The Falklands War Was Terrible for Both Sides—Here's What the Kill Ratio Doesn't Tell You

Описание: The Argentine conscripts called them something that doesn't translate well into English. The closest approximation is "the smiling killers."Eighteen-year-old boys from Buenos Aires and Córdoba, shivering in trenches around Port Stanley, had heard the rumours. The British were bringing Gurkhas. Nepalese soldiers who'd been fighting for the Crown since 1815. Men who carried curved knives called kukris and supposedly never sheathed them without drawing blood.Most of it was myth. Some of it wasn't.And on the night of 13 June 1982, as the final battle for the Falkland Islands began on a frozen ridge called Mount Tumbledown, those Argentine conscripts were about to find out which parts were true.This is the story the Falklands documentaries rarely tell. Not the Sea Harriers. Not the 21-0 kill ratio. Not the ships burning in San Carlos Water.This is the story of the men from Nepal who sailed 8,000 miles to fight a war that ended—according to them—too soon.To understand who was coming up that mountain, you have to go back 167 years.Nepal. A landlocked kingdom wedged between the British East India Company's territories and Tibet, smaller than most people imagine, dominated by the Himalayas. In 1814, the Company went to war against the Kingdom of Nepal over border disputes and the expansion of Nepalese territory into regions the British considered theirs. The Company expected a quick campaign. They had conquered most of the subcontinent. What trouble could a small mountain kingdom cause?