Sephoy Creshen Singh Regiment 30th Punjabi,

Subhana Mitapur Village of Chalanthar, killed in action in Tanzania.

Sipoy Thakur saying saying Regiment 22nd Punjabi killed in action in Mesopotamia.

These are the names of just some of the soldiers from the Punjab who fought during the First World War, whose records were recently unearthed.

Sippoy Gangasing, Regiment 47-6, A Tola Village, Jalanther, died of sickness in Basra.

Sipoy Mahinter Singh, 23rd Sikh pioneers Galipkala village Luthiana.

This is the History Hit Warfare Podcast and I'm your host James Rogers.

It's really a history defining fine that's been reported all around the world.

There were 320,000 records in total and they've now begun to be digitalized by UK-based historians.

It's my great pleasure to welcome one of the lead historians of this project, Gavin Rand, from the University of Greenwich, and amazingly

we have one of the descendants from these soldiers. Dr. Erfan Malik, he has found two great-grandfathers in this

cache of records and he tells us not only where they served and what they did,

but also what this means to him and his family in terms of finding that missing jigsaw piece of their family history.

Enjoy. Hi Gavin, welcome to the history Hit Warfare Podcast. How you doing today?

Delighted to be here, James. Thanks for inviting us.

Not a problem at all. From the very moment that me and the team saw your research and your team's research, we had to get you on the

podcast. This is some real cutting edge groundbreaking stuff because the records of 320,000 Punjab soldiers from the First World War

have been discovered, uncovered and digitized.

I can imagine that that is no easy task

and we can talk about that a little bit later.

Could you tell us, though, these have been uncovered,

they've been found, where have they been found? This is 97 year old material, right? That's the last time it was surfaced.

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