During the First World War, in the campaign in Mesopotamia, my grandfather’s battalion, the 1/67 Punjabis, had fought alongside five ‘Mahratta’ battalions.1 These included the 5th Royal ‘Mahrattas’ as part of 6th Poona Division led by Major General Charles Townshend. Life has a way of coming full circle. This was the same battalion that I had the great privilege to command from 1985 to 1987 in Hyderabad, seventy years later.
In the siege of Kut-el-Amara (in present-day Iraq), the 6th Division of the British Indian Army was surrounded and cut off by the Turkish forces as shown in Sketch 2.1. During this battle, which lasted from November 1915 to April 1916, the defenders had to go on half-rations, then on a quarter, and finally, they had to eat their own mules or starve to death. The ‘Mahratta’ soldiers refused to eat horse flesh. It was then that Chhatrapati Shahu Maharaj, their king and descendant of Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, appealed to the soldiers in a cable that ‘survival is more important and essential than superstitions and taboos’. Finally, famished, exhausted and depleted, the division had to capitulate. All the gallant officers and men ended up as prisoners of war (POWs) of the Turks. These POWs were made to march across the Iraqi desert to Syria. Further, they had to undergo hard labour and were employed by the Turkish army to construct the railway to connect this region with Syria and Turkey. Some were even subjected to torture while in captivity. Most of them perished due to sickness, malnutrition or torture.
Sketch 2.1 (From A Royal Tribute by Major General E. D’Souza, ARB Interactive, Mumbai 2005.)
In a way, my grandfather was fortuitous to have been wounded in an earlier phase of the siege, and was evacuated by the Red Cross and taken out of the theatre along with the other casualties. He took a machine-gun burst on his right elbow, and the joint, along with the radius and the ulna, got shattered. As a young soldier all of twenty years, he was sad to be hors de combat, even though there was no way he could have remained in the theatre of operations. He lost the use of his right arm; but fortunately, it was saved from amputation by timely medical attention. Seriously wounded soldiers were sent to hospitals in the UK or the south of France. Grandpa spent many months recuperating in a hospital in France on the Mediterranean coast. Once, his eyes gleaming, he told us, ‘Asi te memaa samundar kande nangiya nahandia wekhian san!’ (We saw European ladies bathing in the nude on the beaches). This was how and when the ‘French connection’ of our family commenced.
For the ‘Mahrattas’, the Mesopotamian campaign was an epoch-making phase of their impressive and ancient martial tradition of bearing arms. As a mark of honour for the regiment’s impressive display of gallantry, steadfastness, and ability to withstand the harsh battlefield conditions and severe deprivations in the First World War, it was given the title of ‘Light Infantry’. All the paltans (battalions) suffered heavy casualties; some had to be re-raised during the war itself, albeit with reinforcements from sister battalions and with fresh recruitment. It was during this campaign that the 117th Battalion, now the Fifth Battalion, was given the honorific title of ‘Royal’ for conspicuous gallantry and the most outstanding standards of conduct, discipline and dedicated service.
India – Punjab and Maharashtra, in particular – lost thousands of young men in foreign lands, for the British Empire, for a free world, for the glory of their ‘paltan’. They lived and died for ‘naam’, ‘nishaan’, ‘namak’, ‘dastur’ and ‘izzat’ (their name, colours, loyalty, tradition and honour).These were simple, disciplined, sincere and hard-working men from rural backgrounds but when required, they could be ferocious fighters and second to none in gallantry. It wouldn’t be wrong to say that they remain so even today.
1 These were: the 103rd, 1 Maratha LI (Jangi Paltan), the 105th, 2 Maratha LI (Kali Panchwin), the 110th, 2 Para (converted from 3 Maratha LI), the 114th, presently the Maratha LI Regimental Centre (converted from 10 Maratha LI in 1922), and the 117th, 5 Maratha LI (Royal).