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 Ottoman Empire in the Middle East.

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.

2nd Battalion was mobilized for overseas operations in 1941, returning to Iraq to participate in the campaign to secure oil supplies for the Allies and then to defeat Vichy French forces in Syria.

The gallantry displayed by a young rifleman, Ganju Lama, during a subsequent action near Bishenpur was recognised by the award of the Victoria Cross.

The Battalion completed its wartime service in Greece as part of the British force sent to stabilise the country following the end of German occupation.

The years after 1945 saw all Gurkha regiments preoccupied with the issue of Indian independence and the conditions of near civil war attendant on the partition of India and the creation of Pakistan.

In 1962 the 1st Battalion was dispatched from Malaya to the nearby state of Brunei in north Borneo to assist the British Army in suppressing a revolt by Indonesian backed rebels against the Sultan, an ally of the United Kingdom.

The Brunei Revolt was a prelude to a war between an expansionist Indonesia and the new Malaysian Federation backed by Britain and the Commonwealth which is known as the Borneo Confrontation.

Although the regiment was increasingly involved in maintaining the security of the Crown Colony of Hong Kong, particularly when stability there was affected by the Chinese Cultural revolution in 1967, the strength of Brigade was to be substantially reduced.

At a final parade at Church Crookham on 26 May 1994 attended by HRH The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh and many old comrades from Britain and Nepal, the regiment marched into history.

This was because the regiment went into mourning for the loss of Lord Kitchener, (see above) Secretary of State for War, on 5 June 1916, when HMS Hampshire struck a mine and sank.

'East of Kathmandu' - The Story of the 7th Duke of Edinburgh's Own Gurkha Rifles Volume II 1948-1973' by Brigadier E D Smith CBE DSO - Leo Cooper, London, 1976.

'The Autumn Years' - Volume III of the History of the 7th Duke of Edinburgh's Own Gurkha Rifles by Brigadier E D Smith CBE DSO - Spellmount, Staplehurst, 1997.