Back in the days before digital cameras it was a messy business for a soldier to prove to a commander that he’d killed the right man. Chopping off the chap’s head and sending it to the king was a popular option for a few millennia though you would not fancy being the courier for that package after a couple of days in the sun.

The British Army prides itself on a sense of tradition and historical continuity so it’s little surprise that it sometimes eschews the drones and other high tech paraphernalia of modern warfare to get up close and gory. That must have been what motivated one keen member of the 1st Battalion, Royal Gurkha Rifles. According to the Daily Mail “his unit had been told that they were seeking a ‘high value target,’ a Taliban commander, and that they must prove they had killed the right man”. Maybe the rules of the battlefield preclude the use of mobile phones or cameras but rather than lug the corpse away under fire he decapitated it with his kukri knife, a traditional Gurkha weapon which lacks most of the functions of the Swiss army’s very useful equivalent.

You might expect that the private would be commended for his quick thinking under stressful circumstances. Instead the British Army has taken to quoting South Park’s counsellor Mackey saying ‘removing the head in this way was totally inappropriate.’ This seems a bit mean. The British Army in Malaya cut the heads off Communists in the 1950s but the world has moved on and now the line is ‘there is no sense of glory involved here, more a sense of shame. He should not have done what he did.’

A deep cultural sensitivity seems to be the motivation. Dismembering bodies is considered offensive in Afghanistan apparently. Quite how this makes Afghans unique is an unanswered question. There are not too many cultures where the done thing is to hack grandma to bits after she’s kicked the bucket. Nonetheless to demonstrate that they are a nicer sort of imperialist the Mail says “British soldiers often return missing body parts once a battle has ended so the dead can be buried in one piece.”

The hapless private is now confined to barracks facing a court martial and possible imprisonment. He must be genuinely bewildered about what’s he’s done wrong. If he’d blown a wedding party to smithereens with a mortar shell or by calling in an air strike he’d be getting away with a slap on the wrist. Because he threw himself with old school gusto into the business of being an imperial mercenary he’s probably going to be sent back to his village to live out the rest of his life in poverty.

Fortunately for him the Mail’s readers are on his side. They don’t seem to think he’s done anything wrong and seem aroused by a war porn account of his massive weapon: “the kukri’s heavy blade enables the user to inflict deep wounds and to cut muscle and bone with one stroke. It can also be used in stealth operations to slash an enemy’s throat, killing him instantly and silently.” You also have to doubt the judgement of a former British commander in Afghanistan who said ‘I have no doubt that this behaviour would be as strongly condemned by the other members of that regiment, as it would by all soldiers in the British forces.’ Probably not actually. They’d probably like to have the skull as an exhibit in the regimental museum.

Someone should start a Facebook site for the plucky blighter.