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Sikhs And The Great War In France |
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Paramjit Singh, Co-author: Warrior Saints, London, IB Tauris, 1999 Major battles during WWI in France where Sikhs were present: Ypres Regiments present in France 1914-15 comprising Sikh companies: INFANTRY CAVALRY The 15th, the oldest Sikh battalion, and the 47th, the latest raised, were the first to be given the opportunity of showing the mettle of the Khalsa in a European war. The 47th, who were not raised till 1901, earned as proud a record as any in France, distinguishing themselves from the day in October, 1914, when, with the 20th and 21st Sappers and Miners. They cleared the village of Neuve Chapelle after some Homeric hand-to-hand fighting in the houses and streets, to the desperately stubborn advance up the glacis to the German trenches on April 26, 1915, in the second battle of Ypres, when the regiment went in with eleven British and ten Indian officers and 423 other ranks, of whom but two British and two Indian officers and 92 rank and file mustered after the action. The 15th Sikhs, one of the two earliest-raised Sikh battalions, were the first, to come into action in France, and they maintained a high-level reputation for gallantry all through the campaign. The story of Lieutenant Smyth and his ten Sikh bombers at Festubert is not likely to be forgotten. Smyth and two sepoys were the only two survivors of this gallant band who passed by a miracle, crawling over the dead bodies of their comrades, through a torrent of lead, and carried their bombs through to the first line. Smyth was awarded the V.C., Lance-Naik Mangal Singh the Indian Order of Merit, and every sepoy in the party the Indian Distinguished Service Medal. Two of these men belonged to the 45th Sikhs, four to the 19th Punjabis. And here it should be remembered that the Sikhs earned a composite part of the honour of nearly every mixed class-company regiment in France; of the Punjabi regiments, for instance, and of the Frontier Force Rifle battalions, in which the number of Sikh companies varies from one to four, not to mention the Sappers and Miners. It was in the very first days of the Indians' debut in France that a Sikh company of the 57th Rifles earned fame when it was believed that the line must have given way, holding on all through the night against repeated counter attacks, though the Germans were past them on both flanks. As for the Sappers, the story of Dalip Singh is pure Dumas. This fire-eater helped his fallen officer, Lieut. Rail-Kerr, to cover, stood over him and kept off several parties of Germans by his fire. On one occasion — a feat almost incredible, but well established — he was attacked by twenty of the enemy, but beat them all off and got his officer away.1 Extract taken from The Sepoy, Edmund Candler (London, John Murray, 1919). 1"The Indian Corps in France" by Lieut.-Colonel J. W. B. Merewether, C.I.E., and Sir Frederick Smith. Neuve Chapelle - India's Memorial in France On October 7th, 1927, the Earl of Birkenhead, Secretary of State for India, unveiled the noble Memorial which has been erected by the Imperial War Graves Commission at Neuve Chapelle in France, to the memory of the Indian soldiers who fell on the Western Front in the Great War of 1914-1918…. It is a tribute of special significance in that to build it the Dominions combined with India and the Mother Country, just as in the building of memorials to English, Scots, and Irish, Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, South Africans, and Newfoundlanders, India took her part and paid her share of the cost. In a special sense, too, it marks the gratitude of the great French nation to defend whose soil from German invasion the supreme sacrifice of the Indian Army in France was primarily made. It marks French gratitude because the place where it is built is French soil and because France has received it into her keeping for evermore. For this occasion, unique in the long history of India, a contingent of Indian troops representative of the various units engaged — Sikhs, Dogras, Garhwalis — was specially brought from India in order that they might share in the ceremony and might take back to India a more vivid picture than any photographs can hope to give. Extract taken from Neuve Chappelle - India's Memorial in France 1914-1918, (London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1927). The back semi-circular wall is solid and in the centre of it is a tablet bearing the following inscriptions:- TO THE HONOUR OF THE ARMY OF INDIA WHICH EN HONNEUR DE L'ARMEE DE L'NDE QUI A COM- On the walls on either side the names of the Missing are inscribed in a great semi-circle. Extract taken from Neuve Chappelle - India's Memorial in France 1914-1918, (London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1927). Speaking in French, Marshal Foch told of India's effort in the Allied cause, how she had raised more than a million soldiers, how she had lost upwards of one hundred thousand men. After telling the story of the battles from the 10th to 13th March, 1915, the Marshal described how the Indian Corps opened the attack. "The Indian Troops," he said, "were thus among the first to show the way to a victorious offensive. It is only right that a Memorial should perpetuate the glorious memory of officers, non-commissioned officers, and men of the Indian Army at the very spot where later on a general attack by the Allied troops was to bring the decisive victory in sight." Turning to the Indian Contingent, he bade them: "Return to your homes in the distant, sun-bathed East and proclaim how your countrymen drenched with their blood the cold northern land of France and Flanders, how they delivered it by their ardent spirit from the firm grip of a determined enemy; tell all India that we shall watch over their graves with the devotion due to all our dead. We shall cherish above all the memory of their example. They showed us the way, they made the first steps towards the final victory." Extract taken from Neuve Chappelle - India's Memorial in France 1914-1918, (London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1927).
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