Back in the Nineties, when I was commanding officer at the Gurkhas' training depot, I spotted one recruit battling through the final exercise, in typically foul Dartmoor conditions, with a slight limp. He insisted it was nothing. A week later, at the end of the exercise, I noticed his limp was considerably worse. He still protested it was nothing but this time I sent him to the doctor, who discovered the young soldier had been marching on a badly broken ankle for an entire week. When I asked him why on earth he had not told his section corporal, he said: "My grandfather fought in Burma, my father fought in Malaya; they would never have given up and they told me I must never give up." This was the spirit that for the past 200 years has bound the Gurkhas and the British together. Last week, a British High Court judge condemned as "irrational and confusing" a government policy that allowed Gurkhas who had served in the British army after July 1997 to settle in the UK, but denied that right to those who had retired before that date. The judge gave the British Home Office three months to carry out an "urgent revisiting" of the policy. Such an order to reconsider is not the same thing as an order to change, so the headlines that proclaimed victory may have been premature. But there are few in Britain who don't believe that the judge's ruling - and his awarding of costs against the government - was a move in the right direction. Gurkhas first came to the attention of the British as their enemies, in one of those extraordinary phases of early 19th-century empire-building. In the 1740s the Gurkhas, a people of Mongolian origin living in the foothills of the Himalayas and led by a charismatic king, Prithvi Narayan Shah, set out to unify a collection of disparate statelets and fiefdoms into what is now Nepal. To do this they created a regular professional army, a very new concept in a subcontinent where warfare had hitherto been waged by nobility mounted on elephants followed by a swarm of - usually unwilling - conscripted peasants. Regular armies are expensive and the Gurkhas paid for theirs by exacting a land tax on conquered territories. The more territory they absorbed, of course, the larger the army had to be, and thus even more land had to be acquired to pay for it. Eventually this policy brought them to northern India and into conflict with the British, who had numerous treaties with the potentates of Oudh and Bengal, and so began the 1814-16 Anglo-Nepal war. It was a war of which few people in Britain have heard. While the British were struggling through the malarial jungles of southern Nepal, Arthur Wellesley, first Duke of Wellington, was facing Marshal Soult across the Pyrenees. Napoleon was a far greater threat to England and, then and now, of far more interest than what was happening half a world away. By the standards of the time it was an extraordinary war. Geography favoured the Gurkhas, technology the British. Neither side would run, both treated prisoners honourably, both respected civilians and both limited looting and plundering. A mutual respect grew and, after one battle, the British even erected two memorials - one to their own dead and one to "our gallant enemy" (they are still there, north-east of Dehradun in the state of Uttarakhand). The war ended in a stalemate, but the British wisely concluded that it would be far better to have Gurkhas as friends rather than enemies. For its part, the Nepal government now needed an outlet for large numbers of young men who had no wars to fight and the British began to raise Gurkha regiments, whose descendants are still with us. Gurkhas have fought in every British war since then and are still in action in Iraq and Afghanistan today. In proportion to numbers engaged they have won more Victoria Crosses - Britain's highest award for bravery in the face of the enemy - than any other part of the army. Eligible for the award only since 1911, Gurkhas have won 26 - 13 given to their British officers and 13 to Gurkha soldiers. One was awarded to Rifleman Lachhiman Gurung after an action in Burma in May 1945. He was holding a trench dominating a track that the Japanese were desperate to use, because it would have allowed them to outflank the main British position. At first, they attacked the position with grenades. Lachhiman threw back the first, and the second, but the third exploded in his hand, blowing off his fingers, shattering his right arm and severely wounding him in the face and body. The two other soldiers with him collapsed, unconscious and bleeding profusely. The Japanese now tried to rush the trench but Lachhiman, blinded in one eye, loaded and fired his rifle with his left hand and continued doing so for four hours. By the time the assault petered out there were 31 dead Japanese soldiers in front of Lachhiman's trench. In Britain, a society often dismissive of foreigners, Gurkhas have always been loved and admired, if rather as exotic pets, and much myth and legend has grown up around them. It is, for instance, not true that if a Gurkha draws his kukri - an all-purpose tool and weapon that has no religious or mystical significance - it must "taste blood" before it can be returned to its sheath. It is also palpably untrue that Gurkhas kill and eat their prisoners, although the belief proved useful for the British during the Falklands conflict in 1982, when it persuaded Argentine soldiers to abandon their positions and run rather than risk the possibility. Recruiting begins this month for next year's intake of Gurkha recruits. About 30,000 young men will compete for some 300 vacancies in a physical and mental selection process far more rigorous than that of any army in the world. Those who survive it will be flown to Britain in January to begin intensive basic training before joining their units all over the world. The interaction between young Gurkhas and British culture can sometimes lead to misunderstanding. One young man told me he thought the beggars in England were "most respectable and very well dressed". It transpired that he had rounded a corner in Guildford to be faced with a middle-aged lady in blue rinse, twin-set and pearls, holding a tin and collecting for the Royal National Lifeboat Institute. The treaty with Nepal which allows Britain to recruit the citizens of an independent foreign state into her army lays down few restrictions, but includes the provisos that Gurkhas remain Nepalese citizens, that they are to be discharged back to their homeland and that pay and pensions are to be the same in the armies of the UK, Nepal and India - which has around 120,000 Gurkha soldiers - and that these are to be based on the Indian army rates. It is this agreement that has led to the current agitation over pay, pensions and settlement rights. When the Brigade of Gurkhas was based in the Far East these conditions were widely accepted as fair. The handing of Hong Kong to China in 1997 and the removal of the Gurkhas' base to Britain, and, perhaps surprisingly, the replacement of absolute monarchy with a creaky form of democracy in Nepal, caused the systems that had been in place for many years to be questioned. They were not, and are not, being questioned by serving Gurkhas, who are somewhat embarrassed by all the fuss. But in Nepal more than 40 political parties were formed and all wanted the ex-servicemen's vote, which led them to make wild promises about pay, pensions and settlement rights. These cries were picked up in Britain and echoed by the press and numerous well-meaning supporters, convinced that Gurkhas were being treated unfairly without always understanding what the issues actually were. In the past few years the Gurkhas' terms of service have been brought into line with the rest of the army - which is not always to the Gurkhas' advantage. A Gurkha soldier discharged after 15 years of service got an immediate pension; now, he must wait until the age of 50 to get a preserved pension, like his British counterpart, who gets an immediate pension only when he has served for 22 years. The British government has always resisted backdating new rules, but it did make a concession by giving to Gurkhas who had been in the army when the base moved to Britain the right to settle there. The current legal arguments centre round those who retired before 1997, many of them old and sick, who would like to come to Britain because their own country, having just been through a bloody communist insurrection and hovering on "failed state" status, has no interest in them and no welfare system to care for them. I served as a regular officer of Gurkha infantry for most of my adult life. I know the Gurkha, I speak his language, I have trekked over almost every inch of his homeland. He is my only childhood illusion that has never turned out to be a sham. Of course Gurkha loyalty and trust is not given blindly - you have to prove that you are worth it - but once accepted by Gurkhas they will give you their all and they will never let you down. I want to see my old friends who want to come to Britain allowed in - and welcomed, not treated as a burden admitted grudgingly. How dare a bunch of politicians and bean-counters tell men who sweated blood for them that they are not acceptable as residents? A note of warning should be sounded, however. A large influx of retired Gurkhas may not necessarily be in the long-term interest of the Gurkha race, as opposed to the individual. Most of those already in the United Kingdom are in menial jobs - cleaners, drivers, security guards on the minimum wage - and they too will be at the bottom of the employment ladder. They are capable of far more, but that is all that is on offer and it will get worse as recession bites. Gurkha settlers can afford to live in only the poorer parts of the country, and already there are mutterings about them not integrating. Of course Gurkhas will want to live with other Gurkhas, where they share a common language and culture, but ghettos lead to ostracism. Retired Gurkha soldiers will remain disciplined and honourable; but their children will be unlikely to join the army and already there have been fights between the teenage children of Gurkhas and gangs of young Britons. The danger is that continued agitation could swing public opinion from being strongly pro-Gurkha to regarding us as a nuisance and, perhaps, even wondering whether continuing to have Gurkhas in the British army is worth the bother, thus ending a 200-year-old tradition that has been of tremendous benefit to Britain and to the Gurkha. And that would be a tragedy. Gordon Corrigan MBE spent much of his military career with the Gurkhas, until his retirement in 1998. He is the author of a series of books, including Blood, Sweat and Arrogance - And The Myths of Churchill's War, published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
