Johnny Gurkha: Better to Die Than Live a Coward: My Life in the Gurkhas

For the first time in its 200 year history, a soldier of the Brigade of Gurkhas has been given permission to tell his story in his own words
Colour Sergeant Kailash Limbu was born in one of the most remote hill villages of Nepal. His family had no running water or electricity. The nearest town w [...]
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For the first time in its 200 year history, a soldier of the Brigade of Gurkhas has been given permission to tell his story in his own words
Colour Sergeant Kailash Limbu was born in one of the most remote hill villages of Nepal. His family had no running water or electricity. The nearest town was several days' trek from his family home. Yet before he was 25 he was serving as a section commander in the Royal Gurkhas in one of the most dangerous regions on earth, using the most sophisticated weaponry in existence, fighting the most unpredictable enemy in the world the Taliban. He and his comrades took part in one of the least known yet most heroic operations during the entire war in Afghanistan. Just a single platoon in strength, they held out for 30 days against a relentless series of attacks against their position right in the heart of Taliban country. In one of the most exciting and illuminating accounts of modern warfare, the author relives those days and recounts what it really means to be a Gurkha. We learn that facing hardship as a group is ingrained into the Nepalese hill people; how, as a boy, Kailash Limbu trained with the legendary kukri knife a tool in life and a lethal weapon in warfare. We live through the rigorous, three-stage process of selection, the culture-shock of arriving in Britain and, above all, the exceptional comradeship that sustained the author and his comrades through one of the most appalling periods of war in Afghanistan. Reading this memoir makes the reader come to understand why the Gurkhas are indeed called "the bravest of the brave.""