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Friday, 10 July 2015

Gurkhas Commemorative Sheet - 200 years of service.

Royal Mail's next premium-priced commemorative sheet celebrates 200 years of service by the Gurkhas.  The sheet will be issued on 20 August 2015.

The first Gurkha regiment was formed in 1815.  Originally part of the British Indian Army, they fought Pathans on the frontiers, dacoits in Burma and mutineers in India. With six battalions on the Western Front, four in Gallipoli and others in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Palestine, Persia and Salonika, Gurkhas were prominent in the First World War, and similarly so in the Second World War, where they served in North Africa, Italy, Malaya and Burma.

After 1947, Gurkha regiments were divided between the armies of independent India and Britain, with British Gurkhas in the forefront of operations in Malaya and Borneo, and subsequently taking part in the Falklands campaign, and more recently in Bosnia, Kosovo, East Timor, Sierra Leone, Iraq and Afghanistan.

This Commemorative Sheet in a numbered limited edition of 7500.


Two special postmarks have been announced coincident with the issue of this sheet.

Both are available from the London Special Handstamp Centre.


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