00:00Your life has every Gurkha rank.
00:01The strap is cutting into your forehead, and the rocks have not gotten lighter in 4 kilometers.
00:06Your legs are shaking on a hill you have climbed a hundred times in training.
00:10Because this time, if the clock beats you, it is over.
00:13Not the race. Everything.
00:15Behind you, boys are already sitting down on the trail.
00:18Ahead of you, the mist.
00:19Somewhere in it, the finish line and the rest of your life.
00:22Ayogorkali.
00:23But 4 hours before this hill, you were nobody.
00:26You are 18.
00:27A hill village in Nepal.
00:28You have wanted this since you were 6 years old.
00:31It starts with a notebook.
00:32A retired Gurkha walks into your village.
00:34One of 67 old soldiers who scour the hills for boys like you.
00:38And he writes down names.
00:39Being noticed is step zero.
00:41Most boys never even get a look.
00:43Then the funnel begins.
00:44Thousands at the first ground.
00:46Hundreds at the next.
00:47Dozens at the last.
00:48Every stage has tests, and here is the rule that breaks boys.
00:52Fail any single one, and you are done for the year.
00:54No appeals.
00:55No second chances.
00:56Before any of that, there are months of training nobody films.
00:59You run the hills around Pokhara before dawn.
01:02Basket on your forehead.
01:04Because boys who train when someone is watching are the boys who sit down on the trail.
01:08At Pokhara, the final ground, they test more than your legs.
01:11English.
01:12Maths.
01:12A medical.
01:13Interviews in two languages.
01:15The army wants a brain with the legs, not just legs.
01:17And then the doko.
01:185 kilometers uphill.
01:2025 kilos of rock in a woven basket slung from your forehead against the clock.
01:24You make it barely, vomiting at the line like half the boys who pass.
01:28Tens of thousands of boys wanted this hill.
01:31Only a few hundred get to climb it.
01:33The army did not pick the strongest boys in Nepal.
01:36It picked the ones who would not sit down.
01:38But getting picked is the easy part.
01:40Now they have 36 weeks to find out if they picked wrong.
01:51The army is building a soldier who can think in two languages and fight in any weather.
01:59And then there is Kaida.
02:00The system of order, ritual, loyalty.
02:03To your officers.
02:04To each other.
02:05You learn that a Gurkha unit does not run on fear of punishment.
02:08It runs on shame at letting the man next to you down.
02:10Then comes the Kukri.
02:1218 inches of curved steel.
02:14The national weapon of Nepal.
02:16They teach you its drill, its history, its weight.
02:18And the old soldiers tell you the legend with straight faces.
02:22Once a Gurkha draws his Kukri, it must taste blood.
02:2536 weeks later, you march off the square, a different animal.
02:28The boy who climbed the hill is gone.
02:30What marches out is a rifleman.
02:32Then come the orders.
02:33Jungle, desert, or a barracks in England.
02:35And the first time someone points at a map and says the word,
02:38nobody in your family has ever heard in person.
02:41Deployment.
02:42Rifleman.
02:421st Battalion.
02:43Your Kukri is on your hip.
02:45And your name is on a roster that goes back to 1815.
02:48About 4,000 Gurkhas in the brigade.
02:50Every one of them climbed your hill.
02:52Now you earn the war cry.
02:54Ayo Gorkali.
02:55The Gurkhas are here.
02:56You first heard it whispered on the Doko Trail.
02:58Now you shout it on exercise.
03:00And something cold runs down the backs of the men playing the enemy.
03:04There is a reason for that.
03:05And the reason is 200 years long.
03:07In 1814, the British fought your ancestors in the mountains of Nepal.
03:12And were so impressed that they started recruiting them.
03:15The regiment you joined is older than most countries armies.
03:18Its reputation was paid for in advance.
03:20By men whose names you will learn by heart.
03:23Here is the quiet truth of the rifleman years.
03:25You are nobody's leader.
03:27And everybody's foundation.
03:28The section works because you do your job in the dark.
03:31In the rain.
03:32Without being watched.
03:33A rifleman is the smallest rank in the battalion.
03:36And the reason the battalion exists.
03:38General's plan.
03:39Riflemen arrive.
03:40And one day.
03:41On some exercise in some rain.
03:42A corporal looks at you.
03:44Really looks.
03:44And says the words that change the shape of your career.
03:47You are ready for the cadre.
03:49Promotion is not given.
03:50It is survived.
03:51A course that tests whether men will follow you when they are exhausted.
03:55Lost and angry.
03:56The army does not promote the toughest man.
03:58It promotes the man others walk behind.
04:00Lance corporal.
04:02A fire team.
04:03Four men.
04:03Your first command is four tired faces looking at you for the decision.
04:07Get it wrong on exercise and nobody dies.
04:09Get the habit of getting it right.
04:11Because one day it will not be an exercise.
04:13Corporal.
04:14Section second in command.
04:15Eight men now.
04:16And the section commander leaning on you to know every one of them.
04:20Who is struggling?
04:21Who is lying about the blister?
04:22Who needs a quiet word?
04:24And who needs a loud one?
04:25Kaida is your tool now.
04:26The old system you were taught as a recruit.
04:28Loyalty runs both ways.
04:30The men give you everything because you give it first.
04:33This is the Gurkha NCO secret.
04:35And it is why their sections do not break.
04:37The army did not give you men because you are the hardest.
04:40It gave you men because four tired boys decided they would follow you into the dark.
04:44But a section is a family.
04:46A platoon is a village.
04:48And villages need a different kind of man.
04:50The one the officers themselves lean on.
04:52Sergeant.
04:52Section commander now.
04:53The section is yours.
04:55Fully.
04:55And the young officer fresh from Sandhurst who outranks you on paper learns the oldest
05:00lesson in the battalion within a week.
05:02The sergeant runs the platoon.
05:04The officer is being taught how.
05:06Color sergeant.
05:07Platoon sergeant.
05:08Thirty men.
05:09You are the memory of the unit.
05:10Every drill.
05:11Every tradition.
05:12Every name on the roll.
05:13Officers rotate through.
05:14You remain.
05:15This is the rank where the weight lands.
05:17When something goes wrong.
05:18A man injured.
05:19A patrol compromised.
05:20The report goes up.
05:22But the responsibility stops with you.
05:24Better to die than be a coward stops being a motto on a wall.
05:27And becomes a decision you make for other people's sons.
05:30A sergeant does not shout.
05:32He does not need to.
05:33The platoon heard him ten years ago.
05:35And never stopped listening.
05:36Above the sergeants.
05:37There is a floor most soldiers never see.
05:40The senior NCOs is mess.
05:41Where the battalion is really run.
05:43And at the head of its table sits a chair with no equal.
05:46Warrant officer.
05:47Company sergeant major.
05:49Then regimental.
05:49Over a hundred men measured against your standard now.
05:52Your word moves companies.
05:54Then the appointment.
05:55Gurkha major.
05:56The battalion's senior Gurkha soldier.
05:58Not a rank you apply for.
06:00A man the battalion chooses.
06:01You are the commanding officer's right hand and the keeper of Kaida.
06:05Every custom.
06:06Every ritual.
06:06Every standard runs through you.
06:08600 Gurkhas look to you the way the village looked to the elders.
06:11Welfare.
06:12Discipline.
06:13Tradition.
06:13Morale.
06:14The commanding officer commands the battalion.
06:17You are the battalion in the way it feels inside.
06:19The Gurkha major has no promotion left to chase.
06:22That is what makes him the most honest man in the battalion.
06:25And the most powerful.
06:26But there is one ceiling left.
06:28Older than the battalion.
06:30Older than the army itself.
06:31And it is made of paper.
06:33For a hundred years a Gurkha soldier's commission was a viceroy's commission.
06:37Subedar major at best.
06:38And never outranking a British officer no matter how long or bravely he served.
06:43The paper said this far and no further.
06:45Then the ceiling breaks.
06:47The late entry commission.
06:48Senior Gurkha's commissioned as officers on the same terms as British officers.
06:52The old separate system was absorbed in 2008.
06:55The paper ceiling is gone.
06:57Now you are the young officer saluted by men who remember you as a corporal.
07:01The salutes feel wrong for a month.
07:03Then you understand.
07:04They are not saluting the rank.
07:06They are saluting the hill you command now.
07:08Platoon.
07:08Then company.
07:09But Kaida does not care about your pips.
07:12The men follow the man.
07:13And the man is still the boy from the doko trail.
07:1622 years.
07:17That is the engagement most Gurkhas sign.
07:19And at the end of it every Gurkha faces the same question.
07:22What do you do with a legend when the uniform comes off?
07:2526 Victoria crosses.
07:27Not a statistic.
07:28A list of mornings when one man decided.
07:30Lakiman Gurung.
07:31Burma, May 1945.
07:32Alone in his trench.
07:34One hand blown off by a grenade.
07:35He held off around 200 attackers for 4 hours.
07:38Throwing their grenades back at them.
07:40And he lived.
07:41Tul Bahadur Pun.
07:42Burma 1944.
07:44His section wiped out around him.
07:45He charged a Japanese position alone with a Bren gun.
07:48And took it.
07:49Dippersad Pun.
07:50Afghanistan.
07:512010.
07:52Alone against around 30 Taliban.
07:54250 machine gun rounds.
07:56180 rifle rounds.
07:58And when the ammunition ran low the tripod itself became a weapon.
08:02The price.
08:02Over 200,000 Gurkhas served in the two world wars.
08:06Around 43,000 never came home.
08:08The legend was not free.
08:09It was paid in full, in advance, by other men's sons.
08:13Kafar Hunnu Bandamarnu Ramro.
08:15Better to die than be a coward.
08:16And outsiders who learned it best said it plainly.
08:19The bravest of the brave.
08:20If a man says he is not afraid of dying, he is either lying or he is a Gurkha.
08:24There was no safer place than by the side of a Gurkha.
08:27In 2009, after a campaign led by Joanna Lumley, retired Gurkhas won the right to settle in
08:33Britain.
08:33In 2015, 200 years after it all began, they marched past Buckingham Palace.
08:39Retirement in the hills of Nepal, or a life in Britain.
08:41Either way, the Doko Trail is still there.
08:44And every year, a new boy climbs it with 25 kilos on his forehead.
08:48The strap cut into your forehead for 5 kilometers.
08:51The clock nearly beat you.
08:52But you did not sit down on the trail.
08:54And 22 years later, your name is on a roll that started in 1815.
08:59Ayo Gorkhali.
09:00The Gurkhas are here.
09:01They always were.
09:02Be honest in the comments.
09:04At which kilometer of the Doko would you have sat down?
