Gurkhas, Fabled Nepalese Warriors of Britain, Get New Marching Orders : Peacetime: The 7,500-man brigade--once 16,000 men strong--is trimming its size to 2,500 by the end of the decade and moving on to new trouble spots as spearhead of crisis-intervention force.

The Gurkhas, fabled warriors from the Himalayan nation of Nepal who have fought in the British army in every war since 1815, have new marching orders.

The 7,500-man Brigade of Gurkhas--once 16,000 men strong--is headquartered here but dispersed around the world. It is stacking arms, trimming its size to 2,500 by the end of the decade and moving on to new trouble spots.

As the new spearhead of the 5th Airborne Brigade, Britain’s crisis intervention force, most of the tough Nepalese will be based in England and Wales.

This will be a long way from the jungles of Malaysia, where Gurkha units bloodied communist insurgents in the 1950s and ‘60s, and from Hong Kong’s mountainous New Territories, where Gurkhas have thwarted illegal immigrants from China for more than 20 years.

Gurkha infantrymen, armed with assault rifles and distinctive, razor-sharp “kukri” daggers, turned over daily patrolling of the China border last year to the Royal Hong Kong Police, a more conventional, spit-and-polish constabulary.

“The Gurkhas’ mission here is winding down,” said Maj. Paddy Hartigan, spokesman for British military forces in Hong Kong.

Like the regular army’s Black Watch Regiment here, the 5,000 Gurkhas stationed in Hong Kong act as a tripwire in the event of an attack by China, much as the U.S. Berlin Brigade did in Central Europe during the Cold War.

Gurkha patrol boats prowl the close-in waters of the South China Sea in an ongoing battle with Chinese smugglers and car thieves, who pirate stolen luxury cars out of this British colony on powerful boats speeding at more than 60 miles an hour toward the mainland.

Gurkha foot soldiers with sophisticated thermal imaging gear occasionally man secret observation posts along the 19-mile border with China.

While relations between London and Beijing have soured in recent months over the accord for China to regain sovereignty over Hong Kong in 1997, British officials say it is almost inconceivable that China would try to overrun the colony.

In this unlikely scenario, Gurkhas would defend government offices, international banks, the airport and other so-called “strong points” during a forced evacuation of this bustling Asian financial center.

It would be a doomsday mission for the lightly armed infantrymen, whose specialty is hand-to-hand combat.

Before the scheduled Chinese takeover, the Gurkhas’ basic combat-training base will be permanently closed and all Gurkha units shipped out to the few remaining outposts of the dwindling British Empire.

Although based in Britain, Gurkhas will continue to serve in such widespread places as the Falkland Islands, Belize, Cyprus and oil-rich Brunei, the Southeast Asian kingdom where they run a jungle-training base and guard the Royal Dutch-Shell oil fields.

Gurkhas provide the ceremonial guard at Buckingham Palace, the Tower of London and Windsor Castle for six weeks every two years.

Future postings could include Northern Ireland, where about 12,000 British troops are currently stationed, and the former Yugoslavia, as U.N. peacekeeping forces.

“This is going to be a whole new world for us,” said Gurkha Capt. Bijayshor Rai, a 21-year veteran who commands a detachment of fast Sea Raider boats, soon to be disbanded.

Gurkhas, who hail from isolated villages throughout Nepal, enlist for 15 years under a tripartite agreement among Britain, India and Nepal. They also serve in the Indian army and the police forces of Singapore and Brunei. Most of them are Buddhists; some are Hindus.

Prized by the British army for their fierce loyalty and toughness in battles from Gallipoli during World War I to the Persian Gulf War in 1992, Gurkhas have won 13 Victoria Crosses, England’s highest medal for bravery, since 1815.

Gurkhas and their largely British officer corps bristle at any suggestion that the rugged Nepalese are mercenaries. Despite their renowned fighting skills, the officers say, the Gurkhas would make ideal peacekeeping monitors.

“Gurkhas are actually shy and gentle, not warlike at all,” Capt. Jake Austin, a training officer at the Gurkhas’ Malaya Lines Barracks in Hong Kong, said. “Gurkhas don’t hate.”

Lt. Col. Peter Blundell led 89 volunteer Gurkha engineers on a mercy mission to Nepal last summer--the first time Gurkhas of the British army had ever served in their home country. They built three bridges across rivers swollen by the worst monsoon floods in 100 years, reopening Nepal’s main road to India.

In 1992 the same battalion rushed to Western Samoa to repair a hospital racked by a South Pacific cyclone.

“There is nothing a Gurkha can’t do,” said Blundell. “The Gurkhas’ natural field craft is second to none.”

But the Gurkhas, most of them infantrymen and combat engineers, are victims of cuts in London’s post-Cold War defense budget. Some critics say they’re obsolete, that they’re low-tech foot soldiers in an era of high-tech weaponry.

“About the only thing we don’t have to teach them how to use is the kukri,” said Austin. “They have used the knives since they were boys, chopping wood and killing game. It’s an all-around weapon.”

Even the Gurkhas’ strongest supporters concede that some recruits can’t read, write, speak English or use silverware when they begin the tough Hong Kong training.

But in 1989 a network of Gurkha loyalists started working to protect the brigade from government cost-cutters. A Ministry of Defense spokesman in London said the Gurkhas have a “guaranteed future as an integral part of British forces.”

The Nepalese government sees them as essential to the country’s economy. For landlocked and resource-poor Nepal, the British decision to keep the Gurkhas means that more than $50 million a year in hard currency will continue pouring into the Himalayan kingdom from soldiers’ salaries sent home, pensions and other British government payments related to Gurkha recruiting.

“We hope we can make the necessary cuts through attrition,” said Blundell, whose combat engineer battalion will shrink from 800 men to 400 by the end of 1994. “It’s tough to keep morale up in times like these.”