Force
Gurkhas
Nepalese soldiers renowned for courage and the kukri, serving with distinction in British and Indian service for two centuries.
The Gurkhas are Nepalese soldiers in British — and Indian — service, an institution born of respect: the East India Company fought the Kingdom of Gorkha to a costly draw in 1814-16, and began recruiting the men who had impressed it before the ink dried on the peace. They have served in every major British war since, from the Sikh Wars and the Mutiny through both World Wars — over 200,000 served in each — to the Falklands and Afghanistan.
The kukri is their signature: the forward-curved Nepalese blade, tool and weapon at once, carried by every soldier and wrapped in more folklore than any knife on earth. Around it stands a record of thirteen Victoria Crosses won by Gurkha soldiers themselves and thirteen more by their British officers, and a reputation — 'bravest of the brave' in the words of a former Indian chief of staff — that both armies consider simple fact.
Selection in the Nepal hills remains among the most competitive of any army, tens of thousands contesting a few hundred places. The Lee-Enfield Rifle generation gave way to modern arms, Brigade numbers rose and fell with the empire and after, but the essential bargain of 1816 — Nepalese hillmen, British service, mutual fierce loyalty — has now outlasted every other colonial military institution by a century.
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Kukri
The kukri is the forward-curved knife of Nepal: a broad, downward-angled blade that concentrates a blow like a hatchet while handling like a knife, equally at home splitting kindling and splitting helmets. It is the national blade of the Nepalese hill peoples, the universal tool of the Himalayan farmstead, and — as the issue sidearm of the Gurkha regiments for two centuries — one of the most famous and most instantly recognized fighting knives anywhere on earth.
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Lee-Enfield Rifle
The Lee-Enfield was the British Empire's rifle for over half a century: a bolt-action .303 whose rear-locking action and ten-round magazine made it the fastest-cycling military bolt gun ever issued. The trained rapid fire of the BEF at Mons in 1914 was mistaken by the Germans for massed machine guns, and the rifle served from the Boer War's lessons through both World Wars into the 1950s, with well over ten million produced across the Empire.