Training the Gurkhas - Part 2 of 3

During that week we became, I particularly became friends with one of their Gurkha Officers. The regimental officers were really young British chaps who had learned Gurkhali language, but they also had Gurkha Officers, and they, because they had Viceregal Commissions rather than Royal Commissions, they had titles such as Jemadar, Subadar and their weapon was a khukuri, I have one in the den. And the khukuri is about a fifteen inch knife, extremely hard metal, extremely sharp, it had, it has a handle and then a curved blade. It's like a, it's not like machete, because a machete is straight but this thing is, it's specially balanced and the Gurkha Officers told me that when they were fighting the Japs in the jungle, the Gurkhas didn't like their bayonets and rifles. They would throw those down and go swinging with their khukuris.

One Gurkha, one British Officer told me, he said we'd bivouacked at night, and we'd all bed down, post our guards around the bivouac, and the Japs would be bivouacked a little distance off, for the night. He said we never took roll call at night because there would be a bunch of Gurkhas missing. They'd sneak into the Jap bivouac and just lop off heads with their khukuris. He says by night, by dawn, they were all back in their bivouac. He said they, he thinks that the Japs have a joke which says, "Well, we lived through another night," says one Jap to another. The other fella says, "Shake your head."