Gurkhas have been an important part of my family’s life. Their training depot had been moved to Sungei Patani in Northern Malaya, a few miles from Sungei Toh Pawang estate, after Indian Independence in 1947, when the Brigade was split between the Indian and British armies. The depot received the young men who had passed the extremely competitive selection process and turned them into soldiers. St Philip and St James’ church, which we attended every Sunday evening, was next to the depot and our services took place to the background of young recruits running, marching or just chatting. The first school I attended was an Army infants’ school next to the parade ground, and lessons echoed to shouted drill instructions. Gurkhas occupy a special place in the British Army and wider society. Nepal has never been part of the British Empire, and its citizens who chose to join the British Army did so without their families. Until recently they used to return to Nepal at the end of their service as honoured pensioners. Now they have been given the right to settle in the UK, as is right, but their service to Britain has always been given freely and voluntarily. This has been the case since they were first invited to do so at the end of a battle with the British Indian Army in the mid-19th C. In the disaster of Singapore in 1941 the Gurkhas were the only part of the Indian Army contingent not to suffer wholesale desertions, and they suffered badly at the hands of the Japanese army. In the Malayan Emergency they constituted a high proportion of the Commonwealth forces and proved very skilled at jungle warfare, particularly ambushes, which would be set for hours at a time, requiring soldiers to lie still and silent for all that time. They were fearless and lethal in close quarters combat, using their traditional kukri weapon- half knife, half machete. The knowledge that a Gurkha battalion was in the area was by 1955 a powerful incentive to defect for the sometimes demoralised MRLA fighters. As local Europeans our family would always be invited to the two parades which marked the end of the training for Gurkha recruits at the Depot. These were Beating the Retreat and the Passing out Parade. Beating the Retreat is a traditional British Army ritual, commemorating the days when a regiment’s standard was paraded in front of it at sunset so that the soldiers could see it before nightfall. The recruits would parade in their companies behind their British officers in white uniforms and the Depot band, including bagpipes (the Gurkhas had been taught to play the pipes by the Highlanders they had first fought against) as the sun went down. The next morning, invited guests took their seats at dawn for the Passing out Parade and the recruits would march out of the dawning sunrise, using the Light Infantry quick march they have always used as British troops, and march past a senior officer who had been invited to take the salute. This was the climax of their training and a huge moment for their British officers, this morning dressed in khaki drill shirts and enormous shorts. Legend had it that the shorts would be starched and ironed the previous evening by their batmen and placed standing in the corner of the officer’s bedroom. He would then step into them the following morn. As the British Army has contracted, the numbers of Gurkhas have diminished, until now there are only two infantry battalions, together with signals, logistics and engineers units. Still the passion and commitment of these soldiers burns as brightly as ever, and the competition to get into the British Army is as tough as ever. Today, recruit selection in Nepal is held jointly with the Singapore Police Force, whose Gurkha Contingent performs guard functions and acts as an emergency reserve in case of civil unrest. And as the British Army has struggled to recruit even the limited number of soldiers it now needs; a third battalion of Gurkhas has been raised. It was our privilege as a family in 1996 to welcome three young Gurkha soldiers to our house for lunch when they were stationed as part of a reinforcement Company filling manpower gaps in a British regiment stationed near our home. Immaculately dressed, polite and cheerful, they made a fuss of our young children and gave Tom (aged 6) a present of a kukri, the curved knife/machete which is their symbol. He was well impressed, and for a long time there were carefully controlled viewings and handlings of the kukri, along the lines of their demonstrations. They taught him their war-cry, too: “Ayo Gurkhali!”- The Gurkhas are coming.
Roland Crooke

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A story for Chij Kumari I was born just before WW2 in what was then the Dutch East Indies . My family had be there for many generations. I was particularly interested in todays story about Chij Kumari Because of my families Dutch Nationality we as a family were all imprisoned by the occupying Japanese during WW2 for 3 1/2 years in huge overcrowded camps My father was sent to build the Burma railway while all the women and children were imprisoned by the Japanese in huge concentration camps around the islands of what is now Indonesia . My mother with her 3 small children were living in a 3 bedroom house together with almost 80 other women and children . It was the Ghurka's who liberated us from those camps in August 1945. Very little is know about those concentration camps. Communication in those years was ofcourse very limited , especially during the war years. Chij Kumaris husband may well have been my liberator all those many years ago. My mother always told us if the Ghurka's had not liberated us when they did we would not have survived the war in the Far East. . . We had been starved as prisoners of wars for so long. My final concentration camp was called TJIDENG on the island of Java ( Djakarta ) So finally after all those many years I am able to say to the widow Chij Kumari thank you on behalf of your husband for saving my life all those years ago. it is ofcourse the reason I now support the Ghurka welfare trust . Some years ago I went to Japan to make my peace with the Japanese people . Yours sincerely Hanneke Coates-Hoorn Lemprice Farm, Yettington Budleigh Saklterton Devon EX9 7BW
Hanneke Coates-Hoorn
My mother was a WW2 war widow when she met and married my father in 1947. Her 1st husband Bill Sellers was private in the Kings Own Lancaster Regt. Pioneer platoon in Italy in 1944 serving alongside the Gurkhas. During a German bombardment he was seriously wounded in the groin. A Gurkha, he was working, with lay across him to protect him from further injury but when it ceased it was found that the brave Gurkha had sustained a fatal wound and was dead. The medics who rendered aid to Bill put the Gurkha's spectacles in Bill's Battledress blouse pocket. Bill eventually died in 1946 in the Maelor hospital , Wrexham, having never recovered from his wounds. I was born in 1948 and was told this story many times as growing up then in 1965 I joined the Fleet Air Arm and in 1967 I was ships Landrover driver serving aboard HMS Hermes in Hong Kong when the Maoist riots were in full swing. I found myself working with the Gurkhas on many occasions and they fulfilled all that I had heard of their professionalism, bravery and loyalty. After a life in various uniforms of HM The Queen I retired in 2000 and my wife Sandra and I became supporters of the GWT. During the Covid 19 epidemic my wife of 52 Years died due to complications of the infection, our family could not attend the funeral due to the epidemic rules so all the money that would have been used to pay for the flowers and cost of the cremation, cars etc enabled me to donate £5000 to the GWT for the construction of an earthquake proof house for a Gurkha veteran with a plaque dedicating it to my wife. Please think about using this method to give to the GWT and ensure your loved ones death will help those who having served our country and need our help.
David Edwards