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I HEARD on the news last week, with growing disgust and incredulity, that the government is going to deport those wonderfully loyal, courageous and proud Gurkha soldiers who have retired here after serving all their working lives in the British Army.

With the fiasco of thousands of immigrants illegally entering our country and claiming benefits, this bullying government, rather than tackle that problem, picks on the brave, retired Gurkhas, with the lame excuse that they cannot live here as they were not initially based here during their time in the Army.

I think this is a load of rubbish.

The government was grateful enough to receive their help during and after the many wars our nation has been involved in since 1817.

Our government was also grateful to receive monetary gifts from the court of Nepal, and also its people, to buy weapons, machinery and fighter planes during the Second World War.

Considerable sums of money were also donated to the Lord Mayor of London during the Blitz, for the relief of the victims in the docklands area - all this from a country which was then and still is, by western standards, desperately poor.

The Gurkha people are fiercely loyal to Britain and are one of our oldest allies, especially in Asia.

The parents of these soldiers, high up in the Nepalese mountains, are proud to say that their son or daughter is in the British Army and that they trek for weeks across mountain passes and tracks to reach the lowlands in order to sign up.

It is also a fact that Prince Harry was deployed alongside Gurkha troops when in Afghanistan.

I wonder why? Could it be because of their fighting skills, which are second to none, and their ability to help guard Harry when the need arose?

It is despicable that these proud Nepalese people, who now have children and grandchildren in this country, are to be treated so shabbily.

They are the closest of Britain's friends and the bravest of allies and, in the words of the the Prime Minister of Nepal in 1940, "Does a friend desert a friend in time of need?"

Don't desert your friends now, Mr Brown. Shame on you.

MRS RH LEACHMAN, Tilshead

3:03pm Thursday 10th April 2008

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