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Updated: June 9, 2025
Round the corner swings a company of Ghurkas, the sturdy little men who helped England to overcome the mutineers. They look very soldier-like in their neat holly-green uniforms, with small round caps set at a jaunty angle on their cropped heads. They are hill tribes from the north, and in appearance not unlike the Japanese. They are all so much of one size you could run a ruler along their heads.
The following were the troops who, under the command of Brigadier-General Baker, marched out at eleven o'clock to attack the position: Four guns Number 2 mountain battery, two Gatling guns, the 7th company of Sappers and Miners, the 72nd Highlanders, six companies of the 5th Ghurkas, 200 men of the 5th Punjaub Infantry, and 450 of the 23rd Pioneers.
The first, under General Macpherson, consisted of the fourth battalion of the Rifle Brigade, the 20th Bengal Infantry, and the 4th Ghurkas, with a mountain battery. These were to go round by a mountain road, to make a long circuit, and to come down into the pass at a village lying a mile or two beyond Ali-Musjid.
We climbed 1,000 feet higher, then began to descend, and presently got down to Darjeeling, which is 6,000 feet above the level of the Plains. We had passed many a mountain village on the way up, and seen some new kinds of natives, among them many samples of the fighting Ghurkas. They are not large men, but they are strong and resolute. There are no better soldiers among Britain's native troops.
The Indian was at his best in a charge, but at night he had an uneasy habit of crawling out of the trench toward Fritz, with his knife held firmly between his teeth. Before dawn he would return, his knife still in his teeth, but in his hand a German head. To-day the Canadians in France are known by the enemy as the "white Ghurkas," and this, to us, is one of the highest compliments.
The Ghurkas are considered bravest of the brave. Shall we not be proud to share a title such as this? As the religion of the Ghurka follows him to the battle-field, so in a different sense does the religion of the white man. We have our thoughts, our hopes and our aspirations. Some of us have our Bibles and our prayer-books, some of us have rosaries and crucifixes.
We are lucky, for the Ghurkas are followed by a company of Sikhs, and anything less like the Ghurkas you could hardly imagine. The Sikhs are big men with stern bearded faces, they look like veterans and are a pleasant sight in their scarlet tunics with neat gaitered feet. There were many Sikh regiments belonging to our army in the black days of the Mutiny, and some wavered, but some held firm.
So impetuous were they, that on the left they swept round in the rear of our infantry; and the results would have been most terrible, had not Colonel Lister, V.C., commanding the 3rd Ghurkas, formed his men rapidly into company squares, and poured a tremendous fire into the fanatics.
They are small men, but well shaped, not quite so bombé, but even more lithe-looking than Ghurkas, Captain K. says they are as good for hill-work; in fact, if it is possible, they are better! They stormed a village after the march past, which was a charming sight to see.
A French outpost challenged us, and a party of Ghurkas passed us leading pack horses with the bodies of their fallen officers lashed across the saddles. The Ghurkas never leave an officer's body on the field, so the sergeant in rear of the platoon ahead informed us.
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