China 1900, A Hong Kong Regiment Family Pair to Subadar-Major Sardar Khan who was decorated with the Order of the Indian Empire for repelling a Boxer attack on the Tientsin Arsenal Train Station and his nephew Private Jiwan Khan, comprising: China 1900, single clasp, Relief of Pekin, impressed (975 Subr. Maj: Sardar Khan C.I.E. Hong Kong Regt.), no clasp, impressed (632 Pte Jiwan Khan. Hong Kong Regt, ), both with minor edge bruises, very fine or slightly better [100 Relief of Pekin clasps issued to the Hong Kong Regiment] (2) Subadar Major Sardar Khan: Companion of the Order of the Indian Empire: London Gazette: 25 July 1901 - ‘For Services in China.’ Mentioned in Lieutenant General Gaselee’s Despatch: London Gazette:14 May 1901 - ‘Hong Kong Regiment, Subadar-Major Sardar Khan also deserves recognition.’ Promotion from Subadar to Subadar Major: London Gazette: 20 April 1900. The following account of the action for which Sardar Khan received the C.I.E. is recorded in Gordon Casserly, The Land of the Boxers: or China under the Allies, London 1903. On page 16. a Boxer attack on the Tientsin Arsenal train station repulsed by the Hong Kong Regiment is described. The attack lasted four hours during which the Hong Kong Regiment’s casualties were 3 killed and 9 wounded. ‘A commonplace, uninteresting place at first sight-just the ordinary railway station with the usual sheds, iron bridge, offices, refreshment-room, yet here, not long before white men and yellow had closed in deadly struggle, and the rails and platforms had been dyed red with the blood of heroes. The sides of the iron water-tank, the walls of the engine-house, were patched and repaired, for shells from the most modern guns had rained on them for days. The stone walls were loopholed and bullet splashed. Many of the building were roofless, their shattered ruins attesting the accuracy of the Chinese Gunners. At yonder corner the fanatical Boxers had burst in a wild night attack, and even European soldiers had retreated before the fury of their onslaught. But the men of the hitherto untried Hong Kong Regiment, sturdy sons of the Punjaub plains or frontier hills, had swept down 16 on them with cold steel and bayoneted them in and under the trucks; until even Chinese fanaticism could stand it no longer and the few survivors fled in the friendly darkness. For that brave exploit the Subadar-Major of the corps now wears the Star of the Indian Empire. From the mud walls of that village, scarce two hundred yards away, the European-drilled imperial troops, armed with the latest magazine rifles, had searched with deadly aim every yard of open ground over which the defenders advanced. Across this ditch the Boxers, invincible in their mad belief, had swarmed in the face of murderous fire, and filled it with their dead. Not a foot of ground in that prosaic railway station but had its tale of desperate fanaticism or disciplined valour.’ The Hong Kong regiment was an Indian Army regiment seconded to the British Army to form part of the Hong Kong Garisson, formed in 1891, they arrived in Hong Kong the following year. Its soldiers were recruited from native Indians from Upper India. Apart from supressing disturbances in the New Territories in 1897, the only action it saw was in the Relief of Pekin during the Third China War. Due to the high cost of maintaining the regiment it was disbanded in 1902 at the request of the India Office. Its troops were transferred to the newly formed 67th Punjabis.

Estimate: GBP 700 - 1000