The Gurkha Welfare Trust the Prince of Wales. The Trust has three Vice Patrons; Field Marshal the Lord Bramall of Bushfield KG GCB OBE MC JP DL, Field Marshal Sir John Chapple GCB CBE DL and Joanna Lumley OBE. The Chairman of the Board of Trustees is Lieutenant General Nick Pope CBE. Each year, by tradition, all serving officers and other ranks in the Brigade of Gurkhas contribute a day's pay to the Trust. In 1969, it was realised that a great number of Gurkha soldiers and their dependants or widows in Nepal faced destitution in old age. Many of these soldiers had served
7th Duke of Edinburgh's Own Gurkha Rifles the 1st Battalion and the Left Wing becoming the 2nd Battalion 7th Gurkha Rifles. The regiment had the distinction of being one of only two out of the ten Gurkha regiments to recruit its soldiers from the towns and villages which lie along the rugged foothills of the Himalayas east of Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal. Gurkha officers and soldiers have come predominantly from the Rai and Limbu clans but the roll records many names from the less numerous Sunwar, Tamang and Eastern Gurung clans, men from the Sherpa families of mountaineering fame and a sprinkling from Western Nepal and