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

by Kailash Limbu

  Within less than five minutes, we were skidding to a halt on the flat ground directly between ANP Hill and the edge of town. Nani kept the engine running while I debussed and, after quickly clearing the ground, threw myself down about 20 metres away. The second WMIK followed close behind, and soon after it halted, I heard Mathers sahib on the PRR informing the OC that the HLS was now secure. Less than a minute later, you could hear the sound of the Chinook beginning its descent.

  So far, so good, but now we were at our most vulnerable. The enemy would surely have seen us go out and would easily have time to get in position. There was a building we knew he used regularly which would give him the ideal place to engage us from, and I kept it firmly in my sights.

  ‘Lal, reference building four hundred metres!’ I yelled up at him, pointing. ‘Any sign of trouble and you are to engage, OK?’

  ‘Hasur, guruji.’

  ‘But don’t just stare at it. Remember to keep looking through three-sixty degrees.’

  ‘Three-sixty, guruji,’ he replied, swinging the .50-cal slowly from left to right and then behind.

  By this time Cookie had been unloaded, and as soon as the chopper touched down, the medic and the stretcher-bearer ran into the swirling dust.

  Sixty seconds from now.

  But what if they hit the helicopter with RPG? They couldn’t miss. I strained my eyes, looking for any movement.

  Sixty seconds and—

  The engine note changed to a whine and the dust enveloped us. It was up to the gods now.

  ‘Everybody mount up!’

  There was unusual urgency in Mathers sahib’s voice. He was obviously feeling nervous too.

  As I got up, I could just make out one man carrying an empty stretcher running in the direction of the other WMIK. So where was the other one?

  ‘Move now!’

  Nani dropped the clutch and with a lurch as the tyres fought for grip, we tore off.

  The medic must still be on the chopper!

  He must have gone on and not got off in time. Mathers sahib wouldn’t have just abandoned him.

  Sixty seconds. That’s all they give you, and that was all he got.

  As we roared back into town, I noticed the wind on my face. But this pleasant feeling was mixed with real anxiety. We were approaching another maximum-stress point. With the gates opening to let us in, we were vulnerable to a lot of different scenarios – snipers, RPG, grenades – any one of which could spell disaster.

  But nothing happened. Within no more than twenty minutes of leaving, we were back in the jittery calm of the DC, two men down. The medic we could maybe live without, but Cookie was a real loss.

  The medic reappeared, together with Cookie’s replacement, on a resupp a few days later. I teased him that he must have felt like taking a rest, but he explained that there had been something wrong with the drip, and while he was trying to fix it, the heli took off. Cookie himself has since made a full recovery and gone back to work, although he is no longer in the Army. That is the Army’s loss, as he’s a top man. I hope to meet him again one day.

  Back inside the compound, I have to say I felt a big relief. It seemed hard to believe we hadn’t been contacted and I wondered how long our luck could last. For sure we hadn’t heard the last of the Taliban. Later that afternoon, as we ate a meal, there was a lot of talk about whether there was going to be another big contact that night.

  ‘According to ops, it’s going to be overcast again,’ said one of the riflemen who had phoned home. ‘He said he’d checked the weather forecast with the aviation guys.’

  ‘You can never trust those met forecasts. They’re always getting it wrong,’ said another.

  ‘They’re usually quite good over here,’ said someone else. ‘The weather’s more stable than it is back in England. It’s more predictable.’

  ‘Well,’ I interjected, ‘you don’t want to rule anything out just on the basis of a weather forecast. You just never know what the enemy is going to get up to next. He could have got hold of some night-vision equipment for all we know. And there’s no saying he hasn’t got hold of some parachute flares. When I was inspecting General Dostum’s arms dumps, he had plenty, I can tell you.’

  ‘But General Dostum was Northern Alliance, wasn’t he, guruji?’ said Gaaz, who was just finishing his meal. ‘Aren’t they the sworn enemy of the Taliban?’

  ‘That’s true, but my point is you never know what the Taliban might have been able to capture,’ I replied.

  We did have a quiet night in the end, and as usual it was mostly sleepless for me. But I was used to it from my days with Recce Platoon and didn’t feel it too much. As soon as I got up on the position, I would be fully alert again. The biggest danger came from boredom, which is partly why I was always checking and rechecking our kit the whole time. It is also why I never minded when Gaaz resumed his questions about my early life.

  ‘Sorry, guruji, but I want to come out top of my JLC. I want to be a lance corporal by the time I’m twenty-one, same as you.’

  JLC stands for Junior Leaders Cadre, the course everyone eligible for promotion to lance corporal must pass. So I didn’t mind at all.

  ‘Tell us some more about final selection, guruji.’

  Once a week at Pokhara, they gave us a day off. We would all leave the camp and go down to a river nearby to bathe and to do our dhobi, or laundry. On these days we would kick a ball around, or just sit around laughing and talking about our villages. And of course we talked about what might be coming next. We also discussed our chances of staying the course, or whether we would be one of those who had to make the long journey home.

  When people did leave, it was the custom of any friends who remained behind to give them something – a T-shirt or a bag or maybe a pair of boots or shoes. To start with, it was just something insignificant, but by the end, we had given almost all our belongings away. Eventually, I even gave my watch to one guy I knew who was leaving. It was a really nice one which my dad had given me, and I was a bit nervous of giving it to him as it still wasn’t certain I would be staying. But I was so sorry for this boy. He was crying a lot and he had tried so hard. It hurt me to see people carrying their bag out through the gate. Like me, they had dreamed of becoming a Gurkha, and I felt really bad for them.

  In fact, as we got nearer to the end of the month, the gurujis told the people leaving they shouldn’t worry too much. They had only just missed out and they would have a good chance if they came back next year. In fact, I know some guys who went back three or four times before they eventually got in.

  I often thought it would have helped me a lot if I’d had a bit more experience in life before I went to Pokhara. For one thing, I might have done better at the command tasks. As it was, I was completely unprepared for these. To start with, I didn’t even realise that they were part of the testing – and nor for that matter did anyone else who hadn’t done one before. We just thought they were part of the ordinary training.

  What happened was that one of us would be selected to be section commander for a team, and that person would have to work out a plan and then give orders to the others. I’ll never forget the first time I was given a command. We were formed up alongside the swimming pool and split into groups of six or seven.

  ‘Right, Eight Nine Two. Fall out for a briefing.’

  That was me. I was already really nervous as, like everyone else, I didn’t know how to swim.

  ‘OK, the scenario is as follows: one member of your team is wounded. You can choose which one. The swimming pool represents a stream. Your task is to use this equipment to get him, and each member of your team, across from one side to the other, keeping within the boundaries you can see marked out.’

  The guruji then showed me my equipment. There was a sheet of corrugated iron, several planks of wood and some lengths of rope lying in a pile.

  ‘You’ve got two minutes to work out a plan. You’ll then give your orders to your team and you’ll have fifteen minutes to complete
your task. Understood?’

  ‘Yes, guruji.’

  My mind went blank. I had no idea what to do. Not only could I not swim, but the boundary marker showed that we had to stay at the deep end. It occurred to me that there was a good chance of me drowning, along with everyone else. But there was nothing for it, so I lined everyone up and gave them their orders.

  ‘Look guys,’ I said. ‘Number Four Three Six, you’re wounded so you can’t do anything. What the rest of us have to do is get you across to the other side. And we have to take all this stuff with us.’ I pointed to the tin and the rope and the planks. ‘Does everyone understand?’

  There was silence as the seriousness of the situation sank in.

  ‘So what we are going to do is this. On my command, we all jump in. Then we’ll cross to the other side. Have you got that?’

  The guys nodded uncertainly.

  ‘OK. Go!’

  Some of them then grabbed the planks of wood and the rope. I took the tin. Then we all jumped into the pool. Even today I have no idea how we managed to get to the other side without drowning! Actually several of the guys had to be pulled out by the PTIs (the Physical Training Instructors).

  By this time, all the gurujis were laughing their heads off, and so were we. Only then was it explained to us that we were supposed to make a raft. But of course, we had no idea. I certainly had never seen a raft in my life. My only thought had been to get across.

  ‘So what did the gurujis have to say about it?’ Gaaz wanted to know as I finished telling the story.

  ‘Luckily they thought we were really brave just for having a go, so the result was good.’

  ‘Hunza. They were actually all right, the gurujis,’ said Gaaz good-humouredly. ‘I remember one time we had to put up a nine-by-nine tent. They gave us fifteen minutes to complete the task, but by the end of our time, we had got nowhere. We were pulling on ropes and tripping over poles with the canvas on top of us and laughing our heads off. It was total chaos!’

  ‘So what happened?’

  ‘Eventually, one of the British officers came up to us. “Saare noramro,” he said. “That’s REALLY bad.” He was laughing too. Then he showed us how to do it.’

  It wasn’t until later still that I discovered nobody minded whether you actually succeeded in carrying out the task. The result didn’t matter. What they wanted to see was how you tried and how you reacted when things went wrong. But although these command tasks seemed like a fun part of selection, they were taken very seriously by the officers, and if I’d realised, I’m sure I’d have been more worried by them. As it was, of all the things we did during selection, they were the thing that bothered me least. In fact, if I am honest, the only thing that really scared me was the night-time entertainment. Even today, I think I would rather face another night attack by the Taliban than endure the terror of thinking I might have to perform.

  Not every night, but once or twice a week, the gurujis would come down after evening roll-call just before bedtime and call out several names. Those who were picked had to sing a song or tell a joke or, in the case of those who had them, play their musical instrument. I dreaded having my name called more than anything. We had to give presentations during our education sessions in which we had to introduce ourselves and tell people something about our village. I didn’t find this a big problem. But as a simple country boy, I had no jokes, and my singing voice is really bad, so every time the gurujis came down, I used to pray that my name wouldn’t be called. Luckily, it never was, though I’m not sure why. It may be because I was a favourite of the gurujis, because I was always so respectful towards them. Or maybe they thought that because I was from a really remote village I wouldn’t have much to say. If so, they were quite right. Even now I am not good at remembering jokes, and when my children ask me to make up stories at bedtime, I am never very successful. I find it difficult to make things up, and the only stories I have are the ones I remember my mother telling me about the tiger in the jungle.

  ‘There was once a tiger …’ I say, but immediately my children interrupt me and say they have heard it all before. They want new stories of course.

  Finally, the two weeks came to an end and the day of the final selection arrived. As I said, we actually took our bags on parade with us, not knowing if we were going to survive it.

  On this occasion, the DRO (Director Recruiting Officer) came down to announce those who had passed and those who had failed. He was assisted by a QGO who stood on the steps to call out the numbers of about half of the platoon. He did so with the words ‘aayo babu’, a very polite form of address.

  ‘Aayo babu Four,’ he began. ‘Aayo babu Seventeen … Aayo babu Twenty-eight …’

  As their numbers were called, these people had to fall out and stand in a group over to one side of the parade ground. It was a very poignant moment. We all knew that if you had your number called, it was all over.

  Then, somewhere near the end, my own number, 892, was called. I couldn’t believe my ears. It seemed that despite all my hard work, I had failed.

  But then again, I thought, this form of address is unusual. Perhaps it’s going to be different this time.

  I was completely confused and nervous.

  In the end, about half of us were now in one group, and half in the other – with about eighty in each group, as I recall. The guruji now began talking about the future, and what it was going to be like in the Army for those who had passed. Only at the end of this did he announce that those whose numbers had not been called out should take their kit and go down to the guardroom. So I had passed after all! I said a prayer of thanks.

  The next moment, our world was turned completely upside down. When those who were leaving had fallen out, and the officers had gone inside, suddenly the gurujis completely transformed. During the parade, they had been so polite, and even on a day-to-day basis they had been quite friendly. But from this moment on, they were like tigers.

  ‘Congratulations, you are in the British Army now!’ the sergeant major said. ‘But this is when the REAL hard work starts! So get down and give me ten press-ups – NO! make it twenty – NO! make it thirty!’

  At first, everyone was too shocked to move.

  ‘I said GET DOWN you useless jatha!’ the guruji shouted. ‘You’re not civilians any more, you know! YOU’RE IN THE ARMY!’

  For the next twenty minutes, we were running on the spot or doing sit-ups and press-ups or star-jumps, with the guruji shouting at us and calling us really bad names. Then all at once, they began to drill us. Nobody had any idea how to march, and we were all over the place, completely uncoordinated. But instead of telling us what to do, the gurujis just shouted at us, calling us bad names.

  ‘Tongrut horu!’ they shouted every time they saw us. This is an insult meaning something like You bunch of idiots.

  ‘You’re going to be wearing the cap badge of the Gurkhas from now on. You’ve got to be perfect!’ the sergeant major yelled.

  After some time, we were called to attention.

  ‘RIGHT, ALL OF YOU, YOU’RE MARCHING LIKE A LOAD OF GIRLS BECAUSE YOU LOOK LIKE GIRLS! When I fall you out, you’re all to get yourselves down to the barber’s shop and get a haircut. After lunch, there will be kit issue at the RQMS store.’

  The parade then dismissed and we all hurried off. But one of the guys, I remember, just broke down in tears. He was totally traumatised. One of the gurujis immediately went up to him.

  ‘What’s the matter with you, man?’ he wanted to know. ‘Can’t take it? Do you want to leave?’

  ‘Yes, guruji,’ he said, still crying. ‘I want to leave.’

  ‘Well you just go away for a bit and think about it. Then come back and tell me.’

  Needless to say, when he’d calmed down, the boy went back and said he wanted to stay after all.

  In the meantime, we went for our haircuts and the kit issue, where we were given a complete set of Army uniform. Of course, although we were completely shocked by the sudden chan
ge in the gurujis, we were also really happy.

  It wasn’t until the next morning that we were finally told which of us had been successful for the British Army and who would be going into the Singapore Police Force. I remember sitting on the ground as our names were read out. I have a lot of connections with the Singapore police. My mother’s brother served with them, as did one of her sisters’ husbands. But I had heard from my grandfather that there wasn’t much going on in Singapore, so there wouldn’t be much chance of seeing action. That was my main reason for hoping I could join the Army.

  Again, the split was approximately fifty-fifty. So of the five or six hundred of us who came to Pokhara, just about forty made it into one of the British Gurkha regiments.

  That night I wrote a letter to my family.

  ‘Mum! Dad! I got selected for the Army!’

  I don’t think it’s possible for a human being to be prouder or happier than I was in that moment.

  That morning as I lay with Gaaz and Nagen looking out over the desolation that the town had become, I have to admit that that moment of joy seemed a long time in the past. Now, there was less to see than ever. These days there was no disha patrol, and the only sign of human activity was the call to prayer at dawn.

  ‘Allaaahu akbar … Allah is most great … I testify that there is no God but Allah … I testify that Muhammad is the prophet of Allah … Come to prayer. Come to salvation … Allaaahu akbar … There is no God but Allah.’