Great Britain: War Is Heaven

Since 1960, when it ended 21 years of conscription, Britain’s government has aimed to create a highly trained, professional fighting force to meet its worldwide strategic commitments. With full employment and prosperity, Englishmen are reluctant to enlist for soldier’s pay ($70 per month for a private). As a result, the nation still relies, as it did in the heyday of Empire, on British-officered native troops to help man its overseas outposts. Last week the best of the overseas hirelings appeared in Britain itself; a contingent of 1,200 Gurkha troops filed off a troopship at Southampton, to become the first foreign mercenaries ever stationed on English soil.*

The Gurkhas, natives of Nepal, are among the most fearsome fighters who have ever waged war; the British first encountered them during border wars in 1814, when the wiry little peasants fought so well against the redcoats that the British later decided to sign them on as mercenaries. Wrote one awed British officer after he first observed the Gurkhas in action: “I never saw more steadfastness or bravery exhibited in my life. Run they would not, and of death they seemed to have no fear.”

To begin with, the Gurkhas served as part of the British army in India. After independence, the Indians took over six of the ten regiments while the British got the other four. By special treaty, the British are still allowed to recruit Gurkhas in Nepal. The soldiers’ paychecks (a Gurkha private in Britain today averages $56 monthly) and pensions continue to be a mainstay of the Nepalese economy.

Expensive Laurels. Many of Britain’s 10,500 Gurkha soldiers belong to the fourth consecutive generation that has fought for the Crown. Even the crack Guards regiments are no more highly rated than the brown, merry-faced Gurkhas, who seldom measure more than a few inches above the minimum 5 ft. required by the British army. They are renowned for their gentleness off the battlefield, but on it unflinchingly uphold their slogan: Kafar Hone Bhanda Morne Ramro, meaning, Better to die than live a coward. They believe that war is heaven—or at least the best way of getting there.

In World War I’s calamitously costly Ypres offensive, only 49 of 500 Gurkhas in one battalion survived the first day’s fighting—but they captured their objective and garnered new laurels, as a laconic British communiqué put it, “at the expense of their existence.” Gurkhas were the only regiments to break through the Turkish lines at Gallipoli; in 1919 they chased the Bolsheviks from the Persian border and penetrated deep into the Caucasus before they were called off. In World War II, the 200,000 Gurkhas served with greater distinction in Africa. Burma and Italy—notably Monte Cassino—than almost any other Allied outfit.

Drawing Blood. Now in Britain, they will form a mobile elite that will be available to NATO for Europe’s defense and can be airlifted anywhere else on earth to fight brushfire actions or full-scale war. This week, in preparation for their new role, they will begin intensive training in tactical nuclear armaments—though no weapon ever devised has proved more deadly in a Gurkha’s hands than the curved, foot-long kukri, or knife, that they still carry at their belt and superstitiously refuse to unsheathe except to draw blood.

As they settled into barracks, the Gurkhas seemed to adapt quickly to the land so many had defended and so few had seen. Though members of a Hindu sect that sanctions polygamy, few brought even one wife. Their greatest thrill was watching TV, which they had never seen before. The Gurkhas in fact were possibly the only segment of Britain’s TV audience that expressed no indignation at the parade of violence on their screens. Though it was plainly this side of heaven, they thought it exhilarating.

* Though William of Orange and George III both imported private regiments from the Continent for their use.