Personally I would welcome them with open arms, as for the second part of your post, what have the remaining people of Nepal done, who incidentally,have enough misery on their collective plate, to deserve the scrapings of our Benefits Class being dumped in their laps? What possible harm can they have they done to you for God's sake?Originally Posted by 5intheface
My personal gripe with those Nepalese aside, the '97 cut off has to do with HK ceasing to be the base, does this not place an extra reponsibility on Westminster? I'm sure the Vets wouldn't be that keen on the new landlords.
Sorry, I'm not with you here, can you explain?
Oh I don't mean to sound as if I know too much about the Gurkhas but I was under the impression that their main base was in Hong Kong up until '97. I heard it said today that the retired men would have been happy enough to remain there whilst Britain was in charge but not so now. If that is the case, would Britain not have some degree of responsibility in that regard?
I see, well prior to 1997 their training establishment and home base was at Sek Kong in the New Territories of Hong Kong and known as Depot, The Brigade of Gurkhas. All Gurkha recruits were trained there prior to being posted to one of the units in the Brigade. In those days virtually whole Brigade was based in the Far East and the only postings for them in the UK were at Church Crookham in Hampshire, where one of the 8 infantry battalions was stationed, and individual instructor posts at various establishments such as the the engineer, signal, and transport depots etc.
On completion of service (15 years usually) they would return to Nepal, although there were and still are a number of security jobs open solely to Gurkhas in places like Brunei, where one of the two remaining battalions is always stationed. Basically there was no option for Gurkha pensioners to remain in HK, especially as it was to be handed over to China in '97, so whatever you heard is probably wrong.
On the whole, on completion of service they retired on pension to Nepal and this was always the case since 1947 when the Brigade was formed from selected Gurkha regiments of the old British Indian Army. Although the pension was small by British standards it was a considerable sum of money in Nepal and went a very long way indeed. Furthermore, most soldiers would have saved a considerable amount of money during their service and also managed to send money back to their families. By contrast, British soldiers would not get an immediate pension at 15 years, only a preserved pension payable at 65, so although there were major differences between terms of serivice there were advantages peculiar to the Gurkhas. The terms of service by the way, were agreed between India, Nepal and Britain in 1947, and the pay of British Gurkhas had to relate to that of Gurkhas in the Indian and Nepalese armies, both of which paid their solders considerably less than did the British. If we had paid our gurkhas at the same rate as British soldiers they would have been the best paid men in Nepal with for example, a Rifleman earning more than the Nepalese Prime Minister , this would have obviously been disastrous for the Nepalese economy and society, as the best and brightest in the land all went off to become Gurkhas!
There's a lot more to this matter than people realise.
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