New research has uncovered names of an additional 9,909 Indian soldiers who died in WW1 but were not accounted for earlier. This flows from a 5-yr research project - The Punjab Registers: Recovering the Names of India's Fallen Servicemen - of Commonwealth Graves War Commission, UK Punjab Heritage Association (UKPHA), and University of Greenwich. On the 100th anniversary of WW1 observed over 2014 and 2018, media overflowed with tales of courage of 1.4 mn Indian troops at Flanders, Gallipoli and other battlefields.
More relevant would have been to bemoan the voluntary conversion of so many Indians into cannon fodder in a fight between colonial powers. WW1 was a tale of folly and futility, of soldiers galore being slaughtered whenever they tried to attack a trench defended with machine guns. British PM David Lloyd George is credited with saying it was 'just blood, mud, and futility'. No glory accompanied soldiers being sent 'over the top' to near-certain death.
Joan Littlewood's satirical 1963 musical, Oh, What a Lovely War! , starts with soldiers in a trench singing:
Up to your waist in water,
Up to your eyes in slush -
Using the kind of language,
That makes the sergeant blush;
Who wouldn't join the army?
That's what we all inquire,
Don't we pity the poor civilians sitting beside the fire.
News of hundreds of mutinies on both sides was supressed to maintain the fiction of heroism of the war effort. Littlewood's play has a scene with an officer telling his troops to charge to attack enemy trenches. The soldiers refuse to move. The officer asks, 'Do you want to be shot for mutiny?' No, they don't. And so, reluctantly, they charge forward, bleating like sheep to the slaughter. That is what bravery in WW1 amounted to.
