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Khudadad Khan VC

On August 8^th, 1914 two infantry divisions and a cavalry brigade of the Indian Army were ordered to prepare for overseas service, following a plan devised by then-Maj. Gen. Sir Douglas Haig in 1910. Units of this ‘Indian Expeditionary Force’ began arriving in France in September and at the end of October they were rushed up to stop a German advance during the First Battle of Ypres in Belgium. It was here  that Sepoy Khudadad Khan (1888 – 1971), of the 129^th Duke of Connaught’s Own Baluchis, performed the act of gallantry for which he later received the Victoria Cross, becoming the first Indian-born soldier and the first Muslim to be so honored. ...read more

Lying squarely in the middle of the 1916 Somme Battlefield, Caterpillar Valley was the name given by the army to the long swale which rises eastwards, past “Caterpillar Wood”, to the high ground at Guillemont. Longueval village is on the northern edge of the feature and 500 meters west of the village, on the south side of the road, is the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) Memorial to the Missing and Cemetery. ...read more

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) Le Touret Memorial to the Missing is located in the cemetery of the same name near Richebourg, Pas-de-Calais, France. The memorial is a loggia surrounding an open rectangular court that dominates the eastern side of the site. The names of those commemorated are listed on panels set into the walls of the court and the gallery, arranged by regiment, rank and alphabetically by surname within the rank. The memorial was dedicated in 1930 and was designed by John Reginald Truelove (1886 – 1942), a protégé of Sir Edwin Lutyens, who had served as an officer with the 1^st Battalion 24^th County of London Regiment (The Queen’s). He also created the Vis-en-Artois Memorial to the Missing for the CWGC. ...read more