Fellowship & Guest Speaker

Our Speaker tonight is Brigadier Nigel Michael Haynes, M.B.E. late 2nd King Edward VII’s Own Gurkha Rifles (The Sirmoor Rifles). Brigadier Haynes was commissioned into the 2nd Gurkhas and served with them until he commanded their 1st Battalion in 1984.  He served in the Confrontation, the Hong Kong riots, Northern Ireland and went to hold other appointments in the army before retiring in 1993 to run a national charity working with disaffected young people in 17 inner cities for sixteen years. His talk will be on the Gurkhas, their homeland, their campaigns from their raising to Afghanistan in recent times.

The Sirmoor Rifles was a rifle regiment of the British Indian Army before being transferred to the British Army on India’s independence in 1947. The 4th Battalion joined the Indian Army as the 5th Battalion, 8th Gorkha Rifles (Sirmoor Rifles), where it exists to this day. As part of the British Army, the regiment served in Malaya, Hong Kong and Brunei until 1994 when it was amalgamated with the other three British Army Gurkha infantry regiments to form the Royal Gurkha Rifles. It is the only Gurkha regiment which did not have a khukuri on its cap badge