With the Indian Expeditionary Force

A rare surviving postcard from the Indian Expeditionary Force, the troops sent to fight with the Allies in Europe during World War I. It is addressed in Urdu to “M. Boucharde, Chambre du Commerce, Rouen, France," and postmarked the day before the war ended. Although most Indian troops had left the European theatre by this time, during the first two years of the war, some 10-20,000 letters and postcards were being sent each week by troops back home, and the fact that such a card in Urdu could be expected to circulate within the postal service shows how multi-lingual the troops service was at the time.