Saving the sum of things for pay
Charles Allen
IMPERIAL WARRIORS: BRITAIN AND THE GURKHAS by Tony Gould Granta, £20, pp. 480
In 1951 an acerbic former literary editor of The Spectator was commissioned by Life Magazine to spend several weeks with a unit of the British army engaged in opera- tions against the communist terrorists in the Malayan jungle. He returned full of praise for the 'absolute loyalty' of the men, which was reciprocated by their officers with a 'quality of love' found nowhere else in the army. 'Their men,' he wrote of these officers, 'are their passion'. The writer was Graham Greene, the unit was the 2/7th
Gurkha Rifles and he was spot on.
The extraordinary degree of affection in which the Gurkhas of the British army are held, not just by their British officers but by the British public at large, is a phe- nomenon that has existed now for almost a century and a half. Whenever news that a company of the now much depleted Royal Gurkha Rifles is being sent into a war zone — whether Kosovo or East Timor appears on our television screens it sends a collective shiver down the spines of half the nation, briefly uniting the Sun with the Guardian reader (for all the latter's con- cerns about discriminatory pay and colonial hangovers).
What is even more extraordinary about the nation's love affair with the Gurkhas is that we know full well that these Nepalese hillmen are mercenaries. Hired to Kill was in the 1960s the title of a notorious auto- biography written by a former Gurkha officer (John Morris, who went on to become head of BBC Radio's Third Programme) but that, in essence, is what the British army's Gurkhas are.
It is generally supposed that the Gurkhas came into being in the aftermath of the Anglo-Nepal war of 1814-15, when Clause 5 of the Convention of Agreement signed between Major-General Ochterlony and the defeated Nepalese general Kaji Amar Singh Thapa on 15 May 1815 declared that 'all the troops in the service of Nepal ... will be at liberty to enter into the service of the British Government'. But, as Tony Gould shows in his highly readable account of this association, the first Nepalese to fight for the British were turncoats: the 300 men of the Nusseeree Pulteen who quite happily went into action against their own former comrades at the assault on Malaun in April 1815. What is striking about that first action — and a great many since — is that these 300 men fought with the quiet professionalism that is the hallmark of the Gurkha soldier. Their British commander described their performance in glowing terms, commenting that they executed every order 'with cheerfulness, good humour and an acknowledgment of grati- tude for the kindness of their present
'I've got the kids. The wife's not well.' employers'. These also are hallmarks famil- iar to any British soldier who ever marched alongside a Gurkha.
Enlarging on the masterly thesis on the beginnings of Gurkha service with the British written by A. P. Coleman (pub- lished earlier this year under the title A Special Corps by the Pentland Press at £20, all proceeds going directly to the Gurkha Welfare Trust), Tony Gould shows how the Gurkhas brought to the Bengal army their own highly effective military ethos. Some two-thirds of the 4,700 men who formed the first batch of the British Gurkhas were Kumaonis, Garhwalis, Sirmuris and others whose hill-country had been overrun by Prithvi Narayan Shah's Gorkha army. But the remaining third was composed of those same battle-hardened Gorkha troops led by extremely competent Gorkha subadars. Free of caste prejudices, highly adaptable and toughened by spartan upbringing, they knocked the spots off the caste-ridden Rajputs and Brahmans who then made up the bulk of the East India Company's Ben- gal army. British officers merely added modern infantry tactics and weaponry.
Passion entered the equation when it became clear to the British officers who joined the Gurkha regiments that the Gurkha rifleman's overriding concern was to be a better soldier. This tended to bring out the best in his officers. Those who lived up to his exacting standards were rewarded with unquestioning loyalty while those who failed to meet them were usually given the push. Eccentrics and misogynists tended to flourish.
The British public's regard was won by degrees and largely by word of mouth through its soldiery. It began in 1857 with HM 60th Rifles (later the King's Royal Rifle Corps) sharing the defence of Hindu Rao's House on Delhi Ridge with the Sir- moor Battalion (later the 2nd Goorkhas) and continued through innumerable fron- tier campaigns, notable bonds being formed between the 72nd Highlanders (1st Battalion Seaforths) and the 5th Gurkhas during the Afghan war of 1878, and the 92nd Highlanders (Gordon Highlanders) and the 2nd Goorkhas during the Tirah Campaign of 1897. The second world war and National Service thereafter did the rest.
Tony Gould got to know the Gurkhas as a national serviceman in Malaya (like Mor- ris, he joined the BBC), but his account is very far from being the usual gallimaufry of rosy regimental anecdotes and tales of derring-do. It is a ground-breaking history replete with scholarship and fascinating asides of the sort that are now anathema to 'many publisher's editors: the fact, for example, that the two founding fathers of the Gurkhas — Ochterlony and Fraser notched up no less than 20 wives between them. For those looking for the reality rather than the romance of the British Gurkhas, this account can hardly be bet- tered.
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