 | Now there is a story about the gurkas. The gurkas are men from the country of Nepal, which is a Himalayan country. And they are very solid soldiers, they are very brave fighters. For a hundred years or so, the British army always has a division, or several divisions of these gurkas, they hire them specially, because they are very capable in warfare and they are always used as commandos, front line fighters. So in one war, I believe the second world war, the British general called an assembly of one division of gurkas and he said: “We have a very dangerous mission ahead of us, we need volunteers. What we’re going to do is fly you in behind enemy lines in an airplane that is flying only 200 meters above the earth and you have to jump from this airplane behind enemy lines. It’s very dangerous. So how many volunteer?” Knowing the gurkas the general expected they will all volunteer. But on this day only half of them stepped forward, the other half refused to step forward. The general was very concerned and he said: “All right”. He said to those men who didn’t step forward: “Now I’ve never seen this type of behavior before from the gurkas. Why are you reluctant to accept this mission?” And one of the gurkas who didn’t step forward, he said: “Well, I don’t think that I can survive a fall of 200 meters from the airplane and what will be the use? To jump from the airplane and be dead and then I can’t fight.” Then the general said: “No, no, you will have parachute.” And then they said: “Oh, oh.” Then they all stepped forward. Then after that the general had great faith in the gurkas, because he could see that 50 % of the division was ready to jump from an airplane without parachute.
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