02/02/2013
The first gandapur officer commissioned in British Army, belongs to mohallah Musazai (Pak) in Kulachi. The maternal grandfather of Faqir Jamshed khan kamalkhel. The officer graduated from King Edward Medical College Lahore and after completion of his degree, got commissioned in British Army. The officer saw action in North Waziristan Agency, when the British troops were at loggerheads with Faqir of Ippi. On the breakout of WW II, the officer was sent to the British-owned peninsula of Malaya, which was a prize target for the Japanese when they launched their unheralded lightning strikes across the Far East on 8 December 1941. The island chain that comprised the Dutch East Indies, stretched across the Java Sea to the south and east of Malaya, also offered a harvest of natural resources, poorly defended and ripe for the plucking. The Japanese landed at Kota Baharu in northern Malaya on 8 December 1941. Two days later their Air Force sank the 35,000-ton battleship Prince of Wales, flagship of the British Eastern Fleet, and her companion battlecruiser Repulse, in the Gulf of Siam - a huge blow to confidence all round the British Commonwealth. By the beginning of 1942 the defenders of Malaya were forced back onto the island of Singapore, and on 8 February the Japanese launched their decisive assault against the fortress. Once they had captured the city's reservoirs, the end was certain. Singapore surrendered on 15 February 1942, and around 130,000 Allied troops went into captivity. The Indian contingent of the Allied force alone lost 67,450 men and this brave soldier was one of them. The Japanese had sustained 10,000 casualties in effecting this stunning victory.
For the defeated troops more than three years' captivity followed; years of great hardship in Singapore's Changi prison camp and in the other camps which the Japanese ran with such careless indifference to the hunger, sickness and suffering of the inmates. An estimated 300,000 slave labourers died while constructing the notorious jungle railway from Siam to Burma; among them were some 12,000 Allied prisoners-of-war. Untold millions suffered throughout the Far East until August 1945 brought the Japanese surrender and liberation. The account of this brave soldier was later told by his fellows after they were liberated. The officer fought with great zeal, shoulder to shoulder with his troops, albeit he was a doctor and was not supposed to take part in active combat, but he could not see his men dying in front of his eyes and preferred to die rather than the captivity of cruel Japanese. The officer left behind her three daughters and a son in their childhood.
