7th Duke of Edinburgh's Own Gurkha Rifles

7th Duke of Edinburgh's Own Gurkha Rifles
Cap badge of the 7th DEO Gurkha Rifles
Active	1902–1994
Country	India  United Kingdom
Branch	British Army
Type	Rifles
Role	Light Infantry
Colours	Rifle Green; Facings Black
Engagements	World War I Mesopotamia, The Middle East Third Afghan War World War II North Africa, Italy, Greece, Burma Malayan Emergency Indonesian Confrontation Falkland Islands (1982)
Insignia
Abbreviation	7 GR

The 7th Gurkha Rifles was a rifle regiment of the British Indian Army comprising Gurkha soldiers of Nepalese origin, before being transferred to the British Army, following India's independence in 1947 and after 1959 designated as the 7th Duke of Edinburgh's Own Gurkha Rifles

Raised at Thayetmyo in Burma in 1902 by Major E Vansittart as the 8th Gurkha Rifles; became the 2nd Battalion, 10th Gurkha Rifles, 1903 and then 7th Gurkha Rifles in 1907. The 2nd Battalion was raised at Quetta in 1907 by Major N G Woodyatt, the Right Wing becoming the 1st Battalion and the Left Wing becoming the 2nd Battalion 7th Gurkha Rifles.

The Regiment had the distinction of being one of only two out of the ten Gurkha regiments to recruit its soldiers from the towns and villages which lie along the rugged foothills of the Himalayas East of Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal. Gurkha officers and soldiers have come predominantly from the Rai and Limbu clans but the roll records many names from the less numerous Sunwar, Tamang and Eastern Gurung clans, men from the Sherpa families of mountaineering fame and a sprinkling from Western Nepal and India as well.

The Regiment’s first home base was designated as Quetta in northwest India, now Pakistan. It was from here that the 2nd Battalion (2/7 GR) deployed at the start of the First World War to join British forces which were to fight against the Turkish Empire in the Middle East. The Battalion’s first campaign in Mesopotamia, modern day Iraq, was ill-fated. In spite of early successes, such as the battles at Nasiriyah and Ctesiphon, it was part of the force which became trapped at Kut-al-Amara on the River Tigris. After a long siege the garrison, exhausted by a lack of food and ammunition, was forced to surrender to the Turkish Army and went into captivity in 1916. However, in the following year a new 2nd Battalion was raised and the 1st Battalion which had now arrived from India joined it in a reinvigorated and victorious campaign which swept the Turks out of Mesopotamia.

Following the end of the war, the 1st Battalion saw service in the brief Kurdistan campaign, while the 2nd Battalion returned to India to fight in the Third Afghan War, alongside the 3rd Battalion raised for war service in 1917. Thereafter, the two regular battalions spent the inter-war years on occasional tours of duty on the northwest frontier of India and on internal security tasks elsewhere on the sub continent. The 2nd Battalion played a notable part in rescue operations following the disastrous earthquake which destroyed much of Quetta in 1935.