REGIMENTAL
A QUICK NOTE FROM THE EDITOR
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elcome to our 100th Edition. It unashamedly celebrates the Regimental service of our greatest soldier, Field Marshal The Viscount Slim. It also celebrates the legacy of all of us: the 25th anniversary of the founding of The Royal Gurkha Rifles. I was lucky enough to be at the 25th anniversary celebrations at Sir John Moore Barracks on 9 July 2019. One of the awards presented by HRH The Prince of Wales was the Slim award, which is presented annually to the LE Gurkha Captain who is considered to have provided the most inspirational leadership throughout the course of the year – in 2019 to Captain Vijayprakash Subba Limbu. Whilst at Sandhurst I had a copy of Defeat into Victory on the shelf in my room in Victory College. I even read it because I can still remember it has one of the most wonderful opening paragraphs of any military history I have read: ‘It was good fun commanding a division in the Iraq desert. It is good fun commanding a division anywhere. It is one of the four best commands in the Service – a platoon, a battalion, a division, and an army. A platoon because it is your first command, because you are young, and because, if you are any good, you know the men in it better than their mothers do and love them as much. A battalion, because it is a unit with a life of its own; whether it is good or bad depends on you alone; you have at last a real command. A division, because it is the smallest formation that is a complete orchestra of war and the largest in which every man can know you. An army, because the creation of its spirit and its leadership in battle give you the greatest unity of emotional and intellectual experience that can befall a man.’ Heady stuff for a Sandhurst cadet, although the details of the Burma campaign were lost on me at the time. It was not until I read it again whilst leading a small group of 6th Gurkhas on a visit to Kohima and Imphal in 1992 to celebrate our 175th anniversary that
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I really began to understand the book’s greatness. Indeed, many of Slim’s aphorisms contained in Defeat into Victory have guided me through much of my military service. We are lucky, as always, to have an article by our Regimental historian, John Mackinlay, this time on Slim’s Regimental service. Many of the other articles in this edition contain their author’s memories of Field Marshal Slim, whether on a selection board, Sandhurst study or pass out parade. They are a tapestry of unreported history that illustrate the veneration he was and is held in by his Regiment. I have also included a short story set on the North West Frontier written by Slim himself; space precluded me from including the full article, but I hope it will encourage readers to get hold of a copy of Unofficial Histories which is reviewed elsewhere in this Journal. Student’s Interlude is a real boy’s own adventure story, but it is also a meticulously accurate account of a 6th Gurkha Rifles rear-guard withdrawing in contact on the North West Frontier. There is also a historical account by Gordon Corrigan of the formation of the Royal Gurkha Rifles 25 years ago. It is an important article as the RGR are both the legacy of our 200-year history and our Regimental future. As the Slim award shows our Regimental history continues to guide the present generation of lahures in an unpredictable world. It is one of the greatest privileges of my life to belong to the same Regiment that Captain, later Field Marshal, Slim served in. Jai Sixth!
Captain Vijayprakash Subba Limbu receives the Slim award from HRH The Prince of Wales at the 25th anniversary celebrations at Sir John Moore Barracks, 1 July 2019
