Gurkha: Better to Die than Live a Coward: My Life in the Gurkhas

by Colour-Sergeant Kailash Limbu

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Book cover for Gurkha

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In the summer of 2006, Colour-Sargeant Kailash Limbu's platoon was sent to relieve and occupy a police compound in the town of Now Zad in Helmand. He was told to prepare for a forty-eight hour operation. In the end, he and his men were under siege for thirty-one days - one of the longest such sieges in the whole of the Afghan campaign.

Kailash Limbu recalls the terrifying and exciting details of those thirty-one days - in which they killed an estimated one hundred Taliban fighters - and intersperses them with the story of his own life as a villager from the Himalayas. He grew up in a place without roads or electricity and didn't see a car until he was fifteen.

Kailash's descriptions of Gurkha training and rituals - including how to use the lethal Kukri knife - are eye-opening and fascinating. They combine with the story of his time in Helmand to create a unique account of one man's life as a Gurkha.

  • ISBN10 1408705354
  • ISBN13 9781408705353
  • Publish Date 21 May 2015
  • Publish Status Out of Print
  • Out of Print 5 March 2021
  • Publish Country GB
  • Publisher Little, Brown Book Group
  • Imprint Little, Brown
  • Format Hardcover
  • Pages 352
  • Language English