8/3/2007

Letters

Thanks for your support of the glorious Gurkhas

I grew up living among the 10th Gurkha Rifles (1948 to 1968) during the Malayan Emergency and the Borneo War. I eventually qualified as a mental health nurse at Brookwood Hospital, Knaphill, and now work as a nurse at the Ridgewood Centre in Frimley.

I am writing after reading the News article ‘It’s time to give Gurkhas a fair deal’. The Gurkha soldiers, whose motto is “It is better to die than to be a coward”, are brave, loyal and tenacious.

During the Malayan Emergency, the Brigade of Gurkhas infantry was a major force in freeing Malaya from communist rebels and also defending the former British colonies of Malaya, North Borneo and Sarawak during the Borneo War, when Lance Corporal Ram Bahadur Limbu of the 10th Gurkha Rifles became the 13th Gurkha to win the Victoria Cross.

During the Malayan Emergency, my mother, a Gurkha midwife with 34 years’ service, had to counsel Gurkha widows who were returned to the hills of Nepal on a pension which was not worth their husbands’ sacrifice.

I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to Surrey Heath Borough Council and your newspaper for supporting the Gurkas’ cause. Professor Sir Ralph Turner MC said of the Gurkhas in 1931: “As I write these words, my thoughts return to you who were my comrades, the stubborn and indomitable peasants of Nepal.

“Once more I hear the laughter with which you greeted every hardship. Once more I see you in your bivouacs or about your campfires, on forced marches or in the trenches, now shivering with wet and cold. Now scorched by a pitiless and burning sun.

“Uncomplaining, you endure hunger and thirst and wounds, and at the last your unwavering lines disappear into the smoke and the wrath of battle. Bravest of the brave, most generous of the generous, never had a country more faithful friends than you.”

Rajen Chhetri SRN, RMN Day Hospital, Ridgewood Centre, Frimley

First printed in: Aldershot News and Mail