A memory of Dorset: Bridport, Gurkhas

A photographer came to our house, a few days ago, to take pictures of it, and he was an immigrant from Nepal, a Gurkha. This reminded me of an impressive encounter with Gurkha people a few years ago, when we were living in Lyme Regis.

Bridport is the next town along the coast to the east of Lyme, as Axminster is the next to the west.

Bridport lies in the strip of land between the rivers Brit and Asker. The town is T-shaped. Across the north runs the thoroughfare, West Street and East Street, meeting at the town hall. From the town hall, South Street points two miles along the river valley to the sea at West Bay, for Bridport isn’t strictly a sea port. Just past the constriction at the town hall, South Street opens up as a triangular space that is the lively center.

Bridport used to make ropes, for the rigging of ships, and nets for fishing. Flax and hemp were grown in the fields around, spun in the long gardens behind the houses, and laid out to dry in the main street, which is why it is so wide. We were told that, a few years back, Bridport was a depressed place, but factors changed and it was now notably lively.

Whereas Lyme no longer has a street market, Axminster has a Wednesday market, and Bridport has two markets a week – Wednesday and Saturday. And with the Saturday market there are musical events. The market stalls spread along West Street and East Street and the more intimate South Street space, which becomes pedestrian-only, with sidewalk café tables and the music.

Highland pipers, bands from Carinthia and Bolivia. Often the entertainment was the extraordinarily hard-working Stompin’ Dave Allen, singing “Get Out the Way, Old Dan Tucker” or other bluegrass in time to his guitar and stomping feet and the rhythmic accompaniment of his sidekick, an older man who twanged a rope attached to a wooden crate as soundbox..

The first Saturday we took the bus to Bridport, we were hooked.

At ten o’clock (before we got there) the bands, no fewer than four, came marching along West Street and then down South Street: the West Dorset Military Band, the Gurkha Scottish band, the girls’ band of the Polish naval academy, and a band from Ukraine. They had disappeared into the distance and now, one by one, they marched back up South Street to perform in the middle of the market crowd. The mayor and mayoress, benignly beaming, had seats of honour at the front.

The hosts were the West Dorset band, who had organized the occasion as a benefit for the Gurkhas. These Nepalese Gurkhas traditionally served in the British army since 1816, and were famous for their bravery and tenacity; they were the only Allied troops to reach the crestline of Gallipoli. They had not received fair pensions, and there was a campaign for justice for them. The Polish and Ukrainian bands had been brought from their countries, presumably at the expense of the West Dorset band.

(In 2007 the British government announced that Gurkhas serving in the armed forces would at last get equal pension rights – but only those who left the army after 1997.)

The West Dorset band performed first. They played World War One songs – “It’s a Long Long Way to Tipperary,” “Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit Bag.”

Then came the Gurkhas. Even before they hove in sight up South Street, we could hear what they were playing: a slow, slow tune, and it took me a while to recognize that it was “Amazing Grace.” It was a version so drawn-out that the grace-notes were as long as quavers. Suspense, a wondering whether the next note would ever come. And they were pacing slowly, with a check in the middle of each stride, a cross between marching and marking time. They were small men with impassive brown faces; they were in tartan and playing bagpipes and other Highland instruments. Was this because Gurkhas and Scots are both mountain peoples? I would have liked them to play something Nepalese; but nothing could have out-awed that “Amazing Grace” stretched by the long breath of the bagpipes.

The Gurkha band arrived to join the West Dorset band, and there was an overlap period during which the two bands, under one vigorous conductor, played joint arrangements of “Scotland the Brave” and “Auld Lang Syne.” I found this friendly musical handover extremely moving.

Then came the Polish naval girls to join and replace them, and we were able to stay for part of that, had to leave before the Ukrainians came on, but I later met some of them, with their blue and yellow uniforms, walking along Bridport streets.

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