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00:00In a small village of Chakwal, a young man named Khudadad Khan answered the call of duty.
00:09He joined the 129th Duke of Connaught's own Baloch Regiment,
00:15an all-Muslim regiment of Punjabi and Pathan soldiers.
00:20When World War I broke out in 1914, the British army was crumbling under Germany's advance.
00:27The first regiment rushed to Europe was the 129th Baloch, with the 57th Wilds rifles of the Lahore Division.
00:36They sailed to Marseille, then journeyed by train into the frozen trenches of Belgium,
00:44where they stood shoulder to shoulder with British troops.
00:51In October 1914, at Flanders Fields, the Germans stormed forward.
00:57Khudadad's machine gun crew fell one by one.
01:04Wounded and alone, he kept firing, refusing to surrender.
01:08Before the enemy could overrun him, he wrecked his gun to keep it from capture,
01:17then crawled through the mud, battered but unbroken.
01:22His defiance bought the Allies precious time to reinforce and save the Channel ports.
01:28For this, King George V awarded him the Victoria Cross,
01:35the first ever to a soldier of the British Indian Army,
01:40the first Punjabi, the first Muslim.
01:43He returned home a hero, retiring as a Subadar and lived to see Pakistan born.
01:50Today, his legacy is marked by a statue in Rawalpindi and a memorial in London.
01:59His bravery echoed the struggle of 1.5 million who fought from British India in World War I,
02:08drawn largely from the soil of modern-day Pakistan and northern India,
02:12which provided more troops to the war than all British dominions combined.
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