The Memorial to the

Brigade of Gurkhas The Brigade of Gurkhas is the collective name which refers to all the units in the British Army that are composed of Nepalese Gurkha soldiers. The brigade draws its heritage from Gurkha units that originally served in the British Indian Army ...

Horse Guards Avenue Horse Guards Avenue is a road in the City of Westminster, London, linking the major thoroughfares of Whitehall and Victoria Embankment, to the east of the Horse Guards building and parade area. The entrance of the Main Building of the Minis ...

Whitehall Whitehall is a road and area in the City of Westminster, Central London. The road forms the first part of the A roads in Zone 3 of the Great Britain numbering scheme, A3212 road from Trafalgar Square to Chelsea, London, Chelsea. It is the main ...

, London, was unveiled by Queen

Elizabeth II Elizabeth II (Elizabeth Alexandra Mary; 21 April 1926 – 8 September 2022) was Queen of the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth realms from 6 February 1952 until her death in 2022. She was queen regnant of 32 sovereign states during ...

on 3 December 1997. This was the first memorial to

Gurkha The Gurkhas or Gorkhas (), with endonym Gorkhali ), are soldiers native to the Indian Subcontinent, chiefly residing within Nepal and some parts of Northeast India. The Gurkha units are composed of Nepalis and Indian Gorkhas and are recruit ...

soldiers in the United Kingdom, and was occasioned by transfer of their headquarters and training centre from

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China ( abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delt ...

to London in 1997. The sculptor was Philip Jackson, working from a statue of 1924 by Richard Reginald Goulden in the

Foreign and Commonwealth Office The Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) is a Departments of the Government of the United Kingdom, department of the Government of the United Kingdom. Equivalent to other countries' Ministry of Foreign Affairs, ministries of fore ...

, and the plinth was designed by Cecil Denny Highton. Two casts of Goulden's sculpture had previously been erected in locations in

Nepal Nepal (; ne, नेपाल ), formerly the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal ( ne, सङ्घीय लोकतान्त्रिक गणतन्त्र नेपाल ), is a landlocked country in South Asia. It is mai ...

as World War I memorials to the Gurkhas, the first at Kunraghat in 1928 and the second at

Birpur Birpur is a city and a notified area in Supaul district in the state of Bihar, India. It is a small town on the Indo-Nepal border near the historic Koshi Barrage on the Koshi River. It has an airstrip, which is being modernised and later on w ...

in 1930. The memorial in London is more than one and a half times the size of this model, so Jackson worked the figure up in his own style and from a living model, Captain Khemkumar Limbu. One of several inscriptions on the plinth is a quotation from Sir

Ralph Lilley Turner Sir Ralph Lilley Turner (5 October 1888 – 22 April 1983) was a British philologist of Indian languages and a university administrator. He is notable for composing an Indo-Aryan comparative dictionary. He is also the author of some publicati ...

, a former officer in the

3rd Gurkha Rifles The 3rd Gorkha Rifles or Third Gorkha Rifles, abbreviated as 3 GR is an Indian Army infantry regiment. It was originally a Gurkha regiment of the British Indian Army formed in 1815. This regiment recruit mainly Magars and Khas/Chhetri tribes. Th ...

Inscriptions

1st King George V's Own Gurkha Riflles
(The Malaun Regiment)
2nd King Edward VII's Own Gurkha Rifles
(The Sirmoor Rifles)
3rd Queen Alexandra's Own Gurkha Rifles
4th Prince of Wales's Own Gurkha Rifles
5th Royal Gurkha Rifles (Frontier Force)
6th Queen Elizabeth's Own Gurkha Rifles
7th Duke of Edinburgh's Own Gurkha Rifles
8th Gurkha Rifles
9th Gurkha Rifles
10th Princess Mary's Own Gurkha Rifles
11th Gurkha Rifles
The Royal Gurkha Rifles
The Queen's Gurkha Engineers
Queen's Gurkha Signals
Gurkha Military Police
The Queen's Own Gurkha Transport Regiment

Other units in which Gurkha soldiers served after 1815
and also the units of the Royal Nepalese Army
which, as Britain's allies, took part in the Indian Mutiny
and the First and Second World Wars.

India 1816–1826
North East Frontier and Burma 1824–1939
First Sikh War 1845–1846
North West Frontier 1852–1947
Indian Mutiny 1857–1859
Bhutan 1864–1866
Malaya 1875–1876
Second Afghan War 1878–1880
Sikkim 1888
China 1900
Tibet 1904
Third Afghan War 1919
Kurdustan 1919
Iraq 1919–1920
North West Persia 1920
Malabar 1921–1922
Palestine 1945–1946
Java and Sumatra 1945–1946
Indo-China 1945–1946
Malaya 1948–1960
Brunei 1962
Borneo 1963–1966
Malay Peninsula 1964–1965
Falkland Islands 1982
The Gulf 1990–1991
Bosnia 1996

FIRST WORLD WAR
1914–1918
France and Belgium
Gallipoli
Egypt and Palestine
Mesopotamia

SECOND WORLD WAR
1939–1945
North Africa
Italy
Greece
Persia, Iraq and Syria
Malaya and Singapore
Burma

References

External links

The Gurkhas – Britain's oldest allies
(December 4, 1997), BBC News
Statue: Gurkha soldier
at London Remembers
The Gurkha Soldier Memorial – Horse Guards Avenue, London, UK
at Waymarking {{Portal bar, United Kingdom, War, London, Nepal, Visual arts 1997 establishments in the United Kingdom 1997 sculptures Gurkhas Military memorials in London Outdoor sculptures in London Statues in the City of Westminster Whitehall

Inscriptions

See also

References

External links