Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

A fine Great War capture of Baghdad operations M.C. group of nine awarded to Lieutenant-Colonel E. R. Daboo, Indian Medical Service, attached 51st Sikhs

Military Cross, G.V.R., unnamed as issued; 1914-15 Star (Lt., I.M.S.); British War and Victory Medals (Capt., I.M.S.); General Service 1918-62, 1 clasp, Kurdistan (Capt., I.M.S.); India General Service 1908-35, 1 clasp, Waziristan 1921-24 (Capt., I.M.S.); War Medal 1939-45; India Service Medal 1939-45; Jubilee 1935, good very fine and better (9) £800-1000

M.C. London Gazette 18 June 1917:

‘For conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty. He went forward at great personal risk and dressed many wounded men under very heavy fire. He was himself wounded.’

Eruch Ruttonji Daboo was born into a Hindu family in May 1888 and studied at the Bombay and London Hospital before qualifying as a M.B. and B.S. (Bombay) in 1913. Commissioned into the Indian Medical Service as a Temporary Lieutenant in November 1914, he was attached to the 51st Sikhs (Frontier Force), part of 28 Brigade, 7 Indian Division, and landed with his unit in Mespotamia in December 1915.

He subsequently participated in the very costly attempt to relieve the Kut garrison and was present at the engagements of Sheikh Saad, Wadi, Hanna, Dujeilah Redoubt and Sannaiyat, actions that resulted in horrendous casualties to the 51st Sikhs and 28 Brigade as a whole. At Sheikh Saad alone, the Brigade suffered 1000 casualties, and with only four doctors to treat the wounded - Daboo among them - medical facilities rapidly collapsed, so much so that little could be done for the wounded other than the most serious cases - ‘for nights and days on end, [they] lay freezing and bleeding, untended ... no water could be brought to them, and no help was available. At best they were wheeled off to the river bank on jolting carts, and there again abandoned: at worst they lay and died of exposure, or neglect, or further wounds’ (The Siege, by Russell Braddon, refers).

The Kut garrison surrendered in April 1916, but preparations were made for another advance in the new year, and, once again going into action at Sannaiyat at the end of January 1917, the 51st Sikhs lost another 80 men. On 8 March, as the net was closed around Baghdad, the regiment launched an assault against the Turks at Shawa Khan, eight miles south-west of the city, and, attacking in the first wave - across a flat plain under shrapnel and rifle fire - suffered another 75 casualties, including Daboo. As cited in the London Gazette, however, he still managed to attend many of the wounded, and was awarded the M.C.

Baghdad finally fell on 11 March 1917, and the Sikhs and 28 Brigade moved north to attack Mushahidiya. In the following month, in the second phase of the attack on Istabulat, they attacked the ridge before Samarrah, advancing under fire with the Leicesters and storming the enemy positions in moonlight. Bitter fighting followed in a Turkish counter-attack and only four officers of the 51st Sikhs got through unscathed.

Daboo returned to India with the regiment after the Turkish surrender of October 1918, and remained M.O. to the Sikhs in the rank of Captain during the subsequent operations in Kurdistan and Waziristan. He was finally placed on the Retired List in the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel in 1943.