Gurkha Tales

J. P. CROSS has spent 67 years among the Gurkhas, first as a serving officer and then as a resident of Nepal, being the only foreigner in the history of the country to be allowed to be both a house- and land-owner. His language ability is such that, even after 90 minutes of being interviewed on the radio, only those who recognized his voice knew he was not a Nepali.

With this unparalleled knowledge and experience, the author has produced a unique series of articles, written over the past fifty years. These cover events in his own career, including the time he found himself in command of a Japanese battalion fighting nationalist guerrillas in Indo-China in 1945, and jungle warfare in Malaya during the Emergency, as well as descriptions of the nature of the Gurkha soldier and his relationship with the British, first as part of the army of the Raj, and later in the modern British Army.

Informative, amusing and often moving, this anthology gives an insight into one of the most enduring cross-cultural relationships in British military history, one of the few surviving from the age of Empire.