Best special units of WW2

Were the Ghurkas a special unit?

 

I had to choose between them and Chindits, if I had the option for more poll questions I would definitely add them.

 

The Ghurkas during WW2 were conventional infantry units with an attitude; very much the definition used by Rich previously to describe "elite". There are still Ghurka units in both the British and Indian Armies. To my, knowledge, these are all considered conventional infantry.

 

If you wanted to see the Gurkha's kukri, it had to taste blood. So my dad told me. He was running around Italy in 1944.

 

Something of a tangent, the khukri is an interesting design and makes a great camp knife. I got mine from Atlanta Cutlery about thirty years ago and it has been a gem in the woods.

 

Also interesting how similar it is to the Kopis. Not sure if it's an evolution of that or just parallel evolutions.

 

My uneducated guess would be parallels. Other cultures have had forward-curved blades of a sort. They're not the best stabbers but difficult to surpass in the slash.

 

Australian Bayonet/Fighting Knife...this is what the Aussies used...did the job.

 

I would think of them as good "choppers" rather than good "slashers". Perhaps a false dichotomy but I think of "slash" as a cut with a fair amount of edge movement parallel with the surface being cut while a "chop" has most of the edge movement perpendicular to the object being cut. Now that I think of the physics involved the edge geometry may actually force at least something of a slash. Would take some fairly high speed videos to tell for sure. One area where this comes up that confuses some people is one of Musashi's sayings from a Book of Five Rings is usually translated something like "Don't slash ... cut". I think here the translator thought of "slash" as meaning a shallow cut. Would be interesting to have a Japanese speaker give his opinion.

 

A valid point, Sir. To use the local patois, they cut real good.