AFVOA Newletters of Year 2002

Page 75 of 84 Editorial Team Contributions From Brig V A Subramanyam Tele: 491 4776 Col A Krishnaswami VrC. VSM**; Tele 491 1233; Wg M E Muthu; Tele 441 6289 Copt G S Bhaskaran, Tele 434 0918 Coll Jayakaran. Tele 627 4317 AVM V Krishnaswamy, VSM, Tele 234 4588 Wg Cdr K Rajagopal, Tele 472 7266; Wg Cdr Ravi Mani Tele: Tele 491 6705 Cmde S Shekhar: Tele 445 1351; 441 8887 Lt Gen C Sundara Rao: Tele 490 1185 Col N Viswanthan: Tele 447 4720 28. You may have noticed a change in the layout – in the sense that telephone numbers have been indicated against the names of the office bearers in the very first page. This has been implemented based on the suggestions of Maj Gen Aban Naidu. Our grateful thanks to the General. Armistice Day/Veterans Day – 11 th November 29. In continuation of the write up that we had given about the Veterans Day in the Newsletter No 6 of 2001, dated 03 rd Dec 2001 , we wish to bring out that 11 th November is observed as Veterans Day in the US and as Armistice Day in the Commonwealth. Whereas in India, the only time that the Armed Forces personnel are remembered besides during hostilities is on December 7th, which is observed as Flag Day. A brief on ‘Armistice Day’ has been given by Capt GS Bhaskaran, which is reproduced for your reading pleasure. Armistice Day - India’s participation in the two World Wars 30. In two world wars the forces of United India played a major role. The war cemeteries in which her dead are buried and the memorials on which they are commemorated, stretching from England in the West to the Pacific Islands in the East, both honour the deeds of the Indian forces and form an abiding memory to their 1,50,000 dead. 31. In the World War I the strength of the Indian Army rose to one million. It first action in August 1914, in the German colonies in China. It played an important role in the first critical battle of 1914 – 15, in France and Flanders. It formed the major part of the forces in the war against Turkey in Mesopotamia, Egypt and Palestine; it fought in Gallipoli and in East Africa. 32. The Indian Army of the World War II was the largest volunteer Army the world has ever seen two and a half million men. Once again if was represented in the early operations – a company of the Royal Indian Army Service Corps was part of the British Expeditionary Forces. In the 1940 campaign which culminated in the evacuation of Dunkirk. Divisions of the Indian Army won lasting renown in the campaigns in the western desert, in the Middle East and in Eritrea and Ethiopia; and they fought in Italy and took part in the liberation of Greece – the birth place of freedom. But it was in the East, in the war against the Japanese, that the Indian Army was to play its greatest part right through from the reverses of 1942 to the final and overwhelming victory of 1945. 33. The Royal Indian Marines, the forerunner of the Royal Indian Navy of the World War II, was in peace lime a service of unarmed ships. In 1914, its ships were armed and some served with the Royal Navy as auxiliary cruisers on escort duties and others as river gun