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Gurkha Memorial, London


The Memorial to the Brigade of Gurkhas on Horse Guards Avenue, Whitehall, London, was unveiled by Queen Elizabeth II on 3 December 1997. This was the first memorial to Gurkha soldiers in the United Kingdom, and was occasioned by transfer of their headquarters and training centre from Hong Kong 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, and the plinth was designed by Cecil Denny Highton.

Two casts of Goulden's sculpture had previously been erected in locations in Nepal as World War I memorials to the Gurkhas, the first at Kunraghat in 1928 and the second at Birpur 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, a former officer in the 3rd Gurkha Rifles.

THE GURKHA
SOLDIER
Bravest of the brave,
most generous of the generous,
never had country
more faithful friends
than you.

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.


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