‘You grow up with footballs. We grow up with kukris’

17 September 2008

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James Delingpole meets the Gurkha veterans seeking citizenship rights in the courts and says that, this time, the government has picked the wrong fight

‘You always felt safe as houses when the Gurkhas were around,’ recalled Alf Jordan, an 8th Army veteran of the North Africa and Italy campaigns, who’d joined the Gurkhas’ Monday protest march on Number 10 in a gesture of solidarity. ‘You’d be told, “The Gurkhas are on your right.” And you’d go: “Thank God for that.” And they’d look after you even though half the time you didn’t know they were there.’ One night he remembers being advised to watch out for a Gurkha patrol coming back through his positions. ‘We kept waiting and waiting but we never saw a thing. “What happened?” we asked. “Was there a change of plan?” They’d come through us, all right though. We just hadn’t noticed.’

‘So what is it that makes you lot so great?’ I asked Bhimrajtum Bhangphe, who served in Kosovo, Sierra Leone and East Timor. ‘Where you grow up kicking footballs, we grow up playing with bows and arrows and our kukris which we use for everything, even sharpening our pencils. That is our tradition because we want to be the best fighters on the planet,’ he said. ‘But our secret for winning the war is love. We love each other. We respect our comrades. We respect our commanding officer.’

They also have an inspirational motto ‘Better to die than be a coward,’ and a particularly stirring battle cry: ‘Ayo Gorkhali!’ Can you think of any people on earth more deserving of our hospitality than the smiling, noble warrior race that gave us men like Lachhiman Gurung and Tulbahadur Pun? They could bring knife crime to a swift and bloody end, for a start.

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ian skidmore

September 18th, 2008 1:12pm Report this comment

Very well said, Sir ( and that is not a title I normally address you by). Your defence of the Ghurka was noble and timely. They are a shameful demonstration of just how far we have fallen as a nation.

Michael Ney

September 18th, 2008 5:32pm Report this comment

There is a simple policy that a Government of any colour should adopt: "Service guarantees citizenship". Any Ghurka who has served IS a citizen, no need to demonstrate "ties" they are ties of blood and honour. I am proud to call any Ghurka a fellow citizen.

AGB

September 19th, 2008 3:09pm Report this comment

A scandal indeed. My late father served a spell in HMS Ghurka and brought me up to admire, cherish and, indeed, fear these feisty warriors.

A question for Delingpole though: what does "and they earned themselves 6,500 military decorations, including 13 individual VCs and another 13 regimental VCs" mean? What does he mean by "another 13 regimental VCs"?

G.A.MACKINLAY

September 21st, 2008 9:34am Report this comment

For GHURKHA read GURKHA the correct spelling, the four ships of the RN with that name were all HMS Gurkha. Having been to Nepal, and to British Gurkhas Nepal in particular on a number of occasions since 1975, I can say you never see children playing with Kukris, but, you always see them playing with soccer balls

AGB

September 21st, 2008 4:28pm Report this comment

Apologies for mis-spelling! To answer my own question on "regimental VCs", what Delingpole means is that the regiment has won a total of 26 VCs, 13 by Nepali natives, and 13 by British officers of the regiment.

AGB

willgetfooledagain

September 23rd, 2008 5:38am Report this comment

We should remove the Gurkha element from our Armed Forces. Here we have another campaign from the legally rich to create a multi milliom pound immigrant policy to the detriment of our overcrowded little island.

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