J. P. Cross with Chhabe Thapa of the 6th Gurkha Rifles, one of the World War II veterans he interviewed for the book. Photograph supplied courtesy of Buddhiman Gurung. Gurkhas At War, the new book from Greenhill author J. P. Cross and his fellow editor Buddhiman Gurung, is a truly unique publication. The narrative begins with the memoirs of World War II veterans, and sails through sixty years of warfare under the Indian and (later) British armies, right up to the recent peacekeeping campaigns in the former Yugoslavia and East Timor. The key difference between this and other accounts of a mysterious, often misunderstood, brigade is that the Gurkhas’ stories are related - for the very first time - in the first person. Such a unique undertaking requires an unusual degree of access to an elite, tightly-knit society, and who better than Lt Col (Ret) John P. Cross, the author of A Face Like a Chicken’s Backside (Greenhill, 1998), a veteran commander in the Gurkha Rifles, who - fully conversant with the language, ethnicity and social identity of the Gurkhas - now lives permanently in Nepal with his surrogate family. In the first part to the book, Cross examines the origins of these proud and indefatigable warriors, and speaks honestly about the difficulties gathering information from a military group whose oath remains: ‘never complaining, never explaining’. Here he talks about the most memorable aspects of the journey: “In 1999 and 2000 Buddhiman and I visited 24 places in Nepal and three in India to collect stories. Recording was easier by far than transcribing: survivors of World War II were, in 2000, 75-94 years of age, and many of them only remembered years and months of the era according to the calendar used in Nepal. ... Only those who were young men in World War II were alive to tell their tales, and this from a narrow perspective usually clouded by the ‘fog of war’. None of those who served in the Malayan Emergency (1948-59) were under 60 and none who served in the Brunei Rebellion (1962-3) or in Sukarno’s Borneo Confrontation (1963-6) under 50. These campaigns were remembered by all ranks with senior men having a more structured narrative to tell. Events in Hong Kong, Cyprus, the South Atlantic, the Gulf, Bosnia, Kosovo and East Timor came across ‘loud and clear’. Many war-time men, apart from suffering from ‘selective amnesia’, were deaf, toothless, sometimes almost voiceless or even suffering from a stroke so were difficult to understand. ... The oldest men were also illiterate and innumerate, certainly functionally, when they joined up, as education was forbidden in Nepal before 1951. Questions had to be correctly framed otherwise ‘Who are you?’ would be answered ‘I am I’; ‘Who did he then marry?’ ‘Somebody else’; and ‘What was that [Nepali word] you ate?’ ‘Something to eat.’ It is this addiction to the literal that gave Gurkhas a reputation for being dumb. A Gurkha’s facial expression is ‘closed when on parade’ and therefore gives an often erroneous impression of slow comprehension. This was unfair as many only spoke the common language spoken in the hills, Khaskura, or Nepali as it is now known, as a second language after their particular tribal dialect, and many British officers had pronunciations that at best were inadequate and at worst inaccurate, so correct meanings had to be guessed at. Yet another facet of Gurkhas’ reminiscences is that they did not complain of any British inefficiency. They recalled thoughtlessness, yes, as when one young British officer joked to parents, who had lost five sons in the war and were receiving ICR 90 for each son, how much this pension was, saying ‘Give some to me.’ The mother was so angry she threw all the money back in his face. No complaint was made of lack of rations, ammunition and stores as such and almost never at bad tactics. Defeat in Malaya? Privations in Singapore? Retreat through Burma? Capture at Tobruk? All were seen as the result of there not being enough Gurkhas to deal with the situation and a recognition that, possibly, a bigger need for military stores and equipment in Europe meant less being available elsewhere. That the name and fame of the Gurkhas is worldwide is beyond dispute. The Gurkhas themselves are mostly reticent about their achievements and they told their stories dispassionately and, for the most part, modestly. ... Strangely most men did not talk about the more horrendous events until, at the end, one of us usually asked them if there was anything else they’d like to add. Then came personal details, from the more prosaic ‘I had my hat shot off my head twice’ to ‘I was wounded in the neck and my boots were full of blood. I was in hospital for nine months,’ to unbelievable stories of degradation and cannibalism. Interviews acted in a therapeutic and cathartic way. ... Some spoke almost as at confession and later appeared similarly shriven: ‘Sahib, I ignored the advice given to me by my company commander in 1944 and I am sorry. I was wrong. I can’t tell him but I am telling you as I have wanted to tell someone all this time.’ Apart from everything else, gathering data was a wonderful time to meet old friends. ... Many names and numbers of those with whom I had served sprang to mind and almost everybody had his own anecdote about the times we had spent together - some true and flattering, some untrue and flattering, others neither! Looking at the men’s animated faces and shining eyes was like looking into a mirror in reverse: smooth-faced, clean-limbed, upright lads of yore were sometimes scarcely recognisable now that they had become shrivelled, wrinkled, toothless and grey-haired or bald. I, too, after so much time, was one of that large army of ‘those who fade away’. Even so men of regiments other than mine to whom I had only ever once dropped a passing chance remark remembered what it was, and when and where we had met. When the magic of the chemistry still works its charm, for me it is proof positive that the British-Gurkha connection is, indeed, based on very strong grounds.” Back to Greenhill Military Book News No. 112 Table of Contents Back to Greenhill Military Book News List of Issues Back to Master Magazine List © Copyright 2001 by Greenhill Books This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com