Agansing Rai

The Gurkha Hero of the Battle of Imphal Three enemy positions stood between Agansing Rai and his objective. One was protected by a machine gun, another by a 37 mm gun, and the last by a bunker pouring fire and grenades into the advancing Gurkhas. On 26 June 1944, Rai attacked all three. By the end of the action, the positions known as Mortar Bluff and Water Piquet had been retaken, his company was able to advance, and a young Gurkha section commander from Nepal had performed one of the most remarkable acts of battlefield leadership of the Burma Campaign. That soldier was Agansing Rai, later Subedar-Major and Honorary Captain, of the 2nd Battalion, 5th Royal Gurkha Rifles (Frontier Force). His courage near Bishenpur during the Battle of Imphal earned him the Victoria Cross, the highest British and Commonwealth award for gallantry in the presence of the enemy. His official citation praised his "magnificent display of initiative, outstanding bravery and gallant leadership." The Gazette Agansing Rai was born on 24 April 1920 at Amsara in eastern Nepal, in what is now Okhaldhunga District. He enlisted in the 5th Royal Gurkha Rifles (Frontier Force) in 1941 and was posted to its 2nd Battalion. By 1943 he had risen to the rank of Naik and was serving as a section commander, placing him in direct responsibility for leading Gurkha soldiers in battle. The Gurkha Museum confirms his recruitment in 1941, his advancement to section commander, and his service with 2/5th Royal Gurkha Rifles during the fighting in Burma. The Gurkha Museum - Winchester By June 1944 the Japanese offensive against Imphal had produced intense fighting around Bishenpur, southwest of Imphal. Two mutually supporting positions, Mortar Bluff and Water Piquet, had fallen into Japanese hands. Their capture threatened Allied communications, and on the morning of 26 June a company of the 5th Royal Gurkha Rifles was ordered to retake them. After an artillery concentration, the Gurkhas advanced, only to be pinned down about 80 yards from their objective by accurate machine-gun fire from Mortar Bluff and a Japanese 37 mm gun concealed in the jungle. Casualties began to mount. The Gazette Rai understood that remaining exposed would cost even more lives. He immediately led his section against the machine-gun position, advancing through heavy fire and shooting as he moved. He personally killed three of the four-man gun crew. His attack inspired the men behind him to surge forward and clear Mortar Bluff. It was only the first of three assaults Rai would lead that morning. The Gazette Once Mortar Bluff had been captured, the Gurkhas came under fire from the 37 mm gun and from Water Piquet. Rai did not wait. He led his section toward the gun position. The fire was so severe that only three men remained effective before they had covered half the distance. They continued. At close range, Rai killed three members of the gun crew and his surviving men killed the remaining two. The weapon that had been holding up the advance was silenced. The Gazette Rai then returned to Mortar Bluff as the Gurkhas prepared to attack Water Piquet. During the advance, a concealed bunker opened fire with a machine gun and grenades, causing further casualties. Rai ordered his Bren gunner to cover him and moved forward alone. Carrying a grenade in one hand and a Thompson sub-machine gun in the other, he reached the bunker under intense fire and killed all four of its defenders. With the bunker destroyed, Japanese resistance collapsed and Water Piquet was captured. The Gazette The official London Gazette announcement of 5 October 1944 identified him as No. 63219 Rifleman (acting Naik) Agansing Rai, 5th Royal Gurkha Rifles (Frontier Force), Indian Army, and approved the award of the Victoria Cross. The citation made clear that his significance lay not only in personal courage, but in leadership. His actions repeatedly restored momentum at moments when the attack could have stalled under severe enemy fire. The Gazette Rai received his Victoria Cross from Field Marshal Lord Wavell, Viceroy of India, on 23 January 1945. The surviving Cross itself is engraved with his service details on the suspension bar and the date 26th June, 1944 on the reverse, directly connecting the decoration to the action for which it was awarded. The Gurkha Museum - Winchester His military career did not end with the Victoria Cross. After frontline service he became an instructor at the regimental centre. In 1946 he travelled to London to take part in the Victory Parade, and he later returned to the 2nd Battalion during its service with the Allied occupation force in Japan. Gurkha Museum records confirm that Rai rejoined the battalion in Japan after participating in the London victory celebrations. The Gurkha Museum - Winchester Indian independence in 1947 brought a fundamental change to the Gurkha regiments. The 5th Royal Gurkha Rifles became part of the new Indian Army, and Rai remained with his regiment. His post-war career would ultimately carry him far beyond the battlefields of the Second World War. He rose through the Gurkha officer ranks and eventually became Subedar-Major, the senior Indian officer appointment within his battalion. Spink In 1962-63, Rai deployed with the Indian contingent of the United Nations Operation in the Congo, ONUC. His Congo service is supported not only by biographical records but by his own named Videsh Seva Medal with Congo clasp, together with the United Nations Medal for Congo that formed part of his surviving medal group. Spink His long military service was reflected in an unusually substantial group of honours. Rai's documented and reconstructed entitlement includes the Victoria Cross, Raksha Medal 1965, Sainya Seva Medal with Jammu & Kashmir clasp, Videsh Seva Medal with Congo clasp, Indian Independence Medal 1947, 20 Years Long Service Medal, 9 Years Long Service Medal, 1939-45 Star, Burma Star, War Medal 1939-45, India Service Medal 1939-45, Queen Elizabeth II Coronation Medal 1953, United Nations Medal for service in the Congo, and Queen Elizabeth II Silver Jubilee Medal 1977. His family-owned group sold by Spink contained thirteen of these honours and was catalogued as mounted and worn together. A specialist Victoria Cross entitlement record additionally identifies his Sainya Seva Medal with Jammu & Kashmir clasp, while the Government of India Gazette confirms the institution of the Sainya Seva Medal and its system of place clasps. Spink The original Spink catalogue provides especially valuable evidence because many of Rai's medals were individually named. His Raksha Medal carried his post-independence service number JC-5818, as did his Videsh Seva and long-service medals. His Second World War group was also named to him. This gives Rai's surviving medal group unusually strong provenance and allows much of his military service to be connected directly to physical, recipient-specific evidence. Spink Rai retired from the Indian Army in 1971 after approximately three decades of service. Sources disagree on whether his honorary retirement rank was Lieutenant or Captain, but the detailed Spink catalogue of the medal group supplied by his family describes him as Subedar-Major and Honorary Captain Agansing Rai, while his Times obituary also records him as retiring with the honorary rank of Captain. For a historically reconstructed biography, Honorary Captain is therefore the stronger final style. Spink Retirement took Rai back to Nepal, but it did not sever his connection with the military community. He attended reunions of Victoria Cross and George Cross holders in Britain and was presented to Queen Elizabeth II during her visit to Nepal in 1986. Accounts from those who remembered him describe a quiet and dignified man whose reputation rested as much on his character as on the decoration he wore. The Guardian Agansing Rai died in Kathmandu on 27 May 2000. Contemporary accounts record that thousands attended his funeral, a remarkable tribute to a soldier who had returned to a comparatively quiet life after an extraordinary military career. He left two sons and three daughters, and one of his sons later served as a lieutenant colonel in the Indian Army. The Guardian Four years after his death, Rai's family consigned his Victoria Cross and medal group to Spink in London. On 22 July 2004, the group sold for £115,000. It was purchased on behalf of the Michael Ashcroft Trust and entered the Lord Ashcroft Victoria Cross Collection. The specialist record of the collection confirms Agansing Rai's Victoria Cross as an acquisition from 2004. Spink Yet the value of Agansing Rai's story is not measured by the auction price of his Victoria Cross. It lies in what happened on a hillside near Bishenpur on 26 June 1944. Faced first by a machine gun, then an artillery piece, then a fortified bunker, Rai repeatedly moved toward the fire when remaining where he was would have been safer. He did so while responsible for other men, and his example carried them forward. That is why Agansing Rai VC remains one of the defining Gurkha soldiers of the Second World War. His life connected rural Nepal, the Burma Campaign, the Battle of Imphal, the British Indian Army, independent India's Gorkha regiments, the occupation of Japan and United Nations service in the Congo. The Victoria Cross made his name famous, but his career shows that the courage of 26 June 1944 was only one extraordinary chapter in nearly thirty years of military service.