Orders, Decorations and Medals

The important George Cross awarded to Lieutenant-Colonel Mahmood Khan Durrani for his outstanding courage under severe torture whilst a prisoner-of-war of the Japanese

GEORGE CROSS, the reverse officially inscribed (Capt. Mahmood Khan Durrani, Indian State Forces, 23 May, 1946) in its Royal Mint case of issue, some scratches and contact marks otherwise very fine and rare

George Cross, London Gazette, 23 May, 1946: ‘Captain Mahmood Khan Durrani, 1st Bahawalpur Infantry, Indian State Forces.’

During the withdrawal of Malaya in 1942 Captain Durrani was cut off with a small party and succeeded in remaining free in hiding for three months, when he was betrayed to the Indian Nationalist Army and was sent to a Japanese Prisoner of War Camp. He refused to become a member of the Japanese-sponsored Indian Nationalist Army and took active steps to thwart Japanese efforts to infiltrate members of that organisation into India. In fact he conceived the idea of founding a school to send Muslim agents into India to oppose the ideas the Japanese were trying to put across. To start with his efforts were successful but in May 1944 the Japanese arrested him and he was subjected to every form of torture in an effort to find out his accomplices in the scheme. As this produced no result he was handed over to the Indian Nationalist Army where he was again tortured and even condemned to death, but he still refused to give any information. The end of the war brought his liberation, but his health was affected for many years.

Captain Durrani was invested with the George Cross by Field Marshall Lord Wavell at Delhi in 1947. The investiture was boycotted by Mr. Nehru and his interim Government, although Durrani was then the only living Indian to have received the decoration. These boycotts were possibly because of protests by members of the Indian National Army against the award to Captain Durrani whom they accused of 'disloyalty' to that body. The traitors who joined the Indian National Army under the Quisling Chandra Bose and the Japanese in Malaya were, according to Colonel Durrani, given grants of land and pensions, along with loyal troops, when they returned to India. 'I have had nothing he said 'I have seen the ruin of my promising Army career. My position is extremely precarious. I have never been discharged, dismissed, sent a pension or left in a position to follow any other profession.' Of his fellow officers who joined the Indian National Army Durrani said, 'They made life hot for me and in the disturbances of August 1947 they manipulated a case of murder and banditing against me when troops under my command were escorting a refugee caravan to India from Pakistan and a firing incident took place. I was put under close arrest but never brought before any court. My relatives sent cables to the War Office, London, to Mr. Churchill and even to King George VI.'

The man the Japs could not break escaped to his native Pakistan and his case was brought before the Government with unexpected results - 'I was promptly arrested and spent five months in a jail as bad as any I had occupied under the Japs without any charge ever being brought against me.' He came to England for the first time in January 1956 for the publication of his book 'The Sixth Column' in which he relates his harrowing war time experiences at the hands of the Japanese. Colonel Durrani became one of the first George Cross Committee members of the V.C. and G.C. Association, and when the Queen gave her Garden Party for the members in July 1962, he took his wife out of purdah and brought her over to England from Pakistan specially so that she could be presented to Her Majesty. In the words of the late Sir John Smyth V.C., M.C. 'The British Conmnonwealth holds no more loyal and enthusiastic supporter than Colonel Mahmood Durrani.'