Britain Reviews Role of Tough Nepalese Fighters : Future of Legendary Gurkhas in Doubt

Can 8,000 Nepalese hillmen reputed to be among the world’s best jungle fighters find happiness here in the rolling, peaceful English countryside?

If one of history’s richest military traditions is to endure, they apparently have little choice but to try.

At stake is Britain’s 174-year-old military alliance with the famed, knife-wielding warriors known as Gurkhas.

The British army’s Brigade of Gurkhas--who take their name from an 18th-Century Himalayan principality that dominated most of what is now Nepal--is headquartered in Hong Kong. But in 1997, Britain is to turn the colony over to China, so the brigade’s future is under review.

The government has promised some kind of continuing role for the force and has said it will make public its specific plans by the end of this month.

Last week, the Defense Committee of the House of Commons published a 200-page study of the situation in which it expressed “the greatest admiration for the achievements of the Gurkhas . . . and for the great friendship and support which they have given to the British people.”

However, the committee cautioned: “To keep Gurkhas merely for the sake of it--perhaps as a token unit with an artificial role--would be no more than a shabby footnote to past glories. . . . If the only role that Her Majesty’s government could offer were as a token battalion, performing public duties or providing demonstration troops, it might be better to end the historic partnership on a high note; with regret, but with dignity.”

Here at the headquarters of the 6th Queen Elizabeth’s Own Gurkha Rifles, which is the only regiment of the brigade’s four currently based in the United Kingdom, British officers in charge argued that they see no reason why the Gurkhas could not take a place alongside regular British units stationed anywhere.

Adaptability Questioned

The Commons Defense Committee said it expects that “in the long term, the bulk of the Brigade of Gurkhas will be stationed in the U.K.”

But other analysts question the adaptability of the Gurkhas to the needs of modern warfare.

“A low-tech lot in an increasingly high-tech army” is how the Economist, a respected news magazine, characterized them not long ago. “Few can read much more than rudimentary English,” the magazine said. “They are hard to train in the use of complicated weapons. They are ‘straight-leg’ infantrymen in a British army that no longer needs their like.”

Even an otherwise laudatory, illustrated reference book distributed through the Gurkha museum at Church Crookham describes them as “slower to learn than people with more formal schooling and more advanced backgrounds than they themselves.”

The book, “The Mountain Kingdom: Portraits of Nepal and the Gurkhas,” written by a longtime British officer of the Gurkha Brigade, goes on to say: “As people they are . . . not imaginative nor able always to take the unexpected in their stride. Their early life was perhaps too hard, too pressing, primitive, stark and demanding to let the mind wander far or for fertile imaginations to develop.”

If the language of the current discussion sounds as though it might be from another era, it is in keeping with the colonial roots of Britain’s relationship with the Gurkhas.

They met first as enemies when, in the early part of the 19th Century, British troops defending the interests of the East India Company clashed with Gurkhas trying to extend to the south the influence of their king. After two bloody campaigns in which the Gurkhas got the upper hand in the first and the British in the second, they made peace.

Rather than risk further trouble with an obviously talented fighting force, Her Majesty’s government quickly enlisted it, and thousands of Gurkhas have been fighting for the Crown ever since.

Gurkhas rallied to the Union Jack for the Afghan Wars and the Boxer Rebellion in China; they rode camels into battle with Lawrence of Arabia, and in the Falklands they went into battle aboard ships. But their forte is hand-to-hand combat, and their battle cry is still “Gurkhali ayo!”-- “The Gurkhas are upon you!”

They are known particularly for their skill with the khukri, a curved heavy knife that in their Himalayan homeland is used from boyhood as a multipurpose tool. On the battlefield it is used mostly to slit enemy throats.

A notch cut in the blade near the hilt is to direct blood away from the handle, explained Staff Sgt. Ganga Bahadur Gurung, custodian of the museum. Blood, he said, “makes the handle slippery.”

Crossed khukris are the Gurkha Brigade’s symbol. A Gurkha legend has it that a World War II German soldier exulted, “ Ja! Missed!” after one of the hillmen slashed deftly at him. “Try shaking your head,” the Gurkha responds.

“The Almighty created in the Gurkha an ideal infantryman,” said Field Marshal William Slim, who served with Gurkhas in World War I and commanded them as a general in World War II.

Col. Bruce M. Niven, who wrote and took the pictures for “The Mountain Kingdom,” said: “Bold, hardy, tough, enduring and unimaginative, Gurkhas never moralize about the ethics of any war or conflict they get caught up in. The given order is the rock upon which they will stand until they are overwhelmed.”

Through the years Gurkhas have on 13 occasions won the Victoria Cross, Britain’s highest award for valor. Their British officers have won 13 more.

Their bravery inspired a story, possibly apocryphal, about a World War II Gurkha unit that appeared to disgrace itself when only half its members volunteered to join a risky, 1,000-foot airdrop behind enemy lines. Their reluctance disappeared, it is said, when it was explained that they would be issued parachutes.

A Noble Profession

By some definitions, the Gurkhas are mercenaries. But soldiering is considered a noble profession in Nepal, and the label of mercenary is so sensitive there that Britain has undertaken in its agreements with the king to discourage its use in reference to the Gurkha Brigade.

Following Indian independence in 1947, most of the Gurkhas who were serving with the British there transferred to the new Indian army. About 100,000 still serve under the Indian flag. Gurkhas also form Nepalese contingents in various U.N. peacekeeping forces, and another unit makes up more than 10% of the Singapore police force.

The money that the Gurkhas send home to support their families in Nepal, and the pensions paid to retired Gurkha soldiers, represents an important source of income for one of the poorest countries on earth, where the per capita gross national product is the equivalent of $160 a year.

The value to Nepal of the relatively small British Gurkha contingent alone is estimated by the Commons Defense Committee at more than $50 million a year--about 2 1/2 times Britain’s annual aid to Nepal. The impact on the Nepalese economy is one of the factors being considered as the government weighs the future size and role of the Gurkha Brigade.

By most measures, the Gurkhas even in peacetime are a bargain for the British government.

Maj. Gordon Corrigan, deputy commander of the 6th Gurkha Rifles, said in an interview that the Nepalese soldiers are generally more highly motivated than their British equivalents. Absenteeism is almost nonexistent, and about 95% of Gurkhas serve for at least 15 years, compared to an average of about five years for the typical British soldier. That means a much better return on training costs.

A Gurkha rifleman with seven years’ service, stationed in the United Kingdom, is paid less than $8,900 a year. His British counterpart is paid more than $13,000. The difference is even greater for retired soldiers, because of a complex salary scheme under which more than 90% of a British Gurkha’s pay is considered a supplemental allowance. Because the base pay is so low ($77 a month for a rifleman), the pension for a Gurkha staff sergeant after 22 years’ service is only about $800 a year, compared to more than $8,000 for his British counterpart.

The 8,000 men of the Gurkha Brigade constitute about 10% of the British military’s total infantry strength, and with what the army calls a “demographic trough” ahead, their relative importance could increase, according to the Commons Defense Committee report.

Tougher Times Ahead

Between now and the year 2000, the report noted, the number of males aged 18 to 22 in the British population will decrease by about 25%. This is the age group from which conscripts are drawn, and with the army having failed to meet its recruiting target in six of the past nine years, there is concern that it might face even tougher times ahead.

By contrast, there are on average about 30 applicants for each of the approximately 250 annual openings in the Gurkha Brigade, said Col. Clive N. Fraser, liaison officer for the brigade and one of 225 British officers attached to it.

Recruiters known as galla walla go into the Nepalese hills twice a year looking for stout young men, usually in their late teens.

“If we were to say, ‘Anybody who wants to join, come on down!’ we would be inundated,” Fraser said. “There would be thousands.”

Many recruits, like Staff Sgt. Ganga at the Gurkha museum, are one of several in the family to join up. Ganga’s father retired from the Gurkha brigade in 1969, and he has three brothers in the unit.

Of his life in the army, the 13-year veteran observed: “It’s very good considering you come from a place high in the mountains, where you don’t have much educational background and not much opportunity.” Tradition and prestige are part of the attraction, he said, but “money is the main thing.”

Even his minuscule base pay is many times the annual income of 95% of the Nepalese, and with the relatively generous “Gurkha addition” for service in Britain, he can build a secure home for his family’s future.

Among the major drawbacks, Ganga, 32, said, is that Britain, unlike Hong Kong, is an “unaccompanied” post for Gurkhas--no wives or other dependents allowed.

“My small son was born after I came to the U.K.,” he said. “I still haven’t seen him, and he’s 20 months old.”

But the biggest problem is something that even the army cannot do much about, according to Ganga. It’s the weather.

“Summer is OK,” he said, “but in the winter it’s dark and cold. The length of the days (short) and nights (long) is the main thing.”