Gurkha


Book Description

In this Sunday Times Top Ten bestselling memoir that 'reads like a thriller', (Joanna Lumley) Colour-Sargent Kailash Limbu shares a riveting account of his life as a Gurkha soldier-marking the first time in its two-hundred-year history that a soldier of the Brigade of Gurkhas has been given permission to tell his story in his own words. In the summer of 2006, Colour-Sargeant Kailash Limbu's platoon was sent to relieve and occupy a police compound in the town of Now Zad in Helmand. He was told to prepare for a forty-eight hour operation. In the end, he and his men were under siege for thirty-one days - one of the longest such sieges in the whole of the Afghan campaign. Kailash Limbu recalls the terrifying and exciting details of those thirty-one days - in which they killed an estimated one hundred Taliban fighters - and intersperses them with the story of his own life as a villager from the Himalayas. He grew up in a place without roads or electricity and didn't see a car until he was fifteen. Kailash's descriptions of Gurkha training and rituals - including how to use the lethal Kukri knife - are eye-opening and fascinating. They combine with the story of his time in Helmand to create a unique account of one man's life as a Gurkha. 'I was completely bowled over by Kailash's book and read it with a beating heart and dry mouth. I felt as though I was at his side, hearing the shells and bullets, enjoying the jokes and listening in the scary dead of night. The skill with which he has included his childhood and training is immense, always discovered with ease in the narrative: it actually felt as though I was watching, was IN a film with him. It brought me nearer than I have ever been not only to the mind of the universal soldier but to a hill boy of Nepal and a hugely impressive Gurkha. I raced through it and couldn't put it down: it reads like a thriller. If you want to know anything about the Gurkhas, read this book, and be prepared for a thrilling and dangerous trip' Joanna Lumley




A Gurkha's Story


Book Description

This is the first ever autobiography of a Gurkha soldier. The author was also the first Gurkha to win acceptance into the elite ranks of the SAS. Within these pages is a thrilling and inspiring story, which will be relished and enjoyed by military and non-military enthusiasts alike. Detailed and fascinating descriptions of early life and culture in Nepal, of the incredibly tough selection for both the Gurkhas and the SAS and dramatic, nail-biting deployments in Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan experiencing danger, and death at close hand, and where the author served directly alongside Prince Harry, combine with 24 stunning original photographs to create this very handsome and collectible landmark hardback volume. In the depictions of Nepalese family life and customs, of the author's cherished dream of honouring his father's name and military prowess in World War Two, the rivalries and bonds of friendship and camaraderie among fellow soldiers, as well as some of the experiences of Gurkhas coming to Britain for the first time, the story is a personal and often moving one, told with honesty, sensitivity and good humour.As well as being a remarkable true-life adventure and a unique military memoir this is a multi-layered book, revealing among other things some of the conflicts and hidden tensions at work within the British Army and the Brigade of Gurkhas, including the veiled influence of the caste system. 'A Gurkha's Story' makes for truly inspiring reading, showing how with belief and determination, loyalty, hard work and courage the most difficult of challenges can be overcome, the most impossible seeming dreams realised. The author pays tribute to the opportunities given him by the British Army, offers gratitude to the people of Britain for their support for all of the Gurkhas in past and recent times, and expresses the hope that the special relationship forged over some 200 years between Britain and the people of Nepal will continue to flourish in peace as it has done in war. Most importantly of all, this book is dedicated to the author's friends and comrades, Nepalese and British, who gave their lives while serving in Afghanistan.




Valour


Book Description

Since the short and bloody war between Nepal and Britain in 1814-15, Gurkha volunteers, ever mindful of the their motto, 'It is better to die than be a coward', have fought and died for Britain, including in recent years in the Falklands, Afghanistan and Iraq. In the Second World War an astonishing quarter of a million Gurkhas fought aginst Germany and Japan. They have been awarded thirteen Victoria Crosses. Includes detailed appendices include all regimental changes and battle honours.




Ayo Gorkhali


Book Description

The history of the Gurkha serviceman is one that goes beyond soldiering and bravery-it is in equal measure a story of the resilient human spirit, and of a tiny community that carved for itself a niche in world history.




The Gurkhas


Book Description

The author has travelled in Nepal and met many Gurkhas to investigate the background to their traditional service to Britain and the threat that this is now under. He recounts famous battles when they collected VC's and earned admiration.




Arc of the Gurkha


Book Description

Alex Schlacher has accompanied the Gurkhas on operations in Afghanistan, on exercises in the Brunei jungle and Australia, and has visited all the units in the Brigade as well as retired and medically discharged Gurkhas. She has taken intimate portraits of hundreds of soldiers and heard their stories, many of which are recounted in this book. There have been other books on the Gurkhas, but none has portrayed the individual soldiers and focused about their backgrounds, lives and thoughts.




Gorkha


Book Description




The Gurkha's Daughter


Book Description

A number one bestseller in India and a shortlisted nomination for the Dylan Thomas Prize, The Gurkha's Daughter is a distinctive debut from a rising star in South Asian literature. This collection of stories captures the textures and sounds of the Nepalese diaspora through eight intimate, nuanced portraits, taking us from the hillside city of Darjeeling, India to a tucked away Nepalese restaurant in New York City. The daily struggles of Parajuly's characters reveal histories of war, colonial occupation, religious division, systemized oppression, and dispossession in the diverse geographical intersection of India, Nepal, Bhutan, Tibet, and China. In a cruel remark by a wealthy doctor to her tenant shopkeeper, we hear the persistent injustice of the caste system; in the contentious relationship between a wealthy widow and her sister-in-law, we glimpse the restricted lives and submissive social roles of Nepalese women; and in a daughter's relationship with her father, we find a dissonance between modernity and tradition that has echoed through the generations in unexpected ways. Across different ethnicities, religions, and other social distinctions, the characters in these share a universal yearning, not just for survival but for a better life; one with love, dignity, and community. In The Gurkha's Daughter, Parajuly reveals the small acts of bravery--the sustaining, driving hope--that bind together the human experience.




Imperial Warriors


Book Description

A comprehensive history of the Gurkhas, which remains to this day a unique and much-loved regiment, and which played a crucial role in the British Empire.




Gurkha Odyssey


Book Description

A British general’s memoir of serving with these famed Nepalese warriors: “An inspiring journey, delightfully related.” —Times Literary Supplement It is 1814 and the Bengal Army of the Honourable East India Company is at war with a marauding Nepal. It is here that the British first encounter the martial spirit of their indomitable foe—the Gurkha hill men from that mountainous independent land. Impressed by their fighting qualities and with the end of hostilities in sight, the Company begins to recruit them into their own ranks. Since then these lighthearted and gallant soldiers have successfully campaigned wherever the British Army has served—from the North West Frontier of India through two World Wars to the contemporary battlefields of the Falklands and Afghanistan’s Helmand Province, with well over one hundred battle honors to their name and at a cost of 20,000 casualties. Here, Peter Duffell separates fact and myth and recounts something of the history, character, and spirit of these loyal and dedicated soldiers—seen through the prism of his service and campaigning as a regular officer in the 2nd King Edward VII’s Own Gurkha Rifles, as the Brigade of Gurkhas Major General and as Regimental Colonel of the Royal Gurkha Rifles.