All’s fair in love and war, but sometimes circumstances mean that isn’t really the case.

Take for example the story of Sergeant Dipprasad Pun of the Royal Gurkha Rifles, fighting in Afghanistan alongside British troops.

Back in 2010 he found himself completely isolated in the Helmand Province, although he was fiercely determined to uphold the Gurkha traditions of exceptional bravery, ability, and heroism.

Business Insider with the story:

He heard some noises and found two insurgents attempting to lay an IED in a nearby road. He realized [sic] he was surrounded. The night sky filled up with bullets and RPG fire. Taliban fighters sprang into a well-planned assault on Pun’s outpost.

Pun responded by pulling his machine gun off its tripod and handholding it as he returned fire toward the oncoming fighters. He went through every round he had available before tossing 17 grenades at the attackers. When he was out of grenades, he picked up his SA80 service rifle and started using that. He even threw a land mine at the enemy.

If you think that sounds awful the situation was set to worsen even further, a Taliban fighter scaling the roof and charging at Pun.

Pun turned to take the fighter out, but his weapon misfired. Pun grabbed the tripod of his machine gun and tossed it at the Taliban’s face, which knocked the enemy fighter off of the roof of the building.

Pun continued to fight off the assault until reinforcements arrived. When it was all said and done, 30 Taliban lay dead.

In lieu of his bravery Pun was awarded the Conspicuous Gallantry Cross by Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace. He recounts what went down:

“At that time I wasn’t worried, there wasn’t any choice but to fight. The Taliban were all around the checkpoint, I was alone,” he told the crowd gathered at the ceremony. “I had so many of them around me that I thought I was definitely going to die so I thought I’d kill as many of them as I could before they killed me.”

In all, he fired off 250 machine gun rounds, 180 SA80 rounds, threw six phosphorous grenades and six normal grenades, and one claymore mine.

I think we’d all like to believe we’d exhibit such bravery in the face of danger, but I’m a bit more of a realist than that.

Adios Taliban, take what you will because I’m outta here.

[source:businessinsider]

[imagesource:here]