First Indian VC
Until a Royal Warrant was signed in 1911, ethnic Indian officers, NCOs, and men could not be awarded the Victoria Cross. The first such award was made to an Indian Sepoy during the first few months of the First World War.
During the so-called ‘Race to the Sea’ in the autumn of 1914, British forces had managed to secure and hold the Belgian city of Ypres, thus preventing the Germans from sweeping round the coast and cutting Sir John French’s communications with the UK. With the British Expeditionary Force desperately holding onto Ypres, the arrival of the Indian Expeditionary Corps A, commanded by Lieutenant General Sir James Wilcocks, was most welcome. When it deployed in France it was broken up into the Indian Cavalry Corps and the Indian Corps which, in turn, was composed of the 3rd (Lahore) Division and the 7th (Meerut) Division.
The Indians began landing at Marseilles on 26 September 1914, and, after being re-armed with the latest pattern of rifle, were sent into the front line towards the end of October. At the end of that month, the Lahore Division had to face a German attempt to seize the village of Hollebeke. The 129th Duke of Connaught’s Own Baluchis and the 57th Wilde’s Rifles Frontier Force were in the forward trenches and were attacked by overwhelming numbers of the enemy. The Indian position was very weak. It was thinly held, with no protective barbed-wire and only shallow trenches and a reporter in the Dundee Courier noted:
“[Sepoy] Khudadad Khan was one of the regimental machine gun section of the 129th Duke of Connaught’s Own Baluchis which was placed in a portion of the defence held by the 5th Lancers. This part of the line was subjected to a very heavy bombardment, and the machine gun section in particular was signalled out for especially heavy shellfire.
“Man after man was hit, but the brave detachment continued to serve their guns, inflicting severe loss on the enemy. Eventually one of the two guns was put out of action by a direct hit upon it by a shrapnel shell. The British officer, Captain R.F. Dill, who was commanding the section, was wounded in the head about this time, but continued in action until forced to give up the command and was carried to the rear. The team of the remaining gun, however, kept on firing.
“Eventually the enemy, developing vastly superior forces, advanced to the attack regardless of the losses inflicted. The heroic gun team fought to the last and were bayoneted at their posts. Khudadad Khan, the sole survivor [he had, according to one account, feigned death when the position was searched by German troops], though badly wounded, managed after a time to rejoin his company, but did quit his gun till he had ensured that it would be valueless to the enemy.”
Thanks to the gallantry shown by Sepoy Khudadad Khan and his fellow Baluchis, the Germans were held up just long enough for Indian and British reinforcements to arrive. In recognition of his efforts, Khudadad Khan was awarded the Victoria Cross which was gazetted on 7 December 1914.
Though Khudadad was sent to the United Kingdom to recover from his wounds, he was invested with his VC by King George V on Monday, 25 January 1915, whilst the latter was undertaking an official visit to France and the Western Front.
It was not until a Royal Warrant was signed by King George V on 21 October 1911 that eligibility for the Victoria Cross was extended to the ‘native’ officers, non-commissioned officers, and men of the Indian Army. Khudadad was the first Indian soldier, and the first Muslim, to be so honoured.