Posted on 10/02/2001 4:47:51 PM PDT by jslade
Heard on Nightly News with Tom Lockjaw tonight that the British are bringing in up to 20,000 Gurka troops for service in Afganistan. Now, if history serves me right, these are some of the most frightening, blood-thirsty, efficient, killers on the planet. I have read many exploits of the Gurkas from WWII and Korea. Would love the hear of more Gurka stories.
Retired Gurkhas enlist to fight pirate attacks
"The very knowledge that there might be Gurkhas with their long knives lurking onboard ready to chop a boarding party to bits could very well be the deterrent that we need."
Also, by cutting a few throats here and there at night, they can keep a whole regiment from getting any sleep. Worked in WWII.
LOL!
Helen Rumbelow
January 2, 1999
A YOUNG boy sprinted up the mountain with the watchful encouragement of a retired Gurkha officer, his father.
Captain Budhikumar Gurung, who reached the prestigious post of Queen's Gurkha's Orderly Officer, one of a pair serving the Royal Family, returned to Nepal three months ago. He has the difficult task of adjusting from life at Buckingham Palace to living in the seventh poorest country in the world.
Like most of the 26,000 retired Gurkhas, he did not stay in Britain, instead settling next to the Pokhara base that gave him his chance in life more than two decades ago. As with all other Gurkhas, he had a course to help him to adapt to a homeland that he visited only briefly in his adult life.
Taught farming, banking and business administration, he is typical in managing to save enough to own businesses and property, supplemented by an officer's pension of more than £100 a month. Most Gurkhas serve a standard 15 years before recieving a soldier's pension of up to £40 a month, depending on rank and service.
On the slopes of the Himalayas, Gurkha homes are easy to spot, built out of brick, not mud, and with flowered gardens reminiscent of the English countryside. While working, the captain earned more than a Nepalese government minister. Now his pension earns him double a teacher's wage, and immense respect.
A former Gurkha can leapfrog the caste system that bars most of his kinsmen from the plum jobs in Kathmandu, and gives a great advantage in finding a second career. His son, Nabin, said it was a combination of riches and respect that made him want to follow his father and grandfather into the Second Gurkha Rifles. "When my father walks down the street, they look up to him."
Nabin, 19, has excelled in his recruitment tests, a testimony to the private boarding school education his father was able to give his son for ten years while serving in Hong Kong. "I once thought of being a doctor. For a normal Nepalese it's a very good salary. But being a Gurkha is better."
He is one of 36,000 competing for just 230 of this year's places with the British Gurk-has, a wing of the army made up of Nepalese hillmen, who are feared and respected as elite warriors. Among others is a skinny, 20-year-old orphan, Lakh Bahadur Gurung, who won the most dreaded and gruelling of the challenges that the would-be recruits face. In 31 minutes he managed to race two miles up a steep mountainside with two thirds of his body weight in rocks strapped to his back.
Now he is assured of a job fighting for Britain - a country he believes is punctual, clean and wealthy. Later this month, he will be at a damp army base in Hampshire, learning how to swim, use a knife and fork, and flush a lavatory, as well as handling weapons other than his kukri, an all-purpose knife for chopping firewood and, should the need arise, enemy necks.
When he returns for his first visit home in three years' time, his £538-a-month job will have made him a local hero, earning 12 times the average wage and with girls competing just as hard to catch his eye.
After foreign aid, tourism and carpets, Britain's trade in its fit young men is Nepal's biggest money earner, although this year the competition is even stiffer as the army is demanding brains as well as brawn.
Gurkhas have been recruited from the central and eastern mountain surrounding the town of Gorkha for 180 years, ever since a smugly invading British army was shocked by the ruthless opposition of the proud warrior tribe whose first principle is better to die than be a coward.
So much British blood poured down the run-off notches on kukris that a peace treaty was hurriedly drawn up, including a clause to allow the British to recruit from this short and tenacious stock of natural soldiers they had so painfully discovered.
Gurkha numbers have dropped from the 112,000 men who were fighting in the Second World War to around 4,000 today, depleted in the 1990s by the closure of their main base in Hong Kong and by army restructuring.
Although numbers are on the rise again, the army now wants supremely fit athletes and boys who must be able to speak good English and be able to solve complicated algebraic equations. Two thirds of the young hopefuls will be rejected by Colonel Richard Coleman, the officer in command of the base.
One of his problems is that the Basic Fitness Test used for all British recruits is too easy for the Nepalese. Instead of the 11 minutes allotted to an infantry applicant to run a mile and a half, a Gurkha recruit must run it a minute and a half faster.
Although hill boys find running on the flat unnatural and bizarre, this still proves effortless for boys brought up on constant physical exercise, whose legs have the knotted muscles of professional sprinters. So the infamous Doko race was devised, where the traditional wicker rucksack or "doko" supported by a forehead strap must be filled with 70lb of rocks and speeded up a small Himalaya in under 40 minutes.
Most Westerners find even walking up the steep shingle a breathless effort, and army officers say that if the test were applied at home British recruitment would drop to one or two men a year.
History of gentlemen fighters
GURKHAS began their long friendship with Britain in a bloody, year-long war. The British East India Company went to battle against the warrior tribes living around Gorkha in 1814, with an army outnumbering the locals by 21,000 to 16,000.
They quickly established their reputation for both bravery in battle and nobility, slaughtering many British with their trademark "kukri" while "in the intervals of combat, showing us a courtesy worthy of a more enlightened people", said one impressed British soldier.
A peace treaty hastily drawn up by the heavily hit East India Company (or "John Company") gave the British the right to recruit from the area, as well as the origin of the nickname "Johnny Gurkha". The Gurkhas quickly established a reputation for loyalty to Britain during the siege of Dehli in 1857, protecting the British under three months of continuous fire and losing three quarters of their 490 men.
More than 100,000 Gurkhas served in the First World War. A similar number served in the Second World War, when Nepal volunteered 20 extra battalions after France fell and Britain was vulnerable. After Indian independence, four of ten regiments in the Gurkha Brigade transferred to the British Army, the rest to the Indian Army.
Since 1947 they have defended British interests in Malaya, Borneo and Cyprus. The Victoria Cross has been awarded to Gurkhas 26 times.
Copyright 1998 Times Newspapers Ltd.
My friend also told me that his dad, when he was 8 or 9, once walked up to one of the Ghurkas and asked him if he could see his knife and the Ghurka obliged and pulled the knife out for him to see. Then, before putting the knife back into its scabbard, the Ghurka sliced his finger and drew blood. The reason for this, as I am sure other people on this thread will tell you, is that when a Ghurka unsheathes his knife he can't scabbard it unless it has drawn blood. So if a Ghurka pulls his knife and doesn't use it against somebody, he has to use it to draw blood from himself before putting the knife away.
I find myself liking these guys a lot!
This is indeed good news. Big fan of the Gurkas. (Big fan of their Colonel-in-Chief, too.) Thanks to HM's Government from an American soldier.
If I want a firearm, the LAST place I'm going to try to take one from is the arms of a mercenary!!!
This American serviceman visited their headquarters.
He said that their skill with the Khukuri knife was such because they use it for everything, including yard work.
He said that the bit about drawing blood every time they draw the Khukuri is a bit of a myth. Obviously they could not do this and use the knife for all kinds of daily activity.
He also asked about the notch at the base of the blade, he got many replies. My favorite, and his; "It represents the Yoni of the Goddess."
Be that as it may, these guys live with their Khukuri in hand. No wonder they're good with it.
Aren't the Ghurkas all from India? I don't get it, I thought Bush promised to lead a fight against all terrorism with global reach. Was the India terrorism event strictly local?
??? Don't know too much about the Gurkas or soldiering? You owe it to yourself to find out. The Gurkas wouldn't have it any other way and neither would the Brits.
As an American, I'd be honored to have the chance to serve beside them.
My buddy's dad tells about the night his company was camped and several guys were standing around talking. He felt a very light touch fluttering around on his helmet, turned around, and there was no one there. A Gurka had snuck up behind them, and checked to see if he was wearing a German helmet. Since he wasn't, the Gurka left his throat intact, and disappeared without a sound. No one even heard him!
Scary!
That's BS. With some of the Young Republican college boys I've seen posting their "We'll go if we're needed but don't draft us" crap the last 3 weeks, I'd say we'd be lucky to have the Gurkhas. And, by the way, who do you think paid the salaries of the ROK's and Thais that fought on our side in Vietnam?
Nepal. It has a border with India, but its own king and government.
Now the sergeant was given to some tall tales but I talked to his wife several times and she said he was very serious about the Gurkhas and we should believe when he talked about them.
This sergeant was in a platoon which was ambushed by the Japs when crossing a river. He and if I remember correctly only three others survived. He did by floating in the river which was running red for about a mile before he moved.
If it is true the Gurkhas are coming in, more power to them.
Hire them for the INS. Illegal immigration would die of a coronary knowing that these guys were waiting on the US side of the border.
sure enough, alongside suits of armor worn by kings,
some of the queens jewels, etc. they had some of the
gurkha knives and scabbards that been used against various
enemies of britain.
Have some respect for a warrior.
They deserve no less.
With knives of course. That would stop it in it's tracks. "Senor, what is that you have in your right hand". ROFL.
They deserve no less.
I must agree. If I was as good as one of these Gurkas, I would be very formidable indeed.
The Pashtuns are not under the Taliban, but neither have they signed up with the Northern Aliance.
The Gurka are some of the greatest fighting men ever known on any terrain, but this time they get to fight on the terrain they grew up in, High altitude, and steep mountains.
This is wonderful news.
So9
I doubt the previous poster knows the difference.
Semper fi
Boy, have you got that right. Can you imagine our female, front line, combat troops up against an adversary like this. Scary.
Beautiful!
The Gurka took a swipe at him with his Kukhri knife.
The German, figuring he then had the upper hand, laughed and said Aha, you missed!
The Gurka said "Shake your head."
You figure out the rest...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.