At the beginning of the First World War, casualties from the First Battle of Ypres in Belgium were arriving in Britain in large numbers. Many were from the Indian Expeditionary Force whose divisions had been thrown into battle to block a German onslaught heading towards critical ports on the English Channel. Sir Walter Lawrence, a former civil servant had been appointed Commissioner for Sick and Wounded Indians by Lord Kitchener, the Secretary of State for War. On his recommendations, Brighton was selected as a hospital town for the Indian soldiers with three Indian military hospitals. The most famous was opened in the Royal Pavilion built by King George IV around the 1820s. The palace had a very Indian external architecture and both Islamic and Mughal taste in the interiors, which was so opulent that when one of the very severely injured gained consciousness in the hospital, he asked if he had arrived in Heaven!
One of the casualties who was transferred from the Indian Convalescent Hospital in Hampshire at the end of October 1914 was a young Punjabi Muslim from Chakwal, Sepoy Khudadad Khan. He had been enrolled into the 129th Baluchis in 1906 which was part of the Ferozepur Brigade of the Lahore Division that had arrived in Marseilles in September. On the 7th December, there would have been great excitement at the Pavilion Hospital. A notification from the War Office published in the London Gazette announced the first ever award of the Victoria Cross to two Indians – Naik Gabbar Singh Negi of the Garhwal Rifles who was still in France and Sepoy Khudadad Khan.
The palace had a very Indian external architecture and both Islamic and Mughal taste in the interiors, which was so opulent that when one of the very severely injured gained consciousness in the hospital, he asked if he had arrived in Heaven!
Volunteer nurses from Australia were looking after the casualties in the Pavilion. Lindsay Gray, their Sister-in-Charge in a letter of 22 December 1914 says “The pavilion […] is a beautiful place, great space filled now with beds and nice grounds. Here, as a patient, and a very sick one too, they have the first Indian to receive a V.C. He bayoneted a German officer, then 10 men. After that he feigned death, was hit by a German with the butt of his rifle, but never turned a hair, and later on he and a German officer dressed each other’s wounds. He tells the tale quite simply. Nothing to make a fuss about he thinks.”
Compassion in war: what a moving sight it would have been on a dark battlefield lit by the flashes of guns where soldiers were killing each other – an Indian Sepoy and a German officer crawl towards each other and bandage one another with whatever little they had. It may have been the same German officer that Khudadad bayoneted earlier!
Compassion in war: what a moving sight it would have been on a dark battlefield lit by the flashes of guns where soldiers were killing each other – an Indian Sepoy and a German officer crawl towards each other and bandage one another with whatever little they had. It may have been the same German officer that Khudadad bayoneted earlier!
The commander of the Indian Expeditionary Force, General Sir James Wilcox narrates the action for which Sepoy Khudadad was awarded the Victoria Cross in his book With the Indians in France. “If any have ever doubted the splendid gallantry shown under the severest trials let them read this example of what Indian soldiers will do when called on by their leaders. Each battalion had in those days two Maxim machineguns […] the team of one gun of the Baluchis worked their gun until it was blown to bits […] and only retired under orders of their commander Captain R. F. Dill, who, displaying splendid coolness, continued the fight with his other gun.[…] Dill had lost one gun but whilst the other remained he would remain with it. He was disabled by a splinter of shell in the head, his glorious team fell fast, but as each man fell another took his place […] and only one remained, severely wounded. He worked the gun till strength failed him and he lay unconscious and hence untouched by the enemy— No. 4050 Sepoy Khudadad!”
Dill was awarded the D.S.O. and the five men of his Maxim detachment who were all killed were rewarded posthumously.
We have an excerpt from a poem by General James Willcocks who was commanding the Indian Expeditionary Force in Europe. He spent most of his career in India taking part in the Second Afghan War and Frontier Operations. He also participated in the Boer War. The poem, as a tribute to the Indian soldier and Sepoy Khudadad. has been mentioned by name in one of the stanzas. Another stanza reads:-
For ages long the Mullah’s cry, the temple bells shall wile,
And call to prayer for those who died,
The father, mother, son, and bride,
Descendants of the loyal brave
Who rest in warriors’ simple grave,
And need no marble pile.
