Known as 'the Gurkha who took on 200 soldiers with only one hand", Lachhiman Gurung was a Nepalese-British Gurkha recipient of the Victoria Cross.
Gurung served as a member of the 8th Gurkha Rifles in the Second World War and during the 1945 campaign in Burma, he manned the most forward post of his platoon, bearing the brunt of an attack by at least 200 Japanese soldiers.
He threw back two grenades that had fallen on his trench, but in attempting to return a third, he lost his fingers on his right hand and was wounded in the face, body and right leg too.
Despite his injuries, and the fact that his comrades in the trench with him were badly wounded, the rifleman continued to repel the Japanese attack alone, loading and firing his rifle with his left hand for four hours, shouting, "Come and fight a Gurkha!".
His VC citation ends with:
"Of the 87 enemy dead counted in the immediate vicinity of the Company locality, 31 lay in front of this Rifleman's section, the key to the whole position. Had the enemy succeeded in over-running and occupying Rifleman Lachhiman Gurung's trench, the whole of the reverse slope position would have been completely dominated and turned.
This Rifleman, by his magnificent example, so inspired his comrades to resist the enemy to the last, that, although surrounded and cut off for three days and two nights, they held and smashed every attack.
His outstanding gallantry and extreme devotion to duty, in the face of almost overwhelming odds, were the main factors in the defeat of the enemy."
After Gurung's service, he was one of the five claimants in a legal claim to allow Gurkha servicemen to settle in the UK in 2008.
Thanks to his and other Gurkha's persistence, the government was ordered to review its policy and Gurung settled in Hounslow, London, where he lived until his death in 2010.
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