Word: gurkha
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...battle the refugees, Hong Kong relies on five aging police launches, 900 members of the British army's Gurkha infantry, 150 British regulars and 90 Hong Kong soldiers. Though Hong Kong is second only to Malaysia in its population of still homeless Vietnamese refugees (nearly 55,000 now live in camps in the colony), officials consider them a lesser problem than the illegal Chinese. Since the Vietnamese usually arrive by boat, the marine police sight them more easily; moreover, many now in Hong Kong will eventually move on to other countries...
...civil servants will continue to handle much of the sultanate's affairs, as they have since 1888, when the tiny backwater country, which a passing naval captain had chanced on 40 years earlier, formally became a British protectorate. In addition, London agreed to keep a battalion of tough Gurkha soldiers in Brunei (pronounced Brew-nigh) until the sultanate's own Lilliputian army becomes more seasoned. Even the five-year transition period was a grudging concession by Sir Hassanal, who may be the world's most Anglophile ruler...
...come up on the border, the Indian commander receives us. He recounts how his Gurkha soldiers kicked off the operation at 9 o'clock at night and hit the well-entrenched Pakistanis at midnight. I think we took them by surprise,' he says, and an inspection of the hooch of the Pakistani area commanding officer confirms it. On his bed is a suitcase, its confusion indicating it was hastily packed. There are several shirts, some socks. And his trousers. Nice trousers of gray flannel made, according to the label, by Mr. Abass, a tailor in Rawalpindi. The colonel...
...still never quite sets on the British Empire, though it is sinking ever lower on the horizon. Apart from Hong Kong, which remains a Gurkha-garrisoned crown colony, Britain is rapidly withdrawing its historic military presence from the Far East. The huge naval yard and three airbases in Singapore are being turned over to the local government; the Persian Gulf bases of Bahrain and Sharjah will be closed down well before the end of next year; and Aden has become a port of call for the Russian navy and a barracks for wayward Arab guerrillas...
...Nixon (see THE NATION), the total will fall below 420,000 by June 30. By year's end, moreover, the British Far East Command will have shrunk to a token presence of 4,000 men and a few ships based in Malaysia and Singapore, plus three or four Gurkha battalions elsewhere...