Visiting the veterans of Britain's wars in their Nepali homes brings home how ungracious and ungrateful our government has been.

Lance Corporal Ram Bahadur Limbu won his Victoria Cross in a mostly forgotten war, the Indonesian Confrontation, in Borneo (East Malaysia) in 1965. First, he charged a machine-gun nest, knocking it out with a hand grenade. Then he made two forays into open ground to rescue wounded comrades, and another to retrieve a Bren gun. He used it to charge down and kill what was left of the enemy.

When I decided to look up Lance Corporal Limbu a few years ago, it was a simple matter to find him – I just went to his hometown in eastern Nepal and asked for "VC". Although his simple little cross, forged from a cannon captured at Sevastopol in 1855 and hung on a plain red ribbon, had been stolen with the rest of his luggage while he took the train home across India after leaving British service, he had been given a replacement. It was not his only connection to Britain: in his concrete house, off a narrow alley, he showed me the invitations he has received every 10 years for dinner at Buckingham Palace, as well as a photograph of himself and other VC holders with the Queen.

Many of the thousands of Gurkhas who served in the Second World War and in every British conflict since have never been to Britain. But the hills and plains of Nepal are scattered with men who have been steeped in our country's traditions for decades, and to whom we owe a profound debt. A few miles down the road from Lance Corporal Limbu's house, I found a veteran of an earlier generation, living in a bamboo hut in a refugee camp. Lal Bahadur Rai was at Singapore when Lord Mountbatten received the Japanese surrender in 1945. He had a treasured bundle of press cuttings that included a photograph of Mountbatten and another of Queen Elizabeth, the Queen's mother. He uttered their names and repeated them with gravity and emphasis. Continued here...