CHAKWAL: Devar, jeth, ghar wala/Laam gaye tino ghabru/Wekh patt barchaan day loosay/Soaan jang diyan

(My husband his two brothers have all gone to war/The leaves of trees also got scorched hearing news of war)

In a village 17km south of Chakwal there is a forgotten memorial. It stands at raised point at the very entrance to the village, covered almost entirely by shrubbery, the sole relic of Dhedwal’s role in World War I, the 126 men who left the village to fight and the eight who died on battlefields thousands of miles from home.

Dhedwal was funded around 500 years ago during the reign of the Mughal emperor Humayun. It saw some development under the Musharraf regime, when one of its natives, Mohammad Amir Butt — a close aide to then district nazim Sardar Ghulam Abbas — was elected chairman of his union council.

Mr Butt managed to get the boys middle school upgraded to a high school, and the girls primary school upgraded to a middle school.

Dhedwal still looks like a developed village, but both its dispensaries — one for people and one for livestock — are short on doctors. The office of the patwari appears deserted, as he prefers to sit in a rented office in Chakwal city than stay in the village.

Dhedwal is one of the many villages in the Potohar region whose contributions to WWI have been erased from the pages of history, and even the memories of its people.

When the world marked the centenary of the First World War in 2018, the Rawalpindi division — which sent 120,000 soldiers, the highest of any division — did not follow suit.

In The Punjab and the War, M.S. Leigh wrote that Punjab alone supplied half the Indian soldiers in the British Indian Army before WWI broke out; by the end of 1914, 100,000 Punjabis were serving in the army. The figure shot up suddenly when the war began — by the end India recruited more than 1.2 million soldiers and Punjab enlisted more than 360,000. Of these 360,000, 120,000 were from the Rawalpindi division.

Chakwal, Jhelum and Gujar Khan were central recruitment grounds for the army at that time. These areas were arid, agriculture was in poor condition and the region was far from seeing any industrial development.

The war was a blessing in disguise for village leaders, who became key figures in the recruitment process and received fertile agricultural land for their trouble — in addition to appreciatory certificates, titles and more.

Eight out of the nine Victoria Crosses awarded in the Indian Army went to Punjabi soldiers. Dulmial, which sent 460 of its men to war received a cannon which still stands on the banks of the village pond.

Clockwise from top: A memorial of World War I erected near Dhedwal village, the plaque in the memorial shows the number of villagers who participated in the war, Khudadad Khan, a resident of Dab village, who won the first Victoria Cross and Captain Ghulam Mohammad of Dulmial village who sought a cannon when the British asked him and his fellow villagers what reward they wanted for their services. — Photos by the writer

The sacrifices of Dulmial’s soldiers are periodically noted in local and international media, and the village is still — wrongly — known as the largest contributing village in the war. Another 736 soldiers from Dulmial served in World War II.

In actuality, Narra in Attock and Pos Bhangi Khel in Mianwali sent more soldiers than Dulmial did in WWI — 843 people from Narra went to war, along with 516 from Pos Bhangi Khel. Hadali in Khushab sent 437.

According to M.S. Leigh, 65 of Narra’s 843 soldiers were killed in action and another 30 died of wounds and diseases.

Three soldiers won military distinctions and one was awarded a title. The war killed 61,000 Punjabi soldiers and wounded 67,000 more.

M.S. Leigh wrote about some of the women who sent all their sons to war — Mughlani from Rajpur, Saidan from Hattar, Sharfan from Murid and Mirzan and Padshahi from Salhal sent three sons each, while Rakhi from Tatral and Sat Bharai from Jabairpur had four and five sons who enlisted, respectively.

“The suffering of women could only be seen in the folk music of the Potohar region, in which the protagonists are women,” explained Shahid Azad, who teaches English Literature at the Government Postgraduate College in Chakwal.

“Thousand of Punjabis on different military fronts of WWI had their resonance in folk songs that speak of various dimensions of the war that include love, separation, death duty and of fond memories of a ‘Des’ they left behind.

“These songs aesthetically woven in sincerity and emotive impulse are reminiscent of a time when poverty-ridden Punjabis had no other option than joining the army,” explains Mr Azad.

Novels have been written and movies made about the First World War in the West, but despite the trauma its people suffered, Punjab could not document the pain war caused. A few years ago, a writer from Chakwal, Iqbal Feroz, wrote perhaps the first novel on this subject.

“The soldiers who returned from war had countless tales to tell, but no writer from Punjab could document them,” Mr Feroz said.

“The soldiers who thwarted the German army’s movement in Ypres were from Chakwal and Jhelum, but the tales of their bravery have been swept away by the currents of time.”

Recalling the military career of his grandfather, Mr Feroz tells that his grandfather Ghulam Mohammad, hailing from Chak Umra village, was sent to the battlefield.

Unlike common soldiers those who managed to get Viceroy Commission in the Bristh Army were awarded with fertile agricultural lands in the plain areas of central Punjab. But even those officers were not remembered as the world marked centenary of the war recently.

“More than 100 commissioned officers from our village were included in the 460 soldiers of Dulmial who participated in the WWI but they were completely overlooked by the British and Pakistani governments on the occasion of the centenary”, says Riaz Ahmed Malik whose father Subedar Major Mohammad Khan was among those 460 soldiers who went for the war.

“Authorities at least should take some initiative to look after the veterans of World War II as many of them are still alive and living from hand to mouth. The memorials also should be renovated and ceremonies focussing on the services of those soldiers who took part in both wars must be held so that our young generation would know about their past and history could be preserved,” Mr Malik adds.

Published in Dawn, January 13th, 2019