THE SIKH AND THE GURKHA.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVI, Issue 1315, 24 October 1914, Page 4

THE SIKH AND THE GURKHA.

The Sikh and the Gurkha, two extreme types of the Indian troops, are among the best soldiers in the world. The fust is a tall, handsome, well-built man, clean living, and imposingly dignified in demeanour. He is a born soldier, hardy, brave, with a still tongue, obedient to discipline, and attached to his officers. In victory he retains bis steadiness ; in defeat he will die rather than yield. In the old days the British fought him often, and it is not for nothing they call him the finest soldier in the East. The Gurkha, who has a good deal of Mongolian blood in him, is, on the other hand, what might be called the Irishman of the Indian Army. He is frank, independent, self-reliant, and has a fund of humour all his own. He is small, and strongly resembles the Jap. but is more sturdily built, and much more communicative. But if he is an “Irishman” for talk, be is even more of an Irishman for fight, and the record of some of our Gurkha regiments is a truly blood curdling one. The national weapon—and the Gurka is armed with it in our forces —is the kukri, a heavy curved knife, which he uses for every possible purpose; and in a fight he is the unhappiest man on earth, and the cause of more or less trouble to his officers, until he is allowed to use it there. Then all is well. Men who have seen a Gurkha charge declare it to be a thing altogether impossible to forget. It is curious that the Gurkha despises all other Orientals, and he admires and fraternises with Europeans, whose tastes in sport and war he shares. There has long been a very strong bond of comradeship between the Gurkha and the Highlander, and be would be a brave man in India who would seek to disparage the one within the hearing of the other.