians call it jugaad)
this is india's edge over other countries

eg
americans will spent atleast a billion to develop a torpedo

india less than 50 million dollars for a similar class of torpedo

of course american torpedo will be better than Indian torpedo but the advantage can be off set by leveraging quantity and quality in appropriate ratio and also by using innovative techniques to close performance gaps.

recently drdo has started work on electromagnetic RAILGUN

tdayof:
If I have this in Africa, I'll piss off alot of country's radar station, interceptors etc

and burn up lots of dollars in aviation fuel

T-90MS

brahmos separation trials from su30mki

india has previously successfully tested scramjet engines. this was done by ISRO for their space program. but needless to say there has been cross pollination between the civilian and military programmes.

locally developed BMP 2 based carrier command post track (CCPT) for artillery regiments in order to utilize IA’s DRDO-developed ‘Shakti’ artillery fire-assault direction system.

K-9 Vajra-T

nemesis2u:


and burn up lots of dollars in aviation fuel

It's going to be fun tho

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCKAeLz7uOc

HSTV to have first flight by end of this year. They have done a lot of work on the combustor. Very interesting how they have created the test conditions on ground.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTme8HDGcnk

HOW DRDO overcame combustion instability in its dual pulse solid motors. It took them 5-6 years and about 150 full scale rocket firings.


only for those who r technically inclined

Nemesis2u I have one for you, what is the main cannon on this riverine boat
I have never seen such mounted on a little patrol boat.

nishant indias first uav

now production stopped

drdo rustom 1 uav

drdo panchi uav

drdo rustom 2 uav

drdo lakshya reusable target drone

operator consoles of drdo AEW&C

ground exploitation station of drdo AEW&C

drdo mat ground surfacing CL-70

drdo assault bridging system based on arjun tank

drdo multi span mobile bridging system

drdo short span mobile bridging system

drdo under water wireless acoustic communication system