Dr Irfan Malik was just five years-old when he left his native Nottingham to visit his ancestral village of Dulmial in Pakistan. Aside from the heat and the dust and privations of this small agricultural village in the Salt Range Region of the Punjab 100 miles south of Islamabad, one particular detail registered in his young mind: a 12lb British cannon, mounted on a marble plinth ‘in recognition of services rendered by all ranks from this village’ during the First World War.

It was only many years later that Dr Malik, a GP, decided to investigate the extent of Dulmial’s contribution to the Great War following a chance conversation with a patient who was researching the role of Commonwealth troops.

In the four years since, working with historians in England and Pakistan, Dr Malik has discovered the village sent a staggering 460 soldiers – including his two great grandfathers – to fight.

The warriors of Dulmial, a predominantly Muslim village in what was then pre-partition India, were dispatched all over the world: from the Western Front to Tehran to Basra in present day Iraq. Eight of them never came home; those that did returned with their chests glittering with medals.