Peacetime Artillery Service
From 1950, he served with the erstwhile Technical Development Establishments at Jabalpur, Cossipore and later Kanpur and raised Inspectorates for the two major Ordnance Factories. At Kanpur he was credited for contributing to the manufacture of the first 25 Pounder Ordnance and the first Bren Gun in India. The occasion was celebrated by the Ordnance factory by firing of the first Bren Gun in the presence of Shri Dr. Rajendra Prasad, first President of India.
In 1952, he commanded an anti-tank regiment artillery. From 1953-1958 he commanded one of the then only two Medium Artillery Regiments and later raised the third Medium Regiment Artillery. With this newly raised unit, he earned a name in exercise ‘Doaba’ by taking his medium guns across the river Sutlej by dismantling, which was commended by the Corps Commander Lt Gen JN Chaudhari and Lt Gen Kulwant Singh, the chief Umpire and General Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Western Command. It was here that he also conceived the idea of up-gunning the Sherman Tank for better firepower and put up a paper to the General Staff. This was to have a salutary effect on the outcome of the 1965 Indo-Pak War.
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Famous quotes containing the words peacetime, artillery and/or service:
“The man who gets drunk in peacetime is a coward. The man who gets drunk in wartime goes on being a coward.”
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“We now demand the light artillery of the intellect; we need the curt, the condensed, the pointed, the readily diffused—in place of the verbose, the detailed, the voluminous, the inaccessible. On the other hand, the lightness of the artillery should not degenerate into pop-gunnery—by which term we may designate the character of the greater portion of the newspaper press—their sole legitimate object being the discussion of ephemeral matters in an ephemeral manner.”
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“Human life consists in mutual service. No grief, pain, misfortune, or “broken heart,” is excuse for cutting off one’s life while any power of service remains. But when all usefulness is over, when one is assured of an unavoidable and imminent death, it is the simplest of human rights to choose a quick and easy death in place of a slow and horrible one.”
—Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860–1935)