Gurkha gear

[Boonie Stomper]

Had the privilege of spending a fortnight in Nepal in 1971. The medals were all stamped with the soldier's name & unit. It is rather sad when these soldier's found it necessary to sell their medals to survive.

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[Peter Laidler]

I'm sure that the badge on the scabbard and the hat are just touristy things and that badge/quality/obliterated/obscure number doesn't ring any bells. Generally speaking, the Gurkhas that transferred to the Indian Army initially kept their original badges. But after India became a republic in ?, the Crown was simply replaced by the Ashoka (spelling?). The Indian REME have the same badge as ours with an Ashoka instead of a crown.

Incidentally, you could easily 'unbuckle' the brim of the hat by doing what the other users of slouch hats do. Our Gurkhas used to wear them with the rim/brim down.

[Boonie Stomper]

Thanks for the advice. I do prefer to leave the items as they were when purchased in Bhaktapur many years ago.

Two of the buttons are copper, instead of brass, and are spelled "Nepaul". I am thinking that they are from WW1.

[Howard]

I was in Nepal 2 years ago. I bought a knife from a soldier (that was standing guard at a temple) but when I looked at it closely it did not seem to be of military quality. I believe it was from one of the many shops that sell thousands of Gurkha knives to tourist. He had the scabbard spit shined and polished the blade and handle and probably used it for inspections. I am still glad I bought it because it had belonged to a soldier. In Kathmandu every house and building had a shop under it that sells knives and everything else that had to do with Nepal. It was a great trip by the way. really different culture and extremely crowded part of the world.

[Aragorn243]

Massive tourist trade of "military" items in Nepal. The Kukri is non-issue.

[browningautorifle]

That all makes perfect sense and answers a simple question that keep rearing it's head here. Everyone that buys a knife swears it's an original combat knife. Most of them are just tourist trade.

[Aragorn243]

I've been trying to get a British issue Kukri for about a year now. I've not been very diligent about it but every once and a while one comes up for auction. Seems like everyone knows what they are however and I just can't push that $300 button to get one. There are Nepalese Kukri's and IMA got a tone of them a while back and they are about the only ones that have legit ones for sale. Great care has to be taken with the ebay auctions. Most are fake as fake can be. By fake I mean not military. Many are "real" kukri's but just not military. The things are mostly hand made out of spring steel so there isn't exactly a standard pattern that is identical to others. Military ones should have a serial number at minimum, often in script. British issue will have the broad arrow. The Indian military also issued them and this is even more of a grey area. Indian Kukri's in general aren't as sought after as either the British or Nepalese ones.

What makes it worse is the tourist trade went all the way back to WWII so ones that grand dad brought back are probably fakes also.

[browningautorifle]

Military ones should have a serial number at minimum, often in script.

Mine has a rack number... I think. I made the scabbard.

[Flying10uk]

Hopefully, I'm not going to be told that this is a tourist example.

Is the number a date, Dec. 1914, rather than a serial number?

[Aragorn243]

That looks like the real deal to me has a British broad arrow on it. Seems logical that could be the date.