The Indian Army and Mhow
The Army has been here since 1818. Up until World War II, Mhow was the headquarters of the 5th (Mhow) Division of the Southern Army. According to local legend Winston Churchill also spent a few months in Mhow when he was a subaltern serving with his regiment in India (a local shop still boasts of him as its customer). The house on the Mall where he is supposed to have lived has gradually crumbled due to neglect and age. It has been pulled down and a jogger's park has been built on its grounds by the Infantry School, Mhow.
Mhow houses three premier training institutions of the Indian Army -The Infantry School,The Military College of Telecommunication Engineering and The Army War College.
In addition to these institutes, MHOW is where The Army Training Command or ARTRAC was born. ARTRAC was based in Mhow from 1991 to 1994, before it shifted to Shimla (Himachal Pradesh). At that time its General Officer Commanding in Chief (GOC-in-C) was Lt. General Shankar Roy Chowdhary who went on to become the Chief of Army Staff (COAS). Its first GOC-in-C was Lt. General A.S. Kalkat who had earlier commanded the Indian Peace Keeping Force (IPKF) in Sri Lanka. ARTRAC was housed in the campus of the present Army School Mhow. This was used as All Arms Wing of MCTE for many decades. It was originally built and used as the BMH (British Military Hospital).
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