Gurkha: Better to Die than Live a Coward: My Life in the Gurkhas

by Kailash Limbu

  ‘So why do want to join the Gurkhas?’

  ‘My grandfather, he was a Gurkha. He said I should join. And my uncle too.’

  ‘Yes, but why do YOU want to be a Gurkha?’

  I thought for a moment.

  ‘I’ve always wanted to be a Gurkha, sahib. Ever since I first heard about them when I was a child.’

  ‘That still doesn’t answer the question WHY?’

  I bit my lip. What was the answer he wanted? I wondered. It didn’t seem right to tell him the stories my grandfather had told me about the glorious deeds of the ancestors – the times when the Gurkhas had run out of ammunition and still carried on fighting with bayonet and kukri, or how the Gurkhas had helped the British win two world wars.

  ‘Because I like fighting,’ I replied truthfully. ‘And I like guns. I want to do some proper shooting.’

  These words seemed to satisfy him and he noted something down on the paper in front of him.

  As before, the whole procedure was spread out over a few days, after which we assembled together outside the office building. We were all very nervous, as we knew that exactly fourteen of us would be going through and no more. But again I was pretty confident of success. I managed to improve quite a lot on most of my previous scores, which was encouraging.

  ‘OK, listen in everyone!’ The recruiting officer came forward to address us. ‘The following are to report to me afterwards.’

  He started reading out the names of the successful candidates. As I say, I was fairly confident and in fact expected my name would be at the top of the list, or very near it. But he read out one, two, three, four, five other names. I couldn’t believe it! Had I done so badly?

  Six … seven … eight … nine … ten … I counted each one with growing desperation.

  This was bad. Maybe I’d failed. Eleven … twelve … thirteen …

  That was it. I had failed. Fourteen:

  ‘Kailash Khebang Limbu.’

  My heart missed a beat. That was me! I’d passed after all!

  The relief I felt was indescribable. I had the last place! Well never mind, better last than no place!

  Actually, looking back I’m not sure the list was graded at all. It could be that our names were read out at random, or according to our time of arrival. In any case, it didn’t matter. The important thing was that I had got through. I was just so happy.

  But of course, I still had the toughest part of the selection procedure to come. And because I could not be sure of the outcome, I took the next few days to visit the college in Dharan in which I had already enrolled. I had heard a lot of good things about it, and one of my teachers, who had earned his BSc there, told me I should go and get the feel of the place. I should talk to some of the teachers, and some of the people I knew who were already studying there.

  It turned out that the college looked really good, and I decided that if I could not be a Gurkha, I would definitely be a doctor. With my mum having been ill, I still had the thought in the back of my mind that maybe it was better to be a doctor and cure people. Yet although it may seem strange to say so, on the other hand I really did want to fire guns and fight. I felt like I was standing at a fork in a mountain path. One way led to a safe place, the other went uphill and you couldn’t tell where it led, only that you would be sure to have adventures on the way. For some reason I can’t really explain, I wanted to take the harder road. I suppose part of it was down to what my dad had said to me.

  ‘If you are a man, you will really enjoy the Army.’

  ‘The British Army rules the whole world,’ my grandfather added. ‘And the British are so brave!’

  I was really inspired by what they had told me about the Gurkhas.

  Of course, as I discovered later, it wasn’t really true about the British Army ruling the whole world any more. Perhaps, too, not all British soldiers are brave without any exception. But most are, and many are very brave indeed.

  My life as a Gurkha really began when I left the college at Dharan for the main recruiting base at Pokhara. The distance between the two towns is 350 miles and the journey takes more than fifteen hours. I got to the bus stand very early in the morning, and because I was there in good time, I had the seat directly behind the driver. Very quickly, the bus filled up. As a result, when the last person climbed aboard there was nowhere for him to sit. The only possible place was on the engine housing, which on that old bus was on the left side of the driver. It wasn’t a good place to be, as it got very hot and vibrated all the time. In any case, there were some bags on it which needed to be moved. These belonged to two guys sitting right at the front, on the opposite side of the driver. After standing looking round helplessly for some time, the latecomer spoke very politely to the two of them.

  ‘Lunga,’ he said. This is a very polite word for ‘friend’. ‘Can I please sit there?’

  But they said no – ‘That’s where we’re putting our bags, can’t you see?’

  As I sat watching, I began to feel really sorry for this boy. I thought to myself, Those guys in the front can easily move their bags.

  It wasn’t as if they owned the bus! I couldn’t see that it mattered where their bags went, so I spoke to the latecomer. ‘Look,’ I said, ‘don’t take any notice of those two. Just move the bags and put them somewhere else. Then you sit there. If those two guys try to stop you, I’ll fight for you.’

  This probably wouldn’t have been a very good start to my Army career, but luckily it all got sorted peacefully in the end. It turned out that all four of us were going for Gurkha selection. However, my intervention almost cost me very dear.

  As we were about to go through the main gate, one of the two boys who had been sitting in the front told the guard he should not let me through. We all had to present our Grade Pass papers at the entrance, and he had noticed that the picture on mine didn’t look very much like me.

  ‘That’s just because I had long hair when I went for selection at Taplejung,’ I protested. ‘I look different because it’s been cut!’

  But the guard studied the photo and agreed it was of someone else. He accused me of stealing someone else’s papers!

  Luckily, the galla, the recruiting officer who had been in Telog and then Taplejung, was passing at that moment and came forward.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘This is the right person. He’s telling the truth. It was me who told him to get his hair cut before he came here.’

  So I got in.

  As it happened, all four of us who were at the front of the bus passed main selection and ended up on the same intake together. One of the others became an Engineer and the latecomer became a Signaller. The third one is now a very good friend of mine. But every time we meet – the last time was in Afghanistan on Op Herrick 9 – he always reminds me of how we nearly ended up in a fight together.

  ‘You’re a hard man, Kailash,’ he always says.

  But actually he is himself now a Commando, after passing their selection test, so I would say that he is quite a hard man too. It would have been a good fight, although being quite a lot bigger than him, I like to think I would definitely have won.

  It was late evening now, and after finally getting past the guardroom, I joined the other potential recruits as we waited to see what was going to happen next. Later, we were told to form an orderly queue and we were all given our basic kit issue. This consisted of a kitbag, two blankets each, a plate, knife, fork and spoon, a mug – for no particular reason that I could see, some of us got tin ones, others got plastic – and we were then shown to our accommodation. This was in several long, single-storey buildings where the beds were arranged in parallel lines. I don’t know how many we were in each building, but at the time it seemed like there must be at least two hundred of us.

  I remember spending the first night wondering whether I was really in the right place. Was I going to be selected? Some of the other guys looked really tough and fit, and they seemed clever as well. It looked like quite a few had had a really good e
ducation. But even so, I felt reasonably confident. Our intake was approximately fifteen hundred in all, and I knew that there were roughly two hundred and fifty places, so now that I had got this far, I felt there was quite a good chance of success. What I lacked in any department, I would make up for with determination. I hadn’t realised at the time, but actually my chances of getting through the first and second rounds had been much smaller.

  Altogether the selection process at Pokhara took four weeks – if you lasted. On the first day after our arrival, we were given a number of talks about what we were going to be doing over the next month. This all sounded very exciting, but what really impressed me was the gurujis themselves. When I first saw our instructors, I thought Wow, I really want to be like that! They were quite small, most of them smaller than me. But at the same time they had really big personalities, and they looked seriously strong as well.

  At the outset, we were told that, besides Gurkha selection, we were also being assessed for the Singapore police force. Those who didn’t get into the British Gurkhas still had the chance of joining the police. But although nobody said so, we all thought that going into the police was definitely second best. For myself, I decided I would be a British Army Gurkha or nothing at all.

  ‘But why?’ they wanted to know. It was the first question they asked when I went forward for my induction interview.

  ‘Look,’ I said – I don’t think I even said guruji, because I did not yet understand Army ways – ‘my grandfather was a British soldier in India and my uncle is a Gurkha in Singapore. But what I really want to do is get a gun and fight!’

  They really laughed when I said this. They must have been thinking, Who is this person? But it was the truth.

  It was more than twenty-four hours before the next major engagement, and the following morning, after the usual checks, we carried on the conversation.

  ‘The first week was really tough, wasn’t it, guruji?’ Gaaz demanded.

  It certainly was, and after only three or four days, people started to leave. We all wore chest numbers, and if your number was called out on parade, you had to fetch your kit and report to the guardroom straight afterwards. That was the end for you. Because of this danger of being told to leave, I decided straight away that I would keep out of trouble. I didn’t want to be caught fighting in case that was a reason for losing my place. Some of the guys were quite aggressive, I noticed, but I made sure I was polite to everyone. For that reason my nickname to begin with was Khebang-solti. Solti is a Limbu word meaning ‘friend’, so together it means something like ‘Mr Nice Guy from Khebang’.

  But this nickname didn’t last long. I have always been quite a good volleyball player, and whenever I spike it, I really hit the ball hard and shout out ‘Yaah’ at the same time. I soon became known as ‘Yaah-solti’.

  All in all, after the first few days I felt I was getting along OK, but then at the end of our first week we were told there would be a doko race the following morning. Now a doko is a special kind of basket which is used for transporting things in the mountains. I knew how to carry one – I had often used a doko to collect hay for the cattle, or to carry rice or logs in. But I had never tried to run with one uphill. And for this race, we were told, part of the course would be up a steep hill. To make things worse, we would be carrying 30 kilos. Now the thing about carrying a doko is that you have to hold it high on your shoulders and keep it there with a strap that goes round your forehead, leaving your arms free. So it’s all about balance. But because I had never tried running with one, especially not uphill, I was very nervous about this race.

  I also heard that lots of people who did well on other things failed on this race.

  Furthermore, unlike me, a lot of the other guys knew about it and had already practised for the race a number of times before they came.

  As the time drew near, I began to get really anxious. I just didn’t know what it would be like. The dokos could so easily get unbalanced. It would have been fine if there wasn’t much in it. I knew I could cope with that. But with half your own body-weight on your back it would be a lot different from what I was used to.

  So finally the moment arrived and the gurujis came round checking the weight – we had to pack them ourselves – and the British officers were there too. Well, I thought, I will just have to try my hardest. There was nothing else I could do. We were all called to line up and then one of the gurujis began counting down.

  ‘ARE YOU READY?’ he yelled. I was as ready as I was ever going to be.

  ‘THREE … TWO … ONE … GO!’ he shouted, and off we went.

  To start with, the course was flat, but after about 300 metres we began to run downhill into a valley with a small stream to cross at the bottom. To my surprise, things felt OK. Although the load was heavy, I found I could keep it in balance all right so long as I took care to keep my stride even. But after the stream there was a paddy field to cross. The rice had been harvested, which meant the surface was really uneven and difficult. There was nothing for it but to just put everything I had into it. I so badly wanted to do well because I was desperate to be selected.

  As I crossed the paddy field, I glanced either side and to my amazement, I realised I was in first position! I was still out ahead when we got to the end of the field, where we had to scramble over the long mound of earth which had been built up to retain water. Thereafter, the course turned uphill. Now it began to be seriously steep. I was pushing hard when I noticed on the hillside a small shrine that we were going to pass and as I did so, I prayed to its god to help me.

  ‘Give me some power!’ I said gasping under my breath. ‘Help me beat these guys, please.’

  I was still out ahead as we began the climb, but as we got higher, a few people started trying to pass me. I had to push even harder.

  ‘Oh god, please don’t let me down.’

  But eventually some of them did manage to get through. I was really sweating now. I’d never done anything so hard in all my life. I told myself I had to win otherwise I might not be selected, and yet although I was running as hard as I knew how, it seemed like it wasn’t enough.

  When we reached the top of the hill, the course ran in a long loop. Somehow I had to find more energy from somewhere. Where was the god when you needed him?

  The main thing, I realised, was just to keep going, and not to take the pressure off – even though the hardest part was now behind us. Redoubling my efforts, I managed to catch up a few of the guys who had passed me on the hill. It felt like sweet revenge. Finally, as we staggered over the finishing line, I knew I had done my best. That was the main thing. The guy who won was a long way ahead, but still I managed fifth or sixth out of the forty in my group, so that wasn’t bad. Actually, considering it was my first attempt at running with a load, I feel quite pleased with the result even today.

  Unfortunately, those who did not do well on the doko race were dropped the next day. One of those who went was Chudpe, a boy who was always telling jokes. This was a great loss to us all, as he was always laughing and telling funny stories. He was a huge asset to our collective morale. People used to laugh as soon as they saw Chudpe. He was very intelligent and well-educated and good at everything he did, but he just did not have the required level of fitness. One interesting thing I learned from him was that it is actually possible to over-laugh. On one occasion, he said something to one of my friends that was just so outrageous – I forget what it was: just one of those things that seem really hilarious at the time – that we were all bent double with laughter. I remember seeing tears in the eyes of one of the lads. He had to go outside to calm down and recover. But another boy actually fell on the ground and started having trouble breathing. We had to throw water on him because it began to look as though he really might die!

  I don’t know what happened to our joke teller. I didn’t hear whether he was one of the ones who came back the following year. All I know is that we missed him a lot.

  Throughout the course there
were parades when those people who did not make it were sent down to the guardroom, where they were given some money and sent back to their families. You never knew until the moment your name was called if it was going to be you. We all went on parade with our kit ready and packed in case it was us. First there was roll-call, then the gurujis gave us a talk. Finally, a long list of chest numbers was called out.

  ‘Those of you whose numbers have been called, well done. Anyone whose number has not been called out, report to the guardroom.’ Each time, there would be ten, fifteen, twenty people whose names were not called out, and they would fall out and often that was the last we would see of them.

  Not long after the dokos race, we had another race. This time it was a straightforward running race, without any load, on the flat. The distance was over something like 2.5 km. Again I was a bit nervous, as I hadn’t done much in the way of athletics before. There wasn’t much flat ground near to Khebang. What made me really anxious, though, was noticing as we went down to the start that some of the guys had bare feet.

  ‘Where are your boots?’ I wanted to know.

  ‘It’s easier without,’ they told me.

  This put me in a dilemma. My boots were old and in poor condition. Maybe it would be easier without them. On the other hand, I’d never tried running barefoot. I couldn’t decide what to do. As it turned out, however, I didn’t have time to take them off. We were called in to line up as soon as we got there. This time there were about twenty in my group and I managed third or fourth, which again I felt was quite good for a first attempt.

  Our routine every day was to wake up, wash, shave – if we needed to – use the toilet then go to breakfast. When I first saw people shaving, I was amazed.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I wanted to know. ‘And why?’

  At seventeen and a half, I didn’t have anything to cut. Like most Limbus, I don’t have much facial hair. Back home, if anyone could grow a beard they did. Either that or they would pull out individual hairs with a pair of tweezers. I’d never seen a razor.