Indian War Journal

The Indian tri-services contingent marched in Paris to the tune of "Saare Jahan se Achcha" on the occasion of Bastille Day, France's National Day. It is not the first time Indian troops were in France; over 100 years ago, during the Great War or the First World War, the Indian Expeditionary Force under British rule was deployed in France to stop German expansion on the Western Front. However, this valuable contribution has largely gone unrecorded and has been left to just footnotes. Recently, the army shared a picture of Indian soldiers from 1916 marching in France, with a woman pinning a flower on a soldier's uniform. A similar scene unfolded in this year's Bastille Day parade when a French woman pinned a flower on the uniform of an officer from the Punjab Regiment - one of the oldest infantry regiments of the Indian Army. These two images serve as a powerful symbol of the enduring connection between the two nations, forged during the bloody "war to end all

  Homecoming The year was 1971 and Indian troops had surrounded Dacca (Dhaka), putting Pakistan on the verge of losing its eastern half. Pakistan’s ‘Operation Searchlight’, in which innocent civilians in Bangladesh (then East Pakistan) were massacred, was ending with a shameful defeat at the hands of Indian troops and the Mukti Bahini. Realizing the inevitable, Pakistan launched operations on the Western front with the hope of gaining territory to have something on the negotiating table. The Western Front witnessed some of the most decisive battles that would go down in the annals of India’s modern military history.   Credits: YouTube/PrasarBharatiArchives The northern sector (Ladakh) was relatively silent except for a few skirmishes and artillery exchanges. Still, one battle in the extremities of the Himalayas at an altitude exceeding 17,000 feet, marked the homecoming of a village that would play a crucial role in def