An exhibition charting the efforts of soldiers from India to the Allies’ in the First World War is to be displayed at the Gunnersbury Park café.
The exhibition, which will be on display at the café in Gunnersbury Avenue from July 31 until August 27, is on a whistle-stop tour of the UK from its base at the University of Kent, as part of commemorations marking the centenary of the First World War.
More than 1m Indian soldiers were deployed overseas in the Great War, sharing in the horrors of the trenches on the Western Front.
They were the first to repel the Germans at Ypres in 1914 and, in the course of the four-year conflict, 74,000 gave their lives in service.
During the war, Indian troops earned 9,200 decorations including 11 Victoria Crosses – the highest honour that can be bestowed on a soldier serving with the British military, reserved for those who display extreme bravery.
Reproductions of 100-year-old photographs are being lent to the borough by Gateways to the First World War, a centre set up thanks to cash from the Arts and Humanities Research Council.
Councillor Ed Mayne, Hounslow Council's cabinet member for public health and leisure, said: “The Indian Army paid such a vital role in the First World War, but 100 years after the Guns of August rang out across Europe, their service to the nation seems to have been lost to the annals of time, which is terrible.
“We are very pleased to be hosting this exhibition and I hope many people will have the opportunity to see it. There are some fascinating snapshots of military life and what it must have been like for these soldiers to travel so far to fight in a conflict so far removed from their own experiences.”
Ealing Council leader Julian Bell said: “It is so important to remember that it was a world war and there were brave soldiers from across the globe without whose efforts and sacrifice the war may not have been won.
"We have many generations of people living in the borough with roots in the Indian subcontinent and so this exhibition may even tell the stories of some of their relatives.”
The café is hosting the exhibition while the Gunnersbury Park Museum is closed for the first phase of its £21m restoration.
