AFVOA Newletter August 2020

Section 5 - Memoirs CV 2 No. 02 / 2020 Page 110 of 237 13 Throwback to 1975 Maj V Raghavan Genre: Life in the Forces n the light of the present imbroglio in Ladakh, my memory takes me back to an incident, albeit a trifle one in 1975. In November 1975, a routine Assam Rifles patrol was ambushed by the Chinese in NEFA, now called Arunachal Pradesh in Tulung La (La is "pass" in Tibetean) and 4 Indians were killed. If I remember right in that incident a couple of officers were also captured by the Chinese. Tulung La is the pass in Tawang region through which the Chinese entered Bomdi La and captured large areas in 1962. Brig JP Dalvi who wrote The Himalayan Blunder was taken as a POW. He was the commander of the Tawang brigade. Michael Dalvi who played cricket in Madras in the seventies, is his son. It is a coincidence that Brig Dalvi commanded 4 Guards of which I was the RMO (Regimental Medical Officer) in 1975- 76, in 1954. 1975 episode is the prelude to my story. I was posted then as RMO to 4 Guards (4th battalion of The Brigade of Guards) a very famous and one of the oldest battalions of the army. May be I will write about the great Paltan later. We were located in eastern Sikkim almost at the junction of Tibet, Sikkim and Bhutan. It was high altitude and our Hq was at 14200 feet and the highest picquet was 15500 feet. The famous Dokalam which made news last year was a few kms east of our location. We referred to it as Dokala then. Sikkim was just then annexed by India as an Indian I