[17] The Indian Expeditionary Forces deployed to France, Belgium, east Africa, Iraq, Egypt, and the Gallipoli peninsula, among other regions.

[24] With the partition of India and Pakistan on 15 August 1947, the army was reconstituted and divided between the two new Dominions, with the process overseen by Field Marshal Sir Claude Auchinleck.

[31] No divisional staffs were maintained in peacetime, and troops were dispersed throughout the sub-continent, with internal security as their main function.

[40] Lord Kitchener found the army scattered across the country in stations at brigade or regimental strength, and in effect, providing garrisons for most of the major cities.

The Commander-in-Chief's plan called for nine fighting divisions grouped in two corps commands on the main axes through the North-West Frontier.

[41] However, the cost of abandoning some thirty-four stations and building new ones in the proposed corps areas was considered prohibitive, and that aspect of the plan had to be modified.

[42] Under the compromise adopted in 1905, the four existing commands were reduced to three, and together with Army Headquarters, arranged in ten standing divisions and four independent brigades.

This rotating arrangement was intended both to provide all units with experience of active service on the Frontier, and to prevent them becoming 'localised' in static regimental stations.

To emphasise that there was now only one Indian Army, and that all units were to be trained and deployed without regard for their regional origins, the regiments were renumbered into single sequences of cavalry, artillery, infantry of the line, and Gurkha Rifles.

The Indian Army Corps of Engineers was formed by the Group of Madras, Bengal and Bombay Sappers in their respective presidencies.

In 1906 a General Branch was established to deal with military policy, organisation and deployment, mobilisation and war plans, and intelligence and the conduct of operations.

Supporting services were insufficient, and many troops intended for the field force were not moved from their old stations into the areas of their new divisional command.

Some 140,000 soldiers saw active service on the Western Front in France and Belgium – 90,000 in the front-line Indian Corps, and some 50,000 in auxiliary battalions.

British officers that understood the language, customs, and psychology of their men could not be quickly replaced, and the alien environment of the Western Front had some effect on the soldiers.

In November, after a retreat, a scout section of the 1st Battalion 39th Garhwal Rifles under the leadership of Naik Darwan Singh Negi, then badly injured, reinvested lost trenches.

Led by Major General Sir Charles Townshend, they pushed on to capture Baghdad but they were repulsed by Ottoman forces.

[58] Also serving in the First World War were so-called "Imperial Service Troops", provided by the semi-autonomous Princely States.

About 21,000 were raised in the First World War, mainly consisting of Sikhs of Punjab and Rajputs from Rajputana (such as the Bikaner Camel Corps and the Hyderabad, Mysore and Jodhpur Lancers of the Imperial Service Cavalry Brigade).

After the First World War the British started the process of Indianisation, by which Indians were promoted into higher officer ranks.

From a total of about 55,000 Indians taken prisoner in Malaya and Singapore in February 1942, about 30,000 joined the INA,[63] which fought Allied forces in the Burma Campaign.

Many of these men suffered severe hardships and brutality, similar to that experienced by other prisoners of Japan during the Second World War.

12 September 1946 the minister for external affairs in India, Jawaharlal Nehru demanded in a letter to the Commander in Chief and Defence Secretary, that a large-scale reform should be implemented to improve the Indian Army.

[67] As Brian Lapping wrote, "By comparison with the two great provinces [Bengal & Punjab], partition of the army and the civil service was easy, though by any other standard, it was difficult, wasteful, and destructive.

During the transition period after partition, those Gurkha regiments that were in Pakistan, did their service, but were eventually moved back to India.

But, the partition resulted in more ethnic imbalance in the Pakistani military, mainly because the new nation state of Pakistan was formed by joining West Punjab, NWFP, East Bengal, Baluchistan, and Sind.

Writing in The Indian Army (1834), Sir John Malcolm, who had a lifetime's experience of Indian soldiering, wrote about the Bengal Presidency: "They consist largely of Rajpoots (Rajput), who are a distinguished race among the Khiteree (Kshatriya), or Brhamins (Brahmin) We may judge of the size of these men when we are told that the height below which no recruit is taken is five feet six inches.

The title was used before the creation of a unified British Indian Army; the first reported holder was then-Major Stringer Lawrence in 1748.

Lawrence went to India with no larger command than a "small undisciplined garrison of two or three hundred men" facing a significant French presence.

Accordingly, vacancies in the Indian Army were much sought after and generally reserved for the higher placed officer-cadets graduating from the Royal Military College, Sandhurst.

[30] After the Mutiny, recruitment switched to what the British called the "martial races", particularly Sikhs, Awans, Gakhars, and other Punjabi Musulmans, Baloch, Pashtuns, Marathas, Bunts, Nairs, Rajputs, Yadavs, Kumaonis, Gurkhas, Garhwalis, Janjuas, Maravars, Kallars, Vellalar, Dogras, Jats, Gurjar, Mahars and Sainis.