Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ

A Kukri Knife is the traditional knife of the people of Nepal. It is the customary weapon of a Gurkha (a person from Nepal who fights for the British Army). It was given to my Great-Grandfather by his Gurkha friend, Johnny, during WWII. The two men had agreed that if anything happened to either of them, the other would send the dead man's belongings back to their family. My Great-Grandfather's Tank Regiment and Johnny's Gurkha were ambushed by the Germans. Once through the ambush, they went back to look for survivors and found that Johnny, who had been flanking the tank, had been killed. As promised, he sent back Johnny's possessions to his family, but kept the knife as Johnny had wanted and that is how it came into my Great-Grandfather's possession. He found it very hard to talk about the war and only told my mum this about a year before he died. This shows that even though wars are terrible, people from different cultures that took part formed a real comradeship.