The Gorkhas or The Gurkhas: Special Force

THE list of books covering the Gurkhas published in recent decades is even longer than the list of places in which these soldiers have served in. The latter include: Gallipoli in World Word I, Burma in WWII, our own Malaysia during the “Emergency”, Cyprus, Hong Kong (formerly guarding the border; “the Bamboo Curtain” during the Cold War), the Falklands War, Kosovo, Iraq, and – currently – Afghanistan.

Lieutenant-General Sir Francis Tuker set the bar high with his 1957 history, Gorkha: The Story Of The Gurkhas Of Nepal.

Other excellent accounts of the story of the Gurkhas include Tony Gould’s beautifully written Imperial Warriors – Britain And The Gurkhas, and John Parker’s The Gurkhas – The Inside Story Of The World’s Most Feared Soldiers, both of which came out in 1999.

Evidently, this martial brotherhood from the hills and valleys of Nepal has proved a captivating topic for writers, publishers, and readers alike. And now Prof Chris Bellamy has taken on this beguiling and on-going narrative. Bellamy’s last book was 2007’s terrific Absolute War: Soviet Russia In The Second World War, and so expectations are high for this tome. For the most part, the eminent military historian at London’s University of Greenwich has met them.

The Gurkhas – always Nepali natives – have fought in the militaries of Britain and India for nearly 200 years.

As this book describes in great detail, their reputation as brave, resilient, resourceful fighters is overwhelmingly more fact than mythology.

But whence they came? The answer is a complicated matrix, yet is one that Bellamy illuminates with skill and lucidity. He explains the circumstances in which the British began to recruit them, and their rapid rise as distinctive military elite in colonial India, and geographically far-ranging history since.

Fastidiously researched but written in a clean and accessible style, here is an engaging blend of military, political and social history, which emanates from the misty foothills of the Himalayas, and goes on to cover the many campaigns and battles in which Gurkhas have fought.

From the time the East India Company locked horns with the Gurkhas, to the lingering nightmare of Afghanistan, Bellamy digs deep.

Gurkha loyalty to a small-but-powerful nation off the coast of continental Europe is a constant theme in the book. Indeed, the fact that Gurkha regiments kept their nerve during the Indian Mutiny of 1857 was a key factor in the survival of the British Raj for another 90 years.

Bellamy explains that the Gurkhas were subsequently seen as a guarantee against the threat of a mass Muslim-Hindu uprising against the colonial power. One might have thought then that India’s Independence in 1947 would bring about the Ghurkas’ demise, but instead the Gurkha regiments were simply divided between the armies of Britain and newly independent India.

The writer notes Field Marshal Sir Claude Auchinleck’s description of the Gurkhas “as a sort of Foreign Legion under His Majesty’s Government”. Bellamy concurs with this, and points out that both the Gurkhas and the French Foreign Legion featured heavily in Britain and France’s dismantling of their respective colonies after World War II. But Bellamy passes no judgement on Britain’s post-imperial itch in Afghanistan today.

The Gurkhas – Special Force reads like a definitive work, and has all the hallmarks of one as well. In addition to its 12 chronologically ordered chapters, it includes a preface, no less than 36 black-and-white photos, remarkably detailed maps, assorted graphics and illustrations, 47 pages of notes, a glossary, and an impressively voluminous bibliography that not only cites books, print-media articles, and governmental websites scrutinised, but also primary-source interviews, archives, documents, reports, and private memoirs and diaries.

Additionally there’s a prologue, penned to enrapture the reader. And it scores a direct hit. This cinematic vignette featuring Gurkhas very recently in combat in Afghanistan’s Helmand Province, enables Bellamy to make the point that this is the Gurkas fourth Afghan war since 1840.

This book is not without its flaws. A few head-scratchers crop up here and there, notably when Bellamy – twice – notes that Nepal’s Crown Prince Dipendra committed suicide on June 1, 2001, without mentioning the more significant fact that as he did so, he also shot dead his father (the King), his mother (the Queen) and much of the rest of his family, thereby effectively destroying the Himalayan nation’s monarchy.

Nevertheless, Bellamy has, by and large, done justice to the story of the Gurkhas, a saga that has particular resonance in this part of the former British Empire, and in whose jungles and hills the Gurkhas saw combat duty – in both present-day Peninsular Malaysia and Sabah and Sarawak – in the 1950s and 1960s. Indeed, a substantial and typically informative chunk of this book is devoted to these chapters of the Gurkhas’ story.

Bellamy explains how the Gurkhas – who made up a quarter of the riflemen and half the engineers of the forces battling the militia of Malayan Communist Party – were pivotal in the eventual victory over the communist insurrection. The Gurkhas’ role in the mid 1960s in Borneo during the Konfrontasi (the Confrontation with Indonesia’s expansionist attempts) is also explored in considerable detail.

In its final chapter, this fully updated book explores the Gurkhas’ uncertain future at a time of military cutbacks imposed by the current British government, and pleads for the force to be spared. Unfortunately, between publication of this book earlier this year and September, Whitehall has proceed to make the very cuts that Bellamy has cautioned against here – thereby rendering Gurkas a very timely read.

Author: Chris Bellamy
Publisher: John Murray, 448 pages

Source:thestar.com.