Last surviving Victoria Cross holder dies at 85

NEW DELHI: Honorary Captain Umrao Singh, the last surviving Indian recipient of the Victoria Cross and probably the most recognisable face of Republic Day parade through the past five decades, is dead.  He was 85.

Singh won the British Empire’s highest gallantry award by staging a life-defying fight against Japanese in the bloody battlefield of Burma during the World War II. He was not only a military hero, but was also an inspiration back in his village of Palra in Haryana, which has sent more young men to Indian military than any other locality in the country. 

Like millions of young men around the world, Singh joined the British Army when the Empire was recruiting soldiers across South Asia to fight the might of Axis Powers. Over two million of them went to fight for the Allies. 24-year-old Havildar Umrao went to Burma.

He was deployed in the Kaladan Valley in Arakan, Burma on December 15, 1944, and was looking after a gun position when the Japanese guns and mortars were opened on the post for over an hour and a half. And then the Japanese soldiers launched four waves of assaults on the position.

Although wounded by grenade splinters, Umrao inspired his comrades to fight away the Japanese attacks. But the final Japanese assault over-ran an accompanying gun and his unit had exhausted all the ammunition. According to official records, Umrao seized the gun barrel and closed on the Japanese soliders, fighting them hand-to-hand.

Some six hours later, when the British soldiers recovered Umrao’s gun position, they discovered him in an unconscious state by his gun with some 22 bullet and shrapnel wounds. Around him 10 Japanese soldiers lay dead. And for this death-defying act, Umrao was awarded the Victoria Cross.

After Independence Umrao continued to serve the Indian Army and always had a pride of place in the Republic Parade in the Capital since it began.

In 1970 Umrao retired back to his backward village, where he brought together villagers to start a new school. Despite opposition from other members of his Jat community, Umrao sent his daughter to school and got her college education too.

Through his naïve posturing and wit, Umrao always lived up to the fame surrounding Victoria Cross. In 1995, during the 50th year of World War II anniversary, British Prime Minister John Major increased the paltry pension of 100 pounds given to VC winners to 1300 pounds annually, after meeting this VC winner in “turban.”

In 1982, Umrao beat off a British antique dealer’s efforts to buy off his VC medal, saying it would be a disgrace to the award and memory of men who fell by him during history’s bloodiest war.

For antique dealers around the world, this medal cast from bronze cascabels of two cannons of Chinese origin captured from Russians during the siege of Sevastopol in 1854 during the Crimean War is a treasure.