India
Khudadad Khan
1888–1971 Sepoy, 129th Baluchis; machine gunner at Hollebeke, 1914
Khudadad Khan was born in 1888 in the Punjab, in what is now Pakistan, and served as a sepoy in the 129th Duke of Connaught's Own Baluchis of the British Indian Army. His battalion reached France in October 1914. On 31 October, at Hollebeke, Belgium, he was a machine gunner facing a German attack. With the British officer wounded and the other gun hit by a shell, he kept his own gun firing, though wounded, until the rest of the detachment had been killed, then crawled back to his regiment at night. King George V presented the Victoria Cross on 26 January 1915, and Khan is regarded as the first Indian recipient. He retired as a subedar in 1929 and died in 1971.