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BONUS ARMY

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The Bonus Army was the name applied a group over 17,000 U.S  WW1veterans who marched on Washington, D.C. during the summer of 1932 demanding immediate cash payment of the service bonuses promised to them by Congress eight years earlier.
WHY THE BONUS ARMY MARCHED
Most of the veterans marched on the Capitol in 1932 to protest against the World War Adjusted Compensation Act of 1924 promised to them, but not until 1945 — a full 27 years after the end of the war they had fought in. Something like the OROP and downgrading of the military protocol being junked by successive Indian Govts. False promises.
The World War Adjusted Compensation Act was passed by Congress as sort of a 20-year insurance policy  redeemable “Adjusted Service Certificate” worth a certain amount not  redeemable until their individual birthdays in 1945.
On May 15, 1924, President Calvin Coolidge had, veetoed the bill providing for the bonuses stating, “Patriotism, bought and paid for, is not patriotism.” Congress, however, overrode his veto a few days later.
While the veterans might have been happy to wait for their bonuses and so called promises, they had immediate needs for the money and for feeding themselves and their families.
THE BONUS ARMY VETERANS OCCUPY D.C.
The Bonus March actually began in May 1932 as some 15,000 veterans assembled in makeshift camps scattered around Washington, D.C.
where they planned to demand and wait for the immediate payment of their bonuses peacefully like Indian veteran soldiers at Jantar Mantar
The largest of the veterans’ camp was at Hooverville and housed about 10,000 veterans and their families in ramshackle shelters built from old lumber, packing boxes, and scrapped tin from a nearby junk pile. Including the veterans, their families, and other supporters, the crowd of protesters eventually grew to nearly 45,000 people.
Veterans maintained order in the camps, built military-style sanitation facilities, and held orderly daily protest parades.
THE D.C. POLICE ATTACK THE VETERANS
On June 15, 1932, the US House of Representatives passed the Wright Patman Bonus Bill to move up the payment date of the veterans’ bonuses. However, the Senate defeated the bill. The veterans protested peacefully. On June 17 the D.C. police reacted violently, resulting in the deaths of two veterans and two police officers.
THE U.S. ARMY ATTACKS THE VETERANS
On the morning of July 28, 1932, President Hoover, in his capacity as commander in chief of the military, ordered his Secretary of War Patrick J. Hurley to clear the Bonus Army camps and disperse the protesters. At 4:45 p.m., U.S. Army infantry and cavalry regiments supported by six M1917 light tanks assembled on Pennsylvania Avenue to carry out President Hoover’s orders. This was the biggest mistake of his life.
With sabers, fixed bayonets, tear gas, and a mounted machine gun, the infantry and the cavalry charged the veterans, forcibly evicting them and their families from the smaller camps on the Capitol Building side of the Anacostia River. When the veterans retreated back across the river to the Hooverville camp, President Hoover ordered the troops to stand down until the next day.
 By the end, 55 veterans had been injured and 135 arrested.
THE AFTERMATH OF THE BONUS ARMY PROTEST
In the 1932 presidential election, Roosevelt defeated Hoover by a landslide vote. Hoover’s militaristic treatment of the Bonus Army veterans had contributed to his defeat, Roosevelt had also opposed the veterans’ demands during the 1932 campaign. However, when the veterans held a similar protest in May 1933, he provided them with meals and a secure campsite.
On January 22, 1936, both houses of Congress passed the Adjusted Compensation Payment Act in 1936, appropriating $2 billion for the immediate payment of all World War I veterans’ bonuses. 
Ultimately, the events of the Bonus Army veterans’ march on Washington contributed to the enactment in 1944 of the GI Bill, which has since assisted thousands of veterans make the often difficult transition to civilian life and in some small way pay back the debt owed to those who risk their lives for their country.

How Army PRO aided ’71 victory

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How Army PRO aided ’71 victory
A picture of the ‘Tangail Airdrop’, an airborne operation launched on December 11, 1971, released by the PRO of the Defence Ministry.

Shubhadeep Choudhury

THE military treats its media interface as part of the information warfare (IW) package. A fine example of IW — perhaps the most successful in the history of the Indian Army to date — was revealed during the “Vijay Diwas” celebrations by the Army’s Eastern Command here.The Tangail Airdrop was an airborne operation launched on December 11, 1971 by the 2nd battalion of the Indian Army’s Parachute Regiment during the 1971 war with Pakistan.The airdrop and the subsequent capture of the Poongli Bridge gave the advancing Indian Army the manoeuvrability to side-step the strongly held Tongi-Dhaka Road to take the undefended Manikganj-Dhaka Road right up to the Mirpur Bridge at the gates of Dacca.Maj Gen Inder Singh Gill was the Colonel of the Para Regiment at that time. He met the Ministry of Defence PRO in Delhi before the airdrop, and asked him to ensure good publicity for the airdrop. This was critical for building up pressure on the East Pakistani military establishment. As the Army had no prior access to Tangail, photographs of the airdrop could not have been arranged. The PRO, Lt Col Ramamohan Rao, was not one to get dissuaded owing to such trifles. Rao had been to Agra a year earlier to cover an exercise by the 50th Independent Para Brigade. He fished out one of those pictures, and had it released with the caption that troops of the Indian Para Brigade were airdropped over East Pakistan in the morning of December 12.The 2nd Para Battalion, which was actually airdropped, could not have consisted more than 700 odd soldiers. A brigade, on the other hand, can have around 4,000-5,000 men. Rao had turned his constraint into an advantage!The next day international media carried the picture with the news that an entire para brigade was on its merry way to Dhaka. The rest, as the saying goes, is history. Gen AAK Niazi, the Pakistani military commander in the East caved in and surrendered with over 90,000 of his men. When asked later regarding the reason for his surrender, Niazi pointed to a copy of the Times London, on his desk, carrying the doctored picture of the “Tangail Para drop”.RN Kao, the founder of the external espionage agency Research & Analysis Wing (RAW) was impressed by Rao’s pyro techniques. He complimented Rao and the latter soon became a “kaoboy” as the spooks in the RAW were then called.

Didi’s cartoon blanked out

A leading English daily recently blanked out a cartoon on West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee from its Kolkata edition.The decision drew flak from none other than Taslima Nasreen, the exiled Bangladeshi writer who occupied a central place in the cartoon.“The cartoon is about Kolkata and it’s CM. But this has not been published in Kolkata edition,” Nasreen, who had to leave Kolkata following violent protests by Muslim fanatics, tweeted.In the cartoon (published in all major editions of the paper, including Delhi and Mumbai), a caricature of Mamata is seen having a telephonic conversation with another woman who complains against curbing of her creative freedom by some patriarchal characters who enjoy the backing of the state. Mamata, touched by caller’s plight, addresses her as “Padmavati” (of the controversial movie of the same name) and says she is welcome to Bengal. The caller at the other end then says she is Taslima Nasreen, not “Padmavati”. Mamata, shocked, drops the receiver from her hand.Nasreen, who has earned the wrath of Islamic zealots because of her branding of the Islam as a misogynist religion, is in exile since 1994. She spent three years in Kolkata in the last decade. She left the city in 2007 following riotous protests by Muslim fanatics. The so-called secular Left Front government, which was in power in Bengal then, did not do anything to give her protection.Mamata Banerjee, who succeeded the communists, has also made it clear that Taslima is not welcome in Bengal. “She (Mamata Banerjee) thinks she will lose Muslim votes if she allows me to enter West Bengal”, Taslima (55), who has a fatwa on her head and now lives in the US, recently said in an interview.Mamata, even though she likes to appear as a staunch defender of the freedom of expression, does not take kindly to criticism. In the past, action had been taken against people for drawing her caricature and posting it on the Facebook.

Three militants, woman killed in Jammu and Kashmir encounter

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Three militants, woman killed in Jammu and Kashmir encounter
Security forces launched a cordon and search operation. Tribune file

Srinagar, December 11

Three militants and a woman were killed during an encounter with security forces in Handwara area of north Kashmir on Monday, police said here.Director General of Police SP Vaid said the slain militants were apparently Pakistanis.Security forces launched a cordon and search operation in the early hours at Unisoo village of Handwara following intelligence inputs about the presence of militants in the area, a police official said.He said the search operation turned into an encounter as the hiding militants fired upon the forces conducting the searches.During the gunfight, three militants were killed, the official said, adding that the slain militants were most probably affiliated with the Lashkar-e-Toiba.

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He said their bodies, along with three weapons, were recovered from the encounter site.One woman was also killed in the exchange of fire, the official said.Vaid said on Twitter, “In Unisoo Handwara all three terrorists apparently Pakistanis have been neutralised by joint team of J&K Police, RR & CRPF. It has been raining whole night & boys were out there in the cold.” PTI

*_The Indo-China war began on October 20, 1962. A new book states that it was China that decided to go to war._* by Bertil Lintner

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Chinese preparations for the war obviously began long before October 1962 – and the November 1961 meeting where Nehru had outlined his Forward Policy. Even if there already were new roads and military camps in the area, tens of thousands of more People’s Liberation Army [PLA] troops and tons of supplies, including heavy military equipment, had to be moved over some of the most difficult terrain in the world. Mao sent altogether 80,000 Chinese soldiers to Ladakh and the eastern Himalayas to attack India. Supply lines had to be established and secured to the rear bases inside Tibet.
Once across the border, it was also apparent that the Chinese had detailed knowledge of the terrain, where the Indian troops were stationed, and how to best attack them. This was well before China had access to satellite imagery. Aerial surveillance from spotter planes would also have been impossible at that time. China depended entirely on human intelligence collected by its agents in the field, which would have taken time in the North-East Frontier Agency [NEFA]’s rough and roadless terrain. But China’s agents would also be confined largely to areas where the local population spoke languages and dialects related to Tibetan. It was nearly impossible for the Chinese to penetrate most parts of the NEFA where the local tribal population spoke other, non-Tibetan languages and dialects.
Consequently, the areas where the Chinese launched their attacks were carefully selected, and contrary to what many researchers, including those from India, have assumed, relatively limited. There is a common misperception that the PLA overran most of the NEFA and reached the lowlands at Bhalukpong, which now marks the state border between Arunachal Pradesh and Assam. Bhalukpong was abandoned and the PLA’s last encounter with Indian troops was at Chakhu, a small town near Bomdila, south of Rupa. In the east, they did not go much farther than Walong, and the incursions into Subansiri and Siang in the central sector were relatively minor.
*_All these areas have one thing in common. They are populated by Tibetan-speaking people or people speaking languages and dialects related to Tibetan._*
They were also areas where human intelligence operations had been possible before the war, and where the Chinese, through their Tibetan interpreters, were able to communicate with the locals who had stayed behind once the PLA crossed into the NEFA. Although the Indian Army had retreated from all its positions in the northeastern mountains, it is significant that the PLA did not venture into areas of the NEFA populated by Mishmis, Apatanis, Nyishis, and other non-Tibetan speaking tribes because no on-the-ground intelligence had been collected from there before the meticulously planned war. Those tribal groups would have been perceived as alien and therefore potentially hostile.
There were also other preparations that the Chinese had undertaken before the attacks in October 1962. Indian brigadier John Dalvi, who was captured alive with some of his men on October 22, 1962 and remained a prisoner of war in China until May 1963, recorded the events in his book Himalayan Blunder: The Angry Truth about India’s Most Crushing Military Disaster. Once captured and taken to the other side, Dalvi was able to observe how meticulously the Chinese had prepared their blitzkrieg against India.
He discovered that the Chinese had erected prisoner of war camps to hold up to 3,000 men and found out that interpreters for all major Indian languages had been moved to Lhasa between March and May 1962. Not only had tens of thousands of troops been redeployed to the area to be acclimatised to the high altitudes of the border mountains well before the attacks took place, but thousands of Tibetan porters had also been recruited and forward dumps had been established all along the frontier. Even more tellingly, Dalvi noticed that the Chinese had built a road strong enough to hold 7-tonne vehicles all the way up to Marmang near the McMahon Line.
*_All this, Dalvi wrote later, “was not an accident and was certainly not decided after 8th September 1962. It was coldly and calculatingly planned by the Chinese.”_*
While it is not inconceivable that the very final order to attack was given a week or so before the PLA swung into action (which would make sense from a tactical military point of view), it is also important to remember that the 1962 War also had nothing to do with the establishment of an Indian Army post in one of the remotest corners of the subcontinent. That could be seen as a pretext, but even then, at best, a rather flimsy one. Even Mao Zedong had told the Nepalese and the Soviet delegations before and after the war that the issue was never the McMahon Line or the border dispute. China thought that India had designs for Tibet, which, in the 1950s, was being integrated into Mao’s People’s Republic.
At a meeting on March 25, 1959, only three weeks after the outbreak of the Lhasa uprising and as the Dalai Lama was on his way over the mountains to India, Deng Xiaoping, then a political as well as a military leader, made China’s position clear: “When the time comes, we certainly will settle accounts with them [the Indians]” And, according to Bruce Riedel, one of American’s leading experts on US security as well as South Asian issues, “[p]robably as early as 1959, Mao decided that he would have to take firm action against Nehru”.
Zhao Weiwen, a South Asian analyst at China’s premier intelligence agency, the Ministry of State Security, wrote after the war in 1962 that “India ardently hoped to continue England’s legacy in Tibet” and that Nehru himself “harboured a sort of dark mentality”. Those factors, Zhao argued, led Nehru to demonstrate an “irresolute attitude” in 1959. And that “dark mentality”, US-China scholar John Garver quotes him as saying, led Nehru to give a free rein to “anti-China forces” in an attempt to foment unrest in Tibet to “throw off the jurisdiction of China’s central government”.
According to Garver, Mao was also present at the same meeting as Deng in March 1959, and the Chairman said that India “was doing bad things in Tibet” and therefore had to be dealt with. Mao, however, told the assembled members of the inner circle of the Chinese leadership that China should not condemn India openly for the time being. Instead, India would be given enough rope to hang itself, quo xingbuyi bi zibii, literally “to do evil deeds frequently brings ruin to the evil doer”.
*_China was waiting for the right moment to “deal” with India. But first, it needed precise and accurate intelligence from across the border._*
Findings by Nicholas Effimiades, an expert on China’s intelligence operations, reveals that the Chinese began sending agents into the NEFA and other areas two years before the military offensive. “The PLA gathered facts on India’s order of battle, terrain features, and military strategy through agents planted among road gangs, porters and muleteers working in border areas.” These agents, Effimiades states, “later guided PLA forces across the area during offensive operations…junior PLA commander – disguised as Tibetans – had reconnoitred their future area of operation.”
‘Two years before the military offensive” began in October 1962 means at least a year before the Forward Policy was conceived, which makes it hard to argue that India’s moves in the area provoked China to attack. Furthermore, the date, October 20, 1962, for the final assault after years of preparations was carefully chosen because it would coincide with the Cuban missile crisis, which the Chinese knew about beforehand through their contacts with the leaders of the Soviet Union. With Soviet missiles on Cuba, the Chinese were convinced that the USA would be too preoccupied to pay much attention to a war in the distant Himalayas.

Fire on wheels

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Jasmine Singh

Faith, trust or bonding; if you ever start doubting these attributes, well, then you should check out the videos of Shwet Ashw team, the motorcycle daredevils that have set three Guinness Book Of World Records! At the Sukhna lake, on the opening day of the first Military Literature Festival, these daredevils surely proved how one can blindly trust teammates.Power packedThe lake area was cordoned off from both the sides and police made sure the audiences watched from a safe distance. Some of the visitors, all set for a sunset photo-shoot and selfies, were taken by surprise, but they did not mind. With the track Maa tujhey salaam and Yeh shehar hai veer jawaano ka playing in the background, people waited patiently.  And then, the action began! Dressed in red and white tracks, these brave men displayed exemplary stunts on the bike.Ride onMoving together in a parallel position, making a diamond position and then moving on to the figure of eight; balancing in a flower position, swimming or stretching out hands in a Christmas position and doing bhangra; it all happened on the bike! The temple position, reverse sunbath or flying fish… this team led by Naib Subedar Navneen Kumar Tiwari kept the adrenaline pumping. However, the last two stunts — the fire tunnel and breaking the tubelight —fetched a thunderous round of applause. Time stopped as the two daredevils crossed through the tunnel of fire; they raised their hand in victory sign, signalling that the task was accomplished! Sound of clicks drowned in the applause; one wonders how well can we catch the essence of such events in our cameras? Don’t eyes and memory do the job well? 

jasmine@tribunemail.com

 

WhatsApp shares location with friends

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WhatsApp shares location with friends

Andrew Griffin

WhatsApp will now tell you friends where you are, so you don’t have to.

The chat app is introducing “Live Location”, a feature that lets people give out their location in real time to their friends. None of the information will be public, and it’s intended only to be used for a short amount of time.

So if you’re going to meet someone and are not sure where they are, you can show them on a map, for instance.

It’s used by heading to a WhatsApp chat, clicking on the “add” button, press on Location and switch it on. It can be used with just one person or in group chats, where everyone will get access to your location and everyone in the chat will be shown on one map.

The feature will be rolling out on both Android and iOS “in the coming weeks”, WhatsApp said. Some people claim to already have access to it.

A number of apps have recently run into trouble over location services. Snapchat, for instance, recently added a feature that allows people to see precisely where people are — and those people might not even know they’re being tracked.

But WhatsApp will only enable the feature with explicit consent, and will let people do so for a specific amount of time if they choose.

The app has allowed people to share their location for some time. But until now it was only static, so that you could send your current location but it wouldn’t then be updated.

The new feature is similar to one offered in iMessage, but only for people who are using Apple products. From a chat, you can click the little “i” button in the corner, and opt to share your location forever or just for a short while.

— The Independent

 

MILITARY LITERATURE FESTIVAL Memsahibs and their musings

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There are paeans dedicated to Indian Armymen, but their wives remain the unsung heroes. A handful of books take in their perspective and examine their stories

Aradhika Sharma

While taking oath, a soldier swears that he will bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution and honestly and dutifully protect the country, even to the peril of his life, there is an unwritten oath that the woman who weds an armyman takes as well. They pledge to commit to a life of constant ‘postings’, long separations and fears and non-salubrious climes and living quarters. No wonder, most army wives are pragmatic and have developed a sense of acceptance and humour. These women have their own code of conduct — almost as strict as that of their husbands. There are protocols in place that must be adhered to at all times. So while the Army marches ahead with its rank and file; spit and polish; cavalry, artillery, infantry et al, the indomitable ladies do their part by committing to the lives they have chosen to live, representing the softer side of an establishment that is essentially warlike. While some of these ladies have penned down their personal experiences, others have given journalistic and historical accounts in the form of books and articles. All of these works examine different angles of domestic and social lives of soldiers and their spouses and provide a significant sociological commentary on one of the most important institutions of society down the ages. The British Victorian ladies, who came to India in the halcyon days of the Raj, chronicled the lives in those times in the forms of sketches and letters. Though not an army wife Emily Eden (sister of Governor General George Auckland) wrote Up the Country: Letters From the Upper Provinces of India in 1867 . This is a collection of letters that Emily wrote to her sister Fanny. Emily’s wry and caustic style has been compared to that of Jane Austen. Her travels provide insights into the life at the top as well as her brother’s catastrophic policy in Afghanistan.A comparatively modern work on the lives of the Indian Army wives is The Memsahibs: The Women of Victorian India by Pat Barr (1979). It is a wonderfully witty account of British women who came to India as soldiers’ wives, fiancés and sisters in the 19th century and set up a sub culture that the ‘brown memsahibs’ (up to an extent) follow till date. Pat Barr established a reputation for herself as a popular historian. Award-winning journalist Tanya Biank wrote Under the Sabers (2006) and Army Wives (2007). Both books explore the unwritten, complex codes of military marriages. Western literature is overflowing with novels, stories, handbooks, how-to books by army wives. Some of the titles by the western authors are: Homefront Club: The Hardheaded Woman’s Guide to Raising a Military Family. It examines the actualities and challenges of being married to a military man, “from keeping a marriage together and raising good kids to maintaining some semblance of normalcy.”Portraits of the Toughest Job in the Army: Voices and Faces of Modern Army Wives by Janelle H. Mock, who explains, “It’s hard to explain to people that your husband wants to go to war, but he does. He wants the experience. That is what he is trained to do.” Today’s Military Wife by Lydia Sloan Cline is a handbook on how a wife can prosper in a service milieu. She gives information on family-friendly programmes, coping with periodic separations, managing a separate career, living overseas, raising a family, while fully participating in the military social life. Faith Deployed: Daily Encouragement for Military Wives by Jocelyn Green is a ‘collection of devotions that addresses the challenges wives face when their husbands are away protecting freedom.’There’s even A Family’s Guide to the Military for Dummies by Sheryl Garrett and Sue Hoppin and Married to the Military: A Survival Guide for Military Wives, Girlfriends and Women in Uniform by Meredith Leyva (founder of CinHouse.com, a community for army spouses). Surprisingly, Indian Army wives haven’t been writing much. Although some brave better halves have ventured into the field of literature, this category of publication is sadly in the deficit. Fin Feather and Field by Simren Kaur (also the author of childrens’ books: Ladakh: Mountains of Adventure, Mystery of the Missing Relic) is the account of 40 years of her life in the armed forces with her husband. A Soldier’s Love Story by Sonia Kundra Singh (an army officer’s wife) is more about a traumatic love tale than an account of the army life. Soldier and Spice: An Army Wife’s Life by Aditi Mathur Kumar is another foray by an army wife into writing novels. It is the story of Pia who gets married to an army officer Arjun. After she gets married regular life is a thing of the past. She is now an army wife, a memsahib. Considering that the Indian Army is one of the largest in the world, surely there is space for recounting the complex personal challenges of keeping your love alive during deployments, adjusting to  constant moves, understanding how to maximise the salaries and benefits, juggling your own career and kids and the confusing protocols and roles demanded by the institution. 

Masquerade: The Life and Times of Deborah Sampson, Continental Soldier by Alfred F. Young. Vintage.

IMA’s pride

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IMA’s pride
Commandant Lt Gen SK Jha with Mr IMA Tarun Vasudevan. Tribune photo

Dehradun: The IMA Ball, one of the eagerly-awaited social events, for the Autumn term was held at the Indian Military Academy. The evening of joy, merriment and nostalgia was commenced by Lt Gen SK Jha, Commandant, IMA. The highlight of the evening was the selection of Mr IMA and Miss IMA. Meenakshi Chaudhary was adjudged as Miss IMA and Gentleman Cadet Tarun Vasudevan was declared as Mr IMA. The IMA Ball is held towards the end of each term to mark the culmination of the rigorous training schedule. tns