- Don Rob
Don Rob was born in the village of Rehana near Haripur Hazara to a Hindko and
Pashto speaking Pashtun family of the Tareen tribe, the first child of the second wife of Mir Dad Khan, who was a Risaldar Major in Hodson's Horse.Early life
For his basic education, he was enrolled in a school in Sarai Saleh, which was about 4 miles from his village. He used to go to school on a mule's back. Later he was shifted to a school in Haripur, where he started living with his grandmother.
Education
He enrolled at Aligarh University in 1922, but never completed his studies, as he was accepted into the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. He did well at Sandhurst, and was given an officer's post in the British Indian Army and then joined the 1st Battalion of the 14 Punjab regiment (Sherdils), later known as 5 Punjab Regiment.
Military career
During
World War II he served as a captain and later as a major on the Burma front.Following the war, he joined the fledgling Pakistani Army as the 10th ranking senior officer (his Pakistan Army number was 10). He was promoted to Brigadier and commanded a brigade in Waziristan and then was sent initially with the local rank of Major General to East Pakistan (modern day Bangladesh) as General Officer Commanding a division that was responsible for the whole East Wing of Pakistan in 1948, for which non-combatant service he was awarded the Hilal-i-Jurat (HJ) and from where he returned in November 1949 as Adjutant General and then briefly was named Deputy Commander-in-Chief. The events surrounding his appointment marked the first precedent of a Pakistani general being promoted out of turn. Ostensibly because he was the least ambitious of the Generals and the most loyal. He would later go on to serve in the second cabinet (1954) of Muhammad Ali Bogra as Defence Minister, and when Iskander Mirza declared martial law on October 7, 1958, Khan was made its chief martial law administrator. This would be the first of many instances in the history of Pakistan of the military becoming directly involved inReferences
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