蜜芽传媒

The eleventh of November, Armistice Day, is observed in many Commonwealth countries to commemorate the end of World War One in 1918. It's a time to remember all those who gave their lives in service to their country since 1914. Now military files dating back a century, left unread for most of that time, have been unearthed by a British historian. Amandeep Madra, whose team has digitised the archive to make it available online, uncovered soldiers鈥� stories 鈥� including that of his own great uncle - that have been forgotten by many of their descendants until now.

鈥淚t鈥檚 an extraordinary archive housed in the Lahore Museum that hasn鈥檛 been touched for the best part of a hundred years. The Punjab government 鈥� the region of north-west India which saw the highest recruitment during the First World War 鈥� compiled registers to list every man that went to war with some basic family details and regimental details. And, critically, the village they came from.鈥�

鈥淎nd in that part of India the name of the village is central to (one's) identity so we can now reunite families with their ancestors and their ancestors鈥� military history 鈥� much of which has been lost both to family memory and to researchers."

"Each line of these 320,000 lines of text tells a family story at an individual level - but at an aggregate level we can start now to build up a picture of how India was recruited during the First World War, but also how (they) were commemorated 鈥� whether as equally as their European colleagues.鈥�

(Pic: A single page from the Punjab Registers; Credit: UKPHA Archive)

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