t’o yan: ‘soil man’, aborigine
wei: hello (telephone calls)
yanshu: mole
Malay
ladang: aboriginal settlement
lalang: Imperate arundinacea, a coarse, weedy grass
ringgit: Malay dollar
Nepali (Gurkhali)
Ayo: Gurkhali (loosely) Here come the Gurkhas
ba: ‘father,’ a suffix often used when talking to a CSM, ‘Major Ba’
bahaduri: bravery award
chhatiwan: Alstonia neriifolia, ‘Devil Tree’ in Nepal
daku: ‘dacoit’, used by the Gurkhas for the Communist guerillas
gora: fair-skinned, Gurkhas’ word for British troops
hajur: term of respect, inert conversational response (literally ‘presence’)
hunchha: is, okay
sarkar: government, officialdom
syañ: dead man’s spirit
ustad: ‘teacher’, word used in some Gurkha units to an NCO
Note: the ‘-bahadur’ at the end of names is often shorted to ‘-é’ when talking, so, instead of Kulbahadur, it is Kulé etc
Signals jargon
96 Foxtrot: Auster aircraft pilot
Acorn: Intelligence Officer
Big Sunray: Brigade Commander (unofficial)
blower: radio
Roger: ‘understood’
Sunray: commander of unit or sub-unit concerned
Sunray Minor: deputy commander of unit or sub-unit concerned
Wilco: ‘will comply with your message’
About the author
Lt. Col. JP Cross is a retired British officer who served with Gurkha units for nearly forty years. He has been an Indian frontier soldier, jungle fighter, policeman, military attaché, Gurkha recruitment officer and a linguist researcher, and he is the author of twenty books. He has fought in Burma, Indo-China, Malaya and Borneo and served in India, Pakistan, Hong Kong, Laos and Nepal where he now lives. Well into his nineties, he still walks four hours daily.
Operation Red Tidings is the sixth in a series of historical military novels set in Southeast Asia comprising Operation Black Rose, Operation Janus, Operation Red Tidings, Operation Blind Spot, Operation Stealth and Operation Four Rings. The first four books may be read in any order; the final two are sequential. The series features Gurkha military units, and the author draws on real events he witnessed and real people he fought alongside in various theatres of war in Southeast Asia and India.
‘Nobody in the world is better qualified to tell the story of the Gurkhas’ deadly jungle battles against Communist insurgency in Malaya in the 1950s. Cross spins his tale with the eye of incomparable experience.’ John le Carré
‘… a gripping adventure story … learn the ins and outs of jungle warfare from a true expert’ The Oldie (on Operation Janus)
Other books by JP Cross
Fiction
The Throne of Stone
The Restless Quest
The Crown of Renown
The Fame of the Name
