AFVOA Newletters of Year 2008

Page 14 of 56 [From the first two paras of the first chapter; Battle of Adyar – A piece of action that charted the course of history ] Somewhere in the early half. The first line, meanwhile, made it right up to the line of enemy guns, and taking casualties though, drove the defenders from the guns in a do-or-die bayonet charge. The gunners stuck to their posts gallantly, many dying in the act. The attackers pushed through and carried a second line the enemy had taken up at right angles to the first. Now the Maratha line broke; some of the battalions gave up entirely and fled, while others disengaged in good order, only to be broken up by the charging cavalry. The Madras Army was left in command of the field, with over 100 guns left behind by the enemy with their dead and the dying. [From a para in the ninth chapter; Assaye – A battle greater than that of Waterloo ] Towards the second half. Three ferries, No.1 upstream, No.2 in the centre and No.3 downstream, each of 13 bipartite bridging pontoons, were launched at 5.15 a.m. No.1 carried the Norfolk Regiment with rowing parties of their own men and the Royal Engineers. No.2 carried the 2/9 th Gorkha Rifles and 12 Field Company. No.3 carried the 1/2 nd Gorkha Rifles and 13 Field Company. While No.1 was lucky to surprise the enemy, the other two ran into heavy machinegun fire. Only six out of the remaining ten made it in the second run, out of which only five returned. One pontoon recovered later had 100 bullet holes on it. Rowers were the worst hit, many of the crews getting completely wiped out. 18 Sappers in all lost their lives, and another 28 were wounded in the operation. [From a para that narrates the opposed river crossing at Kut-al-Amara in the seventeenth chapter; The First World War – A call to arms well responded ] Into the second half. Two encounters stood out for their ferocity; one at the Shark Piquet where a platoon inflicted nearly 100 casualties on the attacking Japanese, and another at Sita Ridge where Captain RS Noronha held out with his company for 16 days. The latter action won the officer a Military Cross, four of his men Military Medals. In September 1944 the battalion joined the 268 Infantry Brigade in its offensive. They made it to Sittang by a four-day march in severe monsoon pushing the advantage of the enemy’s demoralized state. Despite the river being flooded, the battalion crossed over making itself the first Indian battalion across the Chindwin in the great offensive that was to end in Rangoon. [From a para in the eighteenth chapter; Second World War – The Burmese campaign ] Further along. No single Sapper task during the operations had come to assume such significance as this, since the success of Thimayya’s bold tactics, to bring a speedy end to the war by taking tanks to such heights, solely depended on the completion of the road in time. Racing against the deadline. The ‘Thambis’ had earned for themselves a sobriquet, the ‘Razor-blade brigade’ each man carrying a trademark razor blade tucked into the brim of his hat to cut the cardtex or safety fuses. .Jemadar Thangavelu of 13 Field Company was awarded the Vir Chakra. And the road, appropriately enough, was named after the soft spoken but highly competent commander of the task force, Major Thangaraju. [From a para in the twentieth chapter; Free India’s Proud Soldiers – Partition riots and the war in Kashmir ]