Sepoy Bagga Khan 28th Punjabis d.19/01/16

[christine liava'a]

Remembering Today:

Sepoy BAGGA KHAN, 1066 28th Punjabis, who died on 19.01.16. Basra Memorial, Iraq

Name: BAGGA KHAN

Nationality: Indian

Rank: Sepoy

Regiment: 28th Punjabis

Date of Death: 19/01/1916

Service No: 1066

Additional information: Son of Taiz Ullah, of Tangri, Jhelum, Punjab.

Casualty Type: Commonwealth War Dead

Grave/Memorial Reference: Panel 54

Cemetery: BASRA MEMORIAL

The Basra Memorial was originally sited within Basra War Cemetery but in 1997 the Memorial was moved by presidential decree. The move, carried out by the authorities in Iraq, involved a considerable amount of manpower, transport costs and sheer engineering on their part, and the Memorial has been re-erected in its entirety.

The Basra Memorial is now located 32 kilometres along the road to Nasiriyah, in the middle of what was a major battleground during the Gulf War. The Panel Numbers quoted at the end of each entry relate to the panels dedicated to the Regiment served with. In some instances where a casualty is recorded as attached to another Regiment, his name may alternatively appear within their Regimental Panels.

Please refer to the on-site Memorial Register Introduction to determine the alternative panel numbers if you do not find the name within the quoted Panels.

Historical Information: The Basra Memorial bears the names of more than 40,500 members of the Commonwealth forces who died in the operations in Mesopotamia from the Autumn of 1914 to the end of August 1921 and whose graves are not known.

No. of Identified Casualties: 40661

[Guest Pete Wood]

At the outbreak of war, the 28th Punjabis were based in Lahore; part of 3rd Ambala Bde.

3rd Ambala (Cavalry) Brigade, Ambala [Major General Pirie]

8 Hussars

9 Horse

30 Lancers

Lahore

23 Cavalry

1 Duke of Wellington’s

23 Pioneers

28 Punjabis

The Punjabs, pioneers of the famed Frontier Force, gave to the military world the uniform that put the word ‘Khaki’ into the universal lexicon. The belt that officers in many armed forces still wear immortalizes the name of one of their officers, Sam Browne. The humble regimental water carrier, Jumma, was the real life model for the Rudyard Kipling’s magnificent hero Gunga Din. In Calcutta in 1898, Capt Bertie Clay invented the dum-dum bullet; the effective means to counter the heroic Afridi rebels of the north-west, who were disdainful of conventional weapons and death.

In fact the 28th Punjabis were still fighting in the NW region in the second year of the Great War – and served against the Mohmands and Swattis near Hafiz Kor and Shabkadar on the Northwest Frontier during Aug-Oct 1915.

The 28th Punjabis were then sent to Mesopotamia.

Sepoy BAGGA KHAN died two days before the infamous third attempt (aka Battle of the Hanna) to relieve the trapped British forces in Kut-al-Amara, where once again the Punjabis took very heavy casualties. The 28th Punjabis had already been involved in two earlier attempts to dislodge the Turkish army surrounding Kut. So ‘our’ man may have died from wounds in the previous actions (battles of Sheikh Sa'ad and Wadi), a few days earlier.

The rank of Sepoy is the equivalent of the rank of Private. The Punjabis, like all Indian regiments, contained a large number of British officers, many of whom also fell in action.

[christine liava'a]

History of the Punjab Regiment

The Sige of Kut Al Amara 1916