A full-length portrait of a sepoy in a long trench coat, with spurs on his shoes. He wears a pagri and kulla on his head and holds a lance in one hand.
In October 1914 Paul Sarrut was in Orleans, sketching the Indian Army Corps, who had arrived in Marseilles the previous month and were en route to the Western Front. It was a baptism of fire for the members of those troops, brought in to support the Allies just as the chill of the changing seasons was setting in across Europe. These first soldiers were largely members of Native regiments from the Northwest Frontier regions. The shock of the European climate and culture, combined with inadequate uniform better suited to the tropics, and the brutal totality of trench warfare on the Western Front, made the experiences of these soldiers particularly harrowing.
Though granted a common name, the subject of this sketch may be the same Amir Khan who on 18th March 1915 wrote home to his brother Lance Naik Khan Zaman (84th Rifles, Rawalpindi District, Pubjam). The following excerpt is translated from the Urdu, and gives a sense of the conditions endured by soldiers in the Indian Corps: “God knows whether the land of France is stained with sin or whether the Day of Judgement has begun in France. For guns and of rifles [sic] there is now a deluge, bodies upon bodies, and blood flowing. God preserve us, what has come to pass! From dawn to dark and from dark to dawn it goes on like the hail that fell at Swarra[?] camp. But especially our guns have filled the German trenches with dead and made them brim with blood. God grant us grace, for grace is needed. Oh God, we repent! Oh God, we repent!” (Omissi).
The author of the letter was a member of the 129th Duke of Connaught’s Own Baluchis, a regiment made up of Punjabi Musalmans, Mahsuds, and Pathan soldiers. The regiment was the earliest of the Indian Expeditionary Force to see action, at the First Battle of Ypres which began on October 19th 1914, the same month in which this drawing was made. During the battle, a member of the regiment named Kudadad Khan found himself under such heavy German artillery fire that all of his companions were cut down around him. Though wounded, Khan held his post, manning his machine gun alone for a whole day, and managed to singlehandedly fend off the German advance. For this act of bravery he was awarded the Victoria Cross, making him the first British Indian subject to receive the highest military award for gallantry.
Camille Georges Paul Sarrut (1882-1969) was a French soldier who studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. At the outbreak of the war he enlisted, and was immediately seconded into the British Army as an interpreter for British and Indian soldiers. He made many sensitive studies of his fellow soldiers, particularly those in the Indian Expeditionary Force, and after war he prepared a portfolio of engravings which were published as British and Indian Troops in Northern France, 70 War Sketches, 1914-1915.
Omissi, David. Indian Voices of the Great War 1914-18. (London, Macmillan, 1999), p,43.
