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

by Kailash Limbu

  After breakfast, there was a parade and the roll was called. The gurujis would then tell us what we would be doing that day. On one occasion, I recall, the guruji said that he had seen one of us praying at the temple the previous evening. I realised he must be referring to me, as this was something I always did, though I didn’t think anyone ever noticed.

  ‘That boy has got a lot of sense,’ he went on to say. ‘Your future life is going to depend on what happens here, and you’re all going to need as much help as you can get.’

  As if to emphasise his point, he then called out the next batch of numbers of those being returned to civilian life.

  *

  The next time we came into contact with the enemy, it was in the form of sniper fire. I was in Sangar 3 when, towards the middle of the day, I heard the unmistakable sound of a rifle shot landing a short distance away.

  Aayo! Who was that for? I wondered.

  ‘CONTACT! Wait out.’ Lance Corporal Shree’s voice came up over the PRR a moment later.

  ‘Can either of you see anything?’ I yelled to Nagen and Gaaz.

  ‘No, nothing,’ they replied in turn.

  ‘All right, keep a good lookout. There could be more than just one.’

  For what seemed like ages we crouched down, waiting for the follow-up, but nothing came.

  ‘What about we try putting a helmet up and see if they fire at it?’ said Gaaz. ‘You know, like they did in the First World War? That way we might be able to identify their position.’

  ‘All right, Gaaz. Not a bad idea,’ I said. Apparently that was exactly how the infantry in the trenches would find out whether their position was fixed by enemy snipers. ‘Let’s see how good they really are. But we won’t use a helmet. It would be stupid to take your helmet off. We’ll use your water bottle instead.’

  ‘Good point, guruji. But why mine? I had the idea. Surely it should be Nagen’s?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘You had the idea. You can have the privilege of getting yours shot to bits.’

  Without further complaint, Gaaz reached for his water bottle and, after emptying the contents down his neck, held it out to me.

  ‘What shall we use for a stick?’ he demanded.

  ‘Here, this will do.’ I took down one of the arc markers, judging we could do without it for a few moments.

  With the three of us huddled together on the floor of the sangar, I lay on my back and carefully raised the bottle to just above sandbag height.

  TING!

  Sure enough, the sound of a round landing on the sangar followed almost immediately.

  ‘Aare hou!’ we all exclaimed together, looking at each other in wonder.

  ‘These boys are certainly on the ball today,’ said Gaaz as I leaned over and grabbed the field telephone.

  ‘Zero, this is Sangar Three. Contact. Enemy sniper. Location unknown but probably somewhere to the east of my position. Observing.’

  It was a few seconds before I realised the line was dead.

  ‘Nothing heard. Will try on other means. Out.’

  Other means is the correct way of referring to another method of communication when using proper radio procedure. It’s a way of masking your intentions to anyone listening in.

  I followed up with a call on the PRR while Gaaz put the arc marker back in position.

  ‘Zero, this is Sangar Three. Contact. Sniper, possibly in a position somewhere to the east. Am observing, over.’

  ‘Zero, roger. Out to you. Sangar Six keep a good eye out on AOI Three. Sounds as if they could be using that building on the roof of the compound we identified earlier.’

  ‘Sangar Six, roger. Looking. Out.’

  I checked the field telephone again, but with the same result. The wire must be broken somewhere between the sangar position and the CT. Perhaps it had even been hit by a stray round. I needed to let the OC know.

  ‘Zero, this is Sangar Three. It looks like our field telephone has been taken out. Will be using this means for the time being, over.’

  ‘Zero, understand your other means knocked out. I’ll get back to you. Out.’

  A few minutes later, we heard a shout from down below. I looked out and there was Cookie.

  ‘Guruji! I’ll come up and fix your phone. I’ve got a fresh reel of Don Ten.’

  ‘Not now, Cookie,’ I replied. ‘It’s too dangerous. There’s a sniper.’

  ‘It’s all right. It needs fixing and it won’t take a moment.’

  ‘If you’re sure …’

  I liked Cookie a lot. I’ll always be grateful to him for bringing up the GPMG during that first night attack. He was a really smiley guy, thin and wiry and very friendly. In short, an excellent soldier. I’m afraid it’s true that often we infanteers think of signallers as being not always quite up to the mark when it comes to front-line soldiering, but Cookie proved that theory wrong. Even though he didn’t have an infantry background he was really proactive and helpful. In fact I’d have been very happy to have him as my section 2 i/c. What made him even more of an asset in Now Zad was that he mingled really well with the bhais – especially the younger ones. He was a good joiner-in and always asking to share Gurkha food.

  Without saying any more, Cookie climbed up to the sangar and began tracing the wire from the phone out through the sandbags and onto the roof of the building.

  ‘Easy,’ he said after a few moments. ‘I can repair this.’

  ‘You be careful,’ I replied.

  Hardly were the words out of my mouth when there was a crack of rifle fire followed by a scream.

  ‘SHIT! SHIT! I’ve been fucking hit …’

  Jatha! They’d got Cookie!

  ‘ZERO, THIS IS SANGAR THREE, CONTACT! MAN DOWN! WAIT OUT.’

  ‘Zero, roger. Who is it? Can you help him?’ I could hear the concern in the OC’s voice.

  ‘It’s Cookie!’ I said, slamming the receiver onto its cradle.

  Cookie had already started to climb down, so he could obviously still move, but I thought I’d better go after him. In the first few minutes after getting hit, you don’t always realise how bad it is.

  Grabbing my rifle, I called out to the bhais.

  ‘Gaaz! Naagen! Cover me, OK? I’m going down.’

  I realised there was a good chance of being hit myself, but put the thought out of my mind. You just do.

  The two riflemen did as they were told as I scrambled out of the sangar and over to the ladder. Cookie himself had managed to get off the roof, and I caught up with him at the bottom.

  ‘You OK, Cookie?’

  Of course I knew he wasn’t, but what else was I going to say? Looking into his eyes, I could see immediately that he was in a bad way.

  ‘I’m OK … guruji. I’ll be fine …’

  I did a quick check to see where he’d been hit and saw a small patch of blood on his side in between his front and rear body armour.

  ‘All right, Cookie, we’re going to get you sorted,’ I said as we hobbled towards the CT. ‘The doctor will put you right,’ I went on, not sure if I really believed what I was saying.

  There was intermittent fire coming from each of the different sangar positions.

  At the door to the CT, the two medics were waiting. I watched as they laid him out on a stretcher.

  ‘OK thanks, Kailash. You can go now,’ said the MO as I took one last look at the casualty.

  ‘See you later, Cookie.’

  ‘Cheers, Kailash,’ he said weakly.

  Climbing back up into the sangar position, I was more conscious of the danger than on the way down, but luckily I made it back in without incident.

  ‘Zero, this is Sunray Sangar Three. Back in position.’

  ‘Zero, roger. Well done. Keep a good lookout and let us know if you see anything.’

  This hardly needed saying, because of course that was all we could do – all we could ever do. Just watch and wait and wait and watch. It was so frustrating.

  The bhais were seriously upset.

  �
�Is he going to be OK, guruji?’ they both wanted to know.

  ‘He should be fine. You can’t be absolutely sure, but I reckon,’ I replied, hoping to sound more optimistic than I felt. The truth was, I was really worried for Cookie. It quite often happens that to start with after being hit you can still function but then the body shuts down. I just hoped it wasn’t going to be the case with him.

  ‘Jatha!’ exclaimed Gaaz. ‘Don’t they realise he’s one of us? He’s a Gurkha too.’

  Gaaz had turned angry.

  Unfortunately, as we both understood in our hearts, it was unlikely we would see anyone now. The Taliban knew what they were doing. Having scored a hit, they’d most likely leave us alone until they saw another time we were vulnerable.

  It was about half an hour after Cookie got shot when I had a call from the OC.

  ‘Sangar Three, this is Zero.’

  ‘Go ahead, over.’

  ‘I need you down here for a detail, please.’

  I guessed at once what that meant. Cookie was being casevaced and the OC wanted me to command one of the WMIKs.

  ‘Roger. Coming now, out.’

  I grabbed my rifle and my map and turned to go.

  ‘OK, bhai haru. I need you to cover me again. The OC wants me to go down. Probably Cookie’s being casevaced.’

  ‘You be careful, guruji,’ said Gaaz.

  ‘Thanks. I will.’

  Down on the ground, Rex sahib explained the situation in more detail.

  ‘Captain Martin assesses Lance Corporal Cook a P2 casualty. We need to get him extracted ASAP,’ he began. A P2 casualty is one with a non-life-threatening injury but cannot walk. A P1 is someone who is either in need of immediate medical attention and unable to walk or is unconscious, while a P3 is a walking casualty. I nodded.

  ‘Yes sir.’

  ‘There’s a Chinook on its way and I want you to be ready to command one of the WMIKs to take him down to the HLS. Mathers sahib will command the other one. So go and sort out a crew and be on five minutes’ notice to move.’

  ‘Hasur, sahib.’

  ‘Any questions?’

  ‘No sir. But I suppose there won’t be anything coming in on the helicopter?’

  ‘Good point, but no, this is the IRT. It’s not actually coming from Bastion.’

  IRT stands for Immediate Response Team – basically a dedicated air ambulance based at Bastion in full-time support of the various troop dispositions round Helmand province. Its aim was to get any serious casualty off the battlefield in what we called the Golden Hour.

  ‘Is that everything?’

  ‘Hunza, sahib.’

  ‘OK, thanks, Kailash. By the way,’ he added, ‘how are things up on the position? Have you got enough pani up there? I don’t want people getting dehydrated.’ This part, the OC spoke in Gorkhali. He spoke the language very well and, except when giving orders, used it most of the time when speaking to us.

  ‘We’re fine for water sir, thanks.’

  ‘OK good.’

  I really admired the OC in that moment. He could easily have sent someone else out to give me my orders, but he wanted to do it himself. I could sense that he was really tired, even more than me probably. He had so much on his shoulders. But as well as being brave – he spent a lot of time when we were not actually in contact walking round the positions checking up on everyone, while during the contacts he was mostly on the roof of the CT itself – he really cared for the men under his command. I had the impression he never took his boots off.

  The first thing I did when I went over to the accommodation block was to tell one of the riflemen to take a mug of tea over to Rex sahib.

  ‘And put extra sugar in it, OK? He looks really tired.’

  ‘Hasur, guruji.’

  ‘Any news on Cookie?’ demanded the other off-duty riflemen as I went over.

  ‘Is he OK?’

  ‘Are they sending a heli for him?’

  Several voices joined in together.

  ‘He’s OK, according to Rex sahib. But yes, they are sending a heli. Keep that to yourselves, though,’ I said, glancing towards the ANP block. Actually not many of the ANP guys were to be seen at this time of day. When it got really hot, they mostly stayed inside, sleeping I suppose.

  I looked at the duties list. I wanted to take Nani guru with me, of course. As he was the best driver, I wouldn’t have wanted anyone else. But who was I going to take to man the .50? Normally I would have taken Gaaz, but as he was manning the .50-cal in Sangar 3 right then, I felt that was the best place for him for now.

  At that moment, Rifleman Lal appeared.

  ‘Lal bhai!’ I said. ‘Good. You can come with me.’

  ‘Guruji?’

  ‘Lance Corporal Cook is being extracted back to Bastion. They’re sending a Chinook and I want you on top cover. Nani guru will drive.’

  ‘Hasur, guruj.’

  Lal had yet to leave the compound since we had arrived, and I could see that in one way he was very excited. But he was clearly nervous too. When one man goes down, everyone gets nervous.

  ‘What about your rifle? Have you cleaned it yet today?’

  ‘Yes, guruji.’

  ‘Show me.’

  Lal handed me his weapon.

  ‘Well done, bhai. That’s excellent,’ I said, quickly looking at the gas plug.

  One thing you have to be careful of when you are using your rifle a lot is carbon building up on the gas plug, and I always insisted that the riflemen treated weapon cleaning as seriously on operations as on the parade ground. More so, in fact.

  ‘You’ve got to be a perfectionist,’ I would say.

  By adopting an attitude of perfectionism, you give yourself a bit of leeway. I always think that if your weapon is only 99 per cent perfect, you’ve got a 1 per cent chance of it letting you down when you need it most. I’ve heard of lots of instances of weapons misfiring at a crucial moment. In fact, it happened to one of our officers, Lieutenant Hollingshead on Op Herrick 4, who was a member of the 10 Platoon team we had relieved in Now Zad. During the action, he found himself face to face with a Taliban fighter about 15 metres away. Taking aim, he pulled the trigger but his rifle misfired. Then the Taliban had a shot at him but his weapon misfired too.

  Now I’m not saying Mr Hollingshead’s weapon was dirty. Or if it was, it was because he’d been several hours in contact. The point is, you want to minimise the chances of having something like that happen to you. That way you don’t have to rely on miracles.

  After talking to Rifleman Lal, I went and found Nani guru, gave him a quick brief and told him to get his gear. Not long afterwards, Mathers sahib’s voice came crisply over the air.

  ‘Two One Charlie, this is Zero.’

  ‘Two One Charlie?’

  ‘Zero, report to CT soonest, over.’

  There must be news of the Chinook.

  ‘OK, bhai haru. All ready?’ I said. ‘Let’s see if you can break your previous record,’ I went on, looking at Nani.

  ‘Hopefully without killing the patient,’ added one of the other riflemen within earshot.

  I wondered how Cookie was doing. Although he’d managed to get himself down from the sangar and over to the CT, he hadn’t looked at all good to me. He might only be a P2, but he could go into shock at any time, and shock is a killer. People die from perfectly survivable injuries because of shock.

  Mathers sahib stood waiting outside the CT. Even now we’d given no indication that we were about to go anywhere, in case anybody might be thinking of telling one of their friends on the outside.

  ‘OK, so have you got your map with you? Good, so the HLS is here. It’s well within arc for the section on ANP Hill, so we’ll be covered by them as well.’

  I checked my map against Mathers sahib’s and marked the HLS on it.

  ‘Cookie will be in your WMIK, I suppose?’

  ‘Yes, so you’ll need to get there first. You’ll need to cover us as we unload.’

  ‘Yes sahib,’ I rep
lied. Nani guru would like that. He could pretend he was driving in a grand prix.

  ‘And he’s still a P2?’

  ‘Yes, although he’s not actually walking at the moment. He’s been on oxygen and he’s on a drip now, but the MO thinks he’ll pull through OK.’

  ‘Hunza, sahib.’

  ‘So what we’ll do,’ Mathers sahib continued, ‘is mount up right away and go straight out as soon as the casualty is loaded. Once in the HLS, secure the position and wait for the Chinook to touch down. The medic will go on with the patient, but as soon as he’s handed over, he’ll come back out. As usual there’ll be a sixty-second turn-round. Any questions?’

  ‘No sir.’

  I was used to these excursions by now, although I have to say on this occasion I was very nervous. It was still less than an hour since the incident and there was a good chance the enemy was still in the neighbourhood.

  At once I ran over to where Lal and Nani were waiting.

  ‘Time to go, bhais,’ I said, and once I’d quickly checked their equipment, the three of us headed for the WMIK. Just as we got there, Cookie was being carried out on a stretcher. He was on an IV drip but still obviously conscious, as I could see him saying something to the medical orderly. While the others were mounting up, I went over to say a few words of encouragement.

  ‘Hello Cookie,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry. You’ll soon be all right. You’ll be back in Bastion in less than hour. Probably in England by tonight.’

  He looked towards me as I spoke.

  ‘Cheers, Kailash guruji.’ I could hardly hear his voice, and as I looked into his eyes, I could see he was in a bad way. He was trying to be cheerful, but in that second, I was very concerned for him. He looked more like a P1 casualty to me. I even thought he might die.

  Nani guru was already revving the engine by the time I was on board, and less than half a minute later our wheels were spinning as the gates opened and we blasted through. I had the GPMG ready to fire and my rifle just next to me for short-range targets. My head was spinning too. What would happen if we were ambushed? If one of the WMIKs was disabled? Maybe we’d have to fight our way back in. At the same time I couldn’t help thinking about poor old Cookie being thrown around in the back of the other vehicle. I wondered what sort of state he’d be in by the time we got to the HLS. With one hand on the wheel and his rifle in the other hand, Nani drove like he’d never driven before. Down the road we went, past the shops now all shut up and abandoned, and out into the desert, skidding round the corners and bouncing over every bump. But we couldn’t go any slower. Although the enemy probably wouldn’t be expecting us to go out like this, it would only take a lucky throw of a grenade or a fortunate RPG shot and we’d be in big trouble.