Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

A fine O.B.I. and North West Frontier I.D.S.M. group of nine awarded to Subadar Dost Muhammad, 5/12th Frontier Force Regiment (Queen Victoria’s Own Corps of Guides)

Order of British India, 1st Class, 2nd type neck badge, gold and enamel; Indian Distinguished Service Medal, G.VI.R. (Subdr. Dost Mohd. 5-12 F.F.R.) suspension rod replaced; British War and Victory Medals (342 Nk. Dost Mohd., 1 Bn. Cps. Guides) the Victory medal with naming erased; India General Service 1908-35, 4 clasps, Afghanistan N.W.F. 1919, North West Frontier 1930-31, Mohmand 1933, North West Frontier 1935 (342 Nk. Dost Mohd, 1-Bn. Corps of Guides); India General Service 1936-39, 1 clasp, North West Frontier 1936-37 (1070 Subdr. Dost Mohd., 5-12 F.F.R.); Defence and War Medals; Jubilee 1935, court mounted, the earlier medals a little polished, otherwise nearly very fine or better (9)
£3000-3500

O.B.I. 1st Class awarded 2 June 1943.

I.D.S.M. Gazette of India 195H of 1937. Awarded for the operations in the Khaisora Valley, North West Frontier, November 1936:

‘Subadar Dost Muhammad, for his able leading of “C” Company, and his gallantry in calling in his picquets in the dark on 25th November 1936.’

Dost Muhammad was a Yusufzai Pathan. He was described by one former officer as a big stalwart man with great character and charm, and by another as ‘good, quiet and thoroughly reliable.’

Shortly after the outbreak of the First World War he enlisted in the First Battalion of the Corps of Guides Infantry. He served with the Battalion in India and, in 1917-18, in Iraq. By 1919 Dost Muhammad had been promoted to Naik and he participated in the hard fought campaign in Afghanistan and on the North West Frontier. Throughout the 1920s he saw routine soldiering with the regiment on the Frontier and achieved further promotion to Havildar and then, in 1930, to Jemadar.

In the 1930s he saw a great deal of active service on the North West Frontier. In 1930-31 the Guides were deployed against the Afridis on the outskirts of Peshawar, and in 1933 they were in action against the Mohmands on the northern part of the Frontier. There was another campaign against the Mohmands in 1935 and on 29 September of that year the Guides fought a fierce battle near the village of Wucha Jawar. Dost Muhammad was by then a Subadar and in charge of the machine gun platoon.

The enemy were known to be in force on a precipitous mountain marked on the map as Point 4080. The ridge leading to this had on it three lower features, known from their appearance as Teeth, Nipple and Pimple. The whole country was very ‘big’ and the route from Teeth to Pt 4080, past Nipple and Pimple, was along the narrowest of ridges, with precipitous slopes on either hand.

Lieutenant G. J. Hamilton, who commanded “B” Company of the Guides, later recorded how he reached Teeth with no difficulty except for the atrocious going, clambering in the dark over huge boulders and lumps of shale which sometimes shifted and trundled noisily down the hill through those below. As dawn broke he studied the scene through his field-glasses; he could see that “C” Company were already in position on Nipple, and ‘the two Vickers machine-guns were being lugged up the last few hundred feet of almost perpendicular cliff…’

A little later he observed the leading platoons move out from Pimple onto the approaches to Pt 4080, and come under heavy fire from the concealed tribesmen; ‘In reply, the two machine-guns opened fire with their familiar rattle …’

The enemy fire increased in intensity and accuracy and the survivors of “A” and “C” companies, together with Battalion Headquarters, were all pinned down on the lower slopes of Pt 4080. Hamilton was then ordered to bring up two platoons as reinforcements:

‘We went like hunted chamois over the rocks,’ wrote Hamilton, ‘sliding down into the dips on our backsides and scrambling up vertical cliffs... The final approach to Nipple was almost vertical rock... but we made it, only slowed down by the constant stream of wounded making their way back from the RAP to the valley below. Many were in a bad way and had great difficulty in negotiating the cliff-holds.

I... sped to Subadar Dost Muhamad of the machine-gun platoon. The enemy fire was intense as the number of dead and wounded on that small hilltop showed. More were arriving every minute from the hill beyond. Frank, the doctor, was not far away behind a rocky outcrop; his hands were red with blood as he splinted a knee-bone shattered by a dumdum bullet. “The Dost” put me in the picture which was a black story of disaster. No Battalion Headquarters let as they had all gone forward with the six leading platoons, the battered remains of which were now in full flight down the hillside. “All the Sahibs killed,” said he.’

The end on Pt 4080 was witnessed through field-glass by an artillery observer with another battalion. Tribesmen started collecting the arms of the dead and wounded. Five of the Guides struggled up to fight again and killed one of them. A signaller, propped up against a rock, started flashing a lamp, a signal which no-one read. Meynell, the Adjutant, was seen standing on a rock, defending himself with a rifle butt. Soon all were shot or stabbed.

The Guides lost two officers and twenty soldiers killed in the battle. Captain Godfrey Meynell was awarded a posthumous Victoria Cross.

Hamilton himself was shot in the stomach but survived to be awarded the D.S.O. Writing in a personal letter fifty years later, as a retired Major-General, Hamilton added that Dost Muhammed should have been decorated:

‘He commanded the Machine Gun platoon during the fight on Pt 4080 in ‘35 and should have got decorated. They brought the MGs and ammunition up 2000 feet or more in the dark to give covering fire to the assault companies at first light - no mean feat up frantic, trackless peaks!’

On 25 November 1936, the Guides were carrying out operations against the Tori Khel in Waziristan’s Lower Khaisora Valley. In accordance with the usual practice picquets were posted on the high features, the ridges near Zerpezai, to protect the advance but progress was slower than anticipated and the column did not reach camp until nightfall. Dost Muhammad, then Subadar of “C” Company, carried out the difficult and dangerous work of withdrawing the picquets in the darkness and brought in the baggage train and rearguard. For this valuable service he was awarded the Indian Distinguished Service Medal, one of the first to be awarded in the new reign.

By now he was a distinguished Viceroy’s Commissioned Officer with more than twenty years of service. He was presented with the Order of British India, Second Class, which entitled him to use the title “Bahadur” or Brave. He apparently retired before 1939.

Following the outbreak of the Second World War, Dost Muhammad was re-employed on 25 November 1940. He served in India and with PAIFORCE in Persia and Iraq. In 1943 he was promoted to the First Class of the Order of British India, with the title “Sardar Bahadur”.

Subadar Dost Muhammad, Sardar Bahadur, O.B.I., I.D.S.M., retired again at the end of the war, having served in the Guides for some thirty years.

Sold with a file of research including original letters from Major-General Godfrey Hamilton and Brigadier P. R. Macnamara, both mentioning Dost Muhammad.