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The Gurkhas - Fiercest Soldiers in Modern History - DOCUMENTARY
Kings and Generals
·
May 11, 2026
Open on YouTube
Transcript
0:05
On September 2nd, 2010, 35-year-old Bishnu
Shrestha gazed out the window of a Maurya
0:11
Express train as it chugged through the dense
jungles of West Bengal.
0:16
Around midnight, the train came to a screeching
halt as gangsters poured aboard, armed with
0:21
knives, clubs and firearms.
0:24
Stomping up and down the carriage, they began
extracting cash, jewelry, laptops and watches
0:29
from the terrified passengers.
0:31
Initially, Shrestha kept his head down.
0:34
It was only when the hijackers put their hands
on a helpless young woman that he could no
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0:38
longer stand idly by.
0:40
He leapt up, drew his kukri knife and threw
himself upon the fiends.
0:44
In the ensuing melee, Shrestha single-handedly
killed three gangsters and injured eight more,
0:50
causing the rest to flee.
0:52
Who was this humble superhero, whose badassery
could serve as the inspiration for a Die Hard
0:57
movie?
0:58
He was a Gurkha, a member of arguably the
single most elite fighting force of the 20th
1:03
century.
1:04
In this presentation, we will explore the
history of a revered community of modern warriors
1:09
with a reputation that surpasses the Ancient
Spartans.
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1:13
Welcome to our video on the friendly, chipper,
and utterly fearless Gurkha Brigade, whose
1:18
motto is “better to die than be a coward.”
1:20
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Who are the Gurkhas?
2:22
Indian Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw once was
quoted as saying: “If a man says he is not
2:26
afraid of dying, he is either lying, or he
is a Gurkha.”
2:31
The Gurkhas are elite soldiers native to Nepal,
a mountainous country which has long existed
2:36
at the crossroads of the great Empires of
Eurasia.
2:39
They are most famous for their 200-year history
of foreign service in the British Army and
2:44
other global military forces, in which they
have earned a reputation as arguably the most
2:50
reliable, disciplined and fearless warriors
of the 20th century.
2:54
The title of ‘Gurkha’ is derived from
the historical Nepalese Kingdom of Gorkha,
2:59
but has since evolved to refer exclusively
to Nepali nationals serving in a foreign army
3:04
or police unit.
3:06
Since time immemorial, the frigid peaks and
steep valleys of the Himalayan mountains have
3:11
incubated many hardy peoples who developed
robust martial societies in an unforgiving
3:16
high-altitude environment.
3:18
A culturally diverse fighting force, the Gurkhas
are drawn from across Nepal’s many distinct
3:24
ethnic minorities, most of whom speak their
own unique language and practice a unique
3:28
variation of the Buddhist or Hindu faith.
3:31
However, all Gurkhas are fluent in both English
and the national language of Nepal, an Indo-Aryan
3:37
tongue of Sanskrit heritage.
3:39
With an average height of five feet and three
inches, the Gurkhas are the world’s fiercest
3:44
short kings.
3:45
They are deadliest in CQC, wielding their
iconic weapon, the kukri knife, with fatal
3:50
finesse.
3:51
The Gurkha’s prowess with the curved blade
is the stuff of legend and spawned this amusing
3:56
wartime gag: Locked in close combat in the
trenches, a squat Gurkha takes a swing at
4:01
a tall German with his kukri.
4:03
The German appears to side-step the swipe.
4:05
“Ha!”
4:06
He taunts, “You missed!”
4:07
To this, the Gurkha wipes a drop of blood
from his knife and replies, “Shake your
4:13
head.”
4:14
An insanely rigorous training regimen ensures
that the Gurkhas are among the most physically
4:18
fit humans in the world.
4:20
In order to even qualify for training camp,
each prospective Gurkha has to be able to
4:25
perform physical feats that would make a prime
Rocky Balboa look geriatric.
4:30
These include performing 75 bench jumps in
one minute, 70 sit-ups in two minutes, and
4:35
running three miles up the steep foothills
of the Himalayas while carrying 55 pounds
4:40
of rocks on their backs in under an hour.
4:43
Every year, nearly 28,000 young Nepalese men
compete for just 200 spots in the British
4:49
Army’s Brigade of Gurkhas, ensuring only
the toughest of the tough are inducted into
4:54
the modern world’s most feared fighting
force.
4:56
Examples of Gurkha Heroism
Gurkha history is utterly inundated with insane
5:00
stories of military heroism, and we would
be remiss not to retell some of them here.
5:06
In 1945, Lachhiman Gurung of the 8th Gurkha
Rifles was cut off and encircled by over 200
5:13
Japanese soldiers in the Burmese jungle.
5:15
Alone in a trench with only two other comrades,
he held off the enemy hordes singlehandedly.
5:20
Twice, the Japanese lobbed grenades into his
trench, and twice, he managed to return them
5:25
to sender.
5:26
A third grenade landed.
5:28
This time, when he picked it up, it exploded
in his hand, blowing off most of his fingers
5:32
and severely wounding his face, torso and
right leg.
5:36
Disregarding his mortal wounds and operating
his rifle one-handed, the Nepalese warrior
5:41
fought off wave after wave of Japanese assaults
for four hours, all the while screaming, “Come
5:47
and fight a Gurkha!”
5:49
By the time the enemy retreated, he had amassed
a final kill count of 31.
5:54
He survived his wounds, was awarded the Victoria
Cross, and lived to the age of 92.
6:00
Six months earlier, Tul Bahadur Pun of the
6th Gurkha Rifles was advancing on a Japanese-held
6:06
railway bridge when his entire platoon section
was wiped out.
6:10
As the last man standing, Rifleman Pun charged
alone into a hailstorm of enemy fire, barreling
6:16
ahead over thirty yards of open ground while
ankle-deep in mud, weaving through shell holes
6:22
and leaping over fallen trees.
6:24
Miraculously, he reached the enemy position
without being hit.
6:28
Leaping into a bunker, he killed four Japanese
soldiers with his Bren Gun and another three
6:32
with his kukri.
6:34
He then gave accurate supporting fire from
the bunker, which allowed the remainder of
6:38
his platoon to advance.
6:40
Rifleman Pun was awarded the Victoria Cross
and lived until the age of 88.
6:45
Gurkha families are often warrior dynasties,
with sons and grandsons striving to live up
6:50
to the deeds of fathers and grandfathers.
6:53
As it turned out, Rifleman Pun’s grandson
would more than live up to the legacy of his
6:58
fearless grandfather.
7:00
In 2010, Acting Sergeant Dipprasad Pun was
standing guard on a roof checkpoint in Helmand
7:05
province, Afghanistan, when he found himself
surrounded and under attack by up to 30 Taliban
7:11
fighters armed with AK-47s and RPGs.
7:14
Believing he was about to die, Sergeant Pun
resolved to kill as many of the enemy as he
7:19
could before he went down.
7:21
Fending off attackers from three sides, he
fired more than 400 machine gun rounds, launched
7:26
17 grenades, and detonated a mine.
7:29
When he ran out of ammo, he resorted to using
his gun’s tripod as a club, smashing it
7:34
against an insurgent’s skull as he scaled
the roof.
7:38
Singlehandedly, Sergeant Pun fended off the
attack and was awarded the Conspicuous Gallantry
7:42
Cross by Queen Elizabeth.
7:44
Origins of the Gurkha - The Unification of
Nepal
7:45
Having introduced the Gurkhas and provided
a sampling of the action-movie heroics they
7:49
are capable of, let us explore their origins
and how they came to serve in the British
7:54
Army.
7:55
The story begins in the year 1743, with the
ascension of Prithvi Narayan Shah to the throne
8:00
of the tiny Kingdom of Gorkha, one of many
petty statelets strewn about the Himalayan
8:05
foothills at the time.
8:07
Prithvi Narayan soon came into his own as
one of the greatest visionaries in the history
8:11
of the Indian Subcontinent.
8:13
Embarking on a mission to unify all of Nepal,
he slowly conquered over 54 other principalities
8:20
throughout the Himalayas, training up one
of the most well-drilled, disciplined and
8:24
experienced armies in Asia in the process.
8:27
However, Gorkha was not the only rising power
in the Indian Subcontinent at the time.
8:32
By the late 18th century, the British conquest
of India was well underway, spearheaded by
8:37
a private megacorporation, the British East
India Company.
8:42
Back in 1757, this hydra of capitalism defeated
the last independent Nawab of Bengal at the
8:48
Battle of Plassey, annexing all of Bengal
in the aftermath.
8:51
This put the Gorkha Kingdom and the East India
Company on each other’s borders, causing
8:56
their spheres of influence to overlap.
8:59
In 1767, Prithvi Narayan Shah set his sights
on conquering the Kathmandu Valley.
9:06
Seeking to curtail the expansion of their
regional rival, the British deployed a 2,500-man
9:11
expedition under one Captain George Kinloch
to prevent Kathmandu’s capture.
9:17
In the hilly jungle province of Sindhuli,
the Gorkhas ambushed their foe, pouring out
9:21
of the thicket and wreaking havoc among the
enemy formation with kukri in hand.
9:26
It was the first time that British redcoats
had faced the Gorkhas in battle, and it would
9:30
be an experience they would not soon forget.
9:33
Out of Kinloch’s 2500 men, less than 1000
returned to Bengal alive.
9:39
With the East India Company knocked out of
the picture, King Prithvi Narayan Shah captured
9:44
Kathmandu in 1768 and made it into his royal
capital.
9:49
The great Nepalese conqueror-King died in
1775, and would go down in history as the
9:54
man who had thoroughly humbled the British
Empire and unified all of Nepal.
9:59
The Anglo-Nepalese War of 1814-1816
For the next few decades, the Kingdom of Gorkha
10:03
and the British megacorporation maintained
an uneasy peace, but it was only a matter
10:07
of time before their next clash.
10:10
In November of 1814, during the reign of King
Girvan Yuddha Bikram Shah, an escalating frontier
10:16
dispute led to the second and final showdown
between the two powers: the Anglo-Nepalese
10:21
War.
10:22
According to historians, the Gorkha army at
this time numbered around 12,000 to 14,000
10:28
strong.
10:29
To contend with this force, the East India
Company mustered an expedition of over 50,000
10:34
men.
10:35
That the British levied such a massive army
in preparation for their push into Nepal displayed
10:40
just how highly they regarded the fighting
skills of their mountain-dwelling opponents,
10:45
Kinloch’s doomed expedition no doubt still
fresh in their minds.
10:49
As expected, the East India Company’s advance
into the Himalayas was slow, brutal and bloody.
10:56
Despite being heavily outnumbered, the Gorkhali
army put up an extremely effective resistance,
11:01
utilizing the mountainous terrain of their
native homeland to stymie the advance of their
11:05
numerically superior foes.
11:07
The first major battle of the Anglo-Nepalese
war took place at the fortress of Nalapani,
11:12
where Gorkha captain Balbhadra Kunwar and
a garrison of 600 Nepalese men, women and
11:17
children held the line against British General
Rollo Gillespie’s force of over 3,500 men.
11:23
Outnumbered seven to one, Balbhadra withstood
the British bombardment for over a month and
11:29
even managed to kill General Gillespie in
action.
11:32
Throughout the battle, many British soldiers
developed a begrudging respect for their lionhearted
11:37
enemies, not just for their fighting spirit
but for the honour they displayed in battle.
11:42
James Baillie Fraser, a Scottish adventurer
accompanying Gillespies’ division, wrote:
11:47
“There was here no cruelty to wounded or
to prisoners; no poisoned arrows were used;
11:53
no wells or waters were poisoned; no rancorous
spirit of revenge seemed to animate them:
11:59
they fought us in fair conflict, like men;
and, in intervals of actual combat, showed
12:04
us a liberal courtesy worthy of a more enlightened
people.”
12:08
The bill the British paid for Nalapani amounted
to over a thousand casualties and the life
12:13
of an experienced commander.
12:16
This pyrrhic victory would set the tone for
the rest of the war, in which the East India
12:20
Company would continue to make slow, incremental
and costly advances into Gorkha territory,
12:26
all the while growing increasingly impressed
by the gallant resistance put up by their
12:31
fearless yet noble enemies.
12:33
Indeed, the Gorkhas fought on with seemingly
no comprehension of their own mortality.
12:39
In April of 1815, at the Battle of Deuthal,
74-year-old Gorkha General Bhakti Thapa repeatedly
12:45
threw himself headlong into British cannon
fire until he and his warriors had been mown
12:50
down to the last man.
12:52
Out of respect for this old man’s incredible
courage, the British wrapped his body in an
12:57
expensive shawl and ensured it was returned
to his people with due honours.
13:01
The Treaty of Sugauli - The Gurkhas Join the
British Army
13:02
Despite their seemingly inexhaustible font
of courage, the Gorkha Kingdom was eventually
13:07
ground down by the British Empires’ superior
manpower and firepower.
13:12
In March of 1816, the Anglo-Nepalese war came
to an end with the signing of the Treaty of
13:17
Sugauli, which forced the Kingdom of Gorkha
to cede around a fourth of its recently conquered
13:22
territory to the East India Company, reducing
it to the borders that mark present-day Nepal.
13:28
Although the Nepalese war effort had been
a losing one, they had fought fiercely enough
13:32
to maintain their independence, and would
remain a free nation even as the British extended
13:37
their rule across the entire rest of the Indian
Subcontinent.
13:41
However, while Nepal would not be colonized
directly, there was still one further price
13:46
to be paid for their defiance.
13:49
Incredibly impressed by the tenacity of the
Gorkha soldiers who had fought them so bravely,
13:53
the British made it a term of the peace that
the Kings of Gorkha would have to allow British
13:58
recruiters to roam the Nepalese countryside
and encourage their able-bodied warriors to
14:03
volunteer in the British Army.
14:06
In the British narrative, the creation of
the Brigade of Gurkhas is considered an event
14:10
to be celebrated.
14:12
Peace had been made with a gallant foe who
they had come to respect, and henceforth,
14:16
Gurkha and Briton would no longer be enemies,
but fight side by side as comrades-in-arms.
14:21
However, from the Nepalese perspective, this
watershed moment is often cast in a more sombre
14:27
light.
14:28
Tim Gurung, a modern Nepalese writer and Gurkha
veteran, claims that the policy of recruiting
14:33
young Nepalese men into the British army “not
only took the sting out of the Gorkhali Army
14:38
but also made the country into a toothless
tiger and crippled it for the foreseeable
14:43
future.”
14:44
“By depleting Nepal of its youth and able
men for generations,” Gurung says, Nepal
14:49
would “never again be able to raise its
head against the British.”
14:53
Gurung’s words are important to remember.
14:55
For, as captivating as stories of Gurkha invincibility
are, we must remember that, at least originally,
15:02
they were hired mercenaries serving an Imperialist
power in colonial wars often fought to subjugate
15:07
the homelands of indigenous peoples, and that
this has resulted in the Gurkhas having a
15:12
complex and controversial legacy both in their
own homeland and beyond.
15:16
History of Gurkha Military Service
Indeed, the Gurkha’s reputation among the
15:20
British public for loyalty and reliability
began coming into form during the Great Revolt
15:25
of 1857, when a massive uprising against the
British East India Company erupted across
15:30
the Indian Subcontinent.
15:33
As some of the only native troops who remained
loyal to the British, the Gurkhas played a
15:37
significant role in putting down the insurrection.
15:40
From the end of the Great Revolt to the start
of World War I, British Gurkha Regiments were
15:44
deployed to fight in colonial wars in Afghanistan,
Burma, Tibet, and China.
15:50
Throughout all these campaigns, the Gurkhas
slowly cultivated their reputation as some
15:54
of the most resilient, adaptable and indomitable
soldiers in the known world.
15:59
Throughout the First World War, over 200,000
Gurkhas served in the British Army.
16:04
They fought with all the discipline and bravery
that had come to be expected of them, suffering
16:09
around 20,000 casualties and receiving almost
2,000 gallantry awards for feats of both individual
16:16
and regimental heroism.
16:18
The Gurkhas threw themselves against the Germans
in the trenches of Ypres and Loos, and bloodied
16:23
their kukri against the Turks at the meat
grinder of Gallipoli, where they were among
16:27
the first to arrive and the last to leave.
16:30
Throughout the Second World War, over 250,000
Gurkhas served in almost every theatre of
16:35
battle, suffering around 32,000 casualties.
16:38
They fought Hitler’s Nazis and Mussolini’s
Fascists in Syria, North Africa, Sicily and
16:44
Greece, while bloodying the nose of Imperial
Japan in Burma and Singapore.
16:49
Earlier in this video, we told the stories
Lachhiman Gurung and Tul Bahadur Pun, two
16:54
Gurkhas whose insane feats of bravery against
the Japanese in the Burmese jungle earned
16:59
them the Victoria Cross.
17:01
These were just two of a mind boggling 2,734
bravery awards the Gurkhas earned throughout
17:07
World War Two.
17:10
After India achieved its independence, the
British lost their monopoly on Gurkha invincibility
17:15
when some of the Gurkha regiments that had
formerly formed part of the British colonial
17:19
army in India were transferred to the newly
independent Indian army.
17:23
Meanwhile, in Singapore, a unit of British
Army Gurkhas was formed as an riot-control
17:28
and counter-terrorism wing of the local police
force in 1949, and played a crucial role in
17:34
stabilizing the city-state in its turbulent
road to independence.
17:39
The Gurkha regiments that remained in the
British army continued to see action in every
17:43
conflict the United Kingdom took part in.
17:45
They were in Cyprus in 1974, the Falklands
in 1982, participated in the Gulf War of 1991
17:52
and were deployed into Afghanistan in 2001.
17:55
Legacy of the Gurkhas
After over 200 years of loyal service to the
17:59
British crown, the Gurkhas have undoubtedly
been immortalized as some of the modern era’s
18:04
most lionized soldiers, with a reputation
of immortality that rivals the ancient Spartans.
18:10
However, despite being celebrated as heroes
by the British public, their relationship
18:15
with the British government has not been quite
as rosy.
18:18
In retirement, the Gurkhas have long been
subject to unequal treatment by their British
18:22
paymasters, their military pensions only a
fraction of what British veterans of equal
18:27
rank received.
18:29
Moreover, Gurkha veterans seeking to immigrate
and live in the UK, a country they had fought
18:34
and killed for, faced significant barriers
to entry.
18:38
After decades of protests, the British government
agreed in 2007 to start providing pay and
18:43
pensions on par with British soldiers.
18:46
Then, in 2009, the House of Commons passed
a motion allowing all Gurkha veterans the
18:51
right to residence in the UK.
18:54
In their home country of Nepal, the Gurkhas
are considered in some circles to be a source
18:58
of national shame, a consistent drain on the
country’s best and brightest, and a major
19:03
contributor to economic stagnation back home
. However, despite the controversies, many
19:09
in Nepal hold the Gurkhas in high regard,
and take pride in the reputation for fearlessness
19:15
and invincibility they have earned for the
Nepalese people on the world stage.
19:19
Thus, it seems that for the foreseeable future,
young men throughout Nepal will continue to
19:24
enlist in foreign Gurkha brigades, where they
will cultivate themselves into some of the
19:29
physically and mentally toughest people on
the planet, living up to the legacy of their
19:34
Gurkha fathers and grandfathers as the fiercest
soldiers of the modern age.
19:39
More videos on history’s deadliest warriors
are on the way.
19:43
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