TO THE LAST MAN
On the morning of Sept. 25, 1915, just west of the village of Loos-en-Gohelle in far northern France, Captain Gerald C.B. Buckland of the 2nd Battalion, 8th Gurkha Rifles, realized something had gone decidedly wrong. After crossing no-man’s-land with the first wave of attackers, his company was supposed to tie in with another friendly unit to its right—but no one was there.
Exposed at the vanguard of the failed assault, Buckland’s men were running low on ammunition. It was only a matter of time before the Germans realized the Gurkhas’ right flank was wholly exposed.
he is either lying or he is a Gurkha.” So said Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw, a former Indian army chief of staff whose four decades of military service began in the British Indian army in 1934. Renowned for their courage and tenacity under fire, the Gurkhas traced their ethnic lineage to tribes from the mountainous areas of northern India and Nepal and had originally been united in their fight the British during that country’s conquest of India. They later joined forces with the British in their colonial wars and saw service in Burma, Afghanistan, the 1877–78 Russo-Turkish War and other conflicts across the British
