Darwan Singh Negi
It wasn’t just Australians who answered the call in defence of Britain during the First World War. When Britain declared war on Germany in 1914, it was also able to muster vast numbers of men from India, then the Crown Jewel of its Empire, to serve and potentially die in the conflict.
One such soldier was Darwan Singh Negi. He was born in 1883, in Karbartir Village, India. He served as a rank equivalent to a Corporal in the 1st Battalion of 39th Garhwal Rifles of the Indian Army and was deployed to France on the First World War, during the first months of the conflict. On the night of November 23, 1914, Negi’s unit was ordered to retake some British trenches which had been captured by German soldiers in the area of Festubert, Northern France. In the engagement that followed, Negi was among the first to charge against the Germans, fighting along one stretch of enemy-occupied trenches after another and encountering explosions from bombs and rifle fire from the enemy who fought hard to resist the advance and hold the trenches it had captured. By the time the action ended, and the Allies had succeeded in retaking the trenches, Negi had been wounded twice in the head and also on the arm and was recorded as being drenched in blood from head to toe.
Like so many brave individuals of the First World War, he was also awarded the Victoria Cross. When King George V presented Negi with his Victoria Cross on December 5, 1914, the monarch reportedly asked him “What can I do for you?”. Negi replied that his local village in India was without a school and that a middle school should be started at Karanprayag. The request was immediately actioned.