Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

An important K.P.M. awarded to Inspector W. A. Marshall, Punjab Police, for bravery and initiative during the Amritsar troubles of April 1919
King’s Police Medal, G.V.R., 1st issue (Wm. Alex. Marshall, Insp., Punjab Police), good very fine £1200-1500

Recommendation for the K.P.M., submitted to The Rt. Hon. Edwin Montagu, H.M’s Secretary of State for India, dated at Simla, 13 September 1919, states:
‘On 10 April 1919, Mr. Marshall was on duty at the Police Lines level-crossing at Amritsar with an armed reserve of 25 constables. Hearing that the Normal Girls Mission School had been attacked and set on fire, Inspector Marshall left half his reserve to guard the crossing, and with the other half went to the rescue. He drove off the mob, extinguished the fire and saved four Mission ladies who were hiding from the mob in the Mission buildings.’

This was the very day that the Amritsar troubles commenced. Judging by events elsewhere in the holy city, Marshall’s actions may well have saved the four ladies from serious injury or death, or certainly if the fate of Miss Sherwood is anything to go by: a long-standing member of the Zenana Missionary Society, she was dragged off her bicycle and beaten by a gang of Indian youths, chanting nationalist slogans, until she appeared dead. In retaliation, the authorities erected a whipping frame in the street where she had been attacked, and any Indians who wished to use the thoroughfare were ordered to crawl along it. More famously, of course, a military force commanded by Brigadier-General R. E. H. Dyer, C.B., opened fire on a large crowd in the Jallianwala Bagh on the 13 April 1919 - after ten minutes and 1650 rounds, his riflemen ran out of ammunition, and were brought to their feet and marched out, leaving more than 1500 casualties in their wake.