Ist world War۔The call of Duty۔

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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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