The Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) has added 9,909 men previously omitted from commemoration records, recognising them as casualties of the First World War who died of injuries away from the battlefield.The soldiers have now been acknowledged through the Punjab Registers project, a five-year partnership between the CWGC, the UK Punjab Heritage Association, and the University of Greenwich.During the First World War, more than 1.4 million men from the Indian Army served on all major battlefronts.One in six soldiers fighting for the British came from pre-partition India, with half a million from Punjab, including Sikh, Muslim, Hindu and Christian servicemen. Yet, many of these men have long been overlooked in mainstream histories.Early work on the Punjab Registers showed that some soldiers listed as having died during the conflict were missing from CWGC records and commemorations. The majority of the missing casualties were men who had died in non-operational zones within India during the war.Due to rulings made by the British Indian Government at the time, these men were not afforded war graves status, and so their names were never shared with the Commission. This project has overturned that decision, read the statement.A major verification process was undertaken. A CWGC-funded PhD student at the University of Greenwich, George Williams, and nineteen volunteers from around the world, many with personal ties to the Registers, examined 15,935 deaths and compared them with 74,000 existing CWGC Indian Army records.Their enormous effort was supported by computer-assisted analysis, and each stage was reviewed by the CWGC and Indian Army specialists. The process revealed that 9,909 casualties were missing from the records. The Punjab Registers project forms part of the Commission’s wider Non-Commemoration Programme, established in 2021 to address historical inequalities in commemoration.So far, the programme has identified more than 20,000 additional names for commemoration, the statement reads. In a statement on its social media handle X, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) stated, “Today, we are announcing the largest single addition to our casualty records since the Second World War, following a major international research project drawing on rare historical records.” “A total of 9,909 Indian Army servicemen, previously missing from our records, have now been added, correcting a past historical omission that meant they were never formally commemorated,” the statement reads.”This milestone is the outcome of the Punjab Registers project, a five-year partnership between the CWGC, the UK Punjab Heritage Association (UKPHA), and the University of Greenwich. Together, the organisations digitised and analysed a rare and fragile collection of documents held at Lahore Museum, containing the names and service details of approximately 3,20,000 Punjabi recruits,” reads the statement on the website of the Commonwealth War Graves.Claire Horton CBE, Director General of the CWGC, said: “Over a century after the end of the First World War, our mission endures, ensuring all those who died in the service of the Commonwealth receive the commemoration they deserve. The Punjab Registers project is a landmark moment in that mission.The recovery of every one of these 9,909 names helps restore missing chapters in family and world histories.It stands as a constant, timeless reminder that commemoration is not only about the past, it is about personal identity, family legacy, and recognizing the human cost of war.”“The CWGC remains committed to meaningful physical commemoration and to working with governments and nations to seek their views on a memorial to honor these individual soldiers with the dignity and respect they so rightly deserve,” stated Horton.