Tribune News Service

Amritsar, November 26

The Punjab State War Memorial and Museum will be hosting the first ever Army Literature festival on its premises on December 2 and 3.

The inaugural edition of the two-day festival will have multiple interactive activities and sessions on the famous historical battles by former Army personnel and experts. The festival is being organised in collaboration with the Army headquarters, Western Command.

“The focus of the festival would be to bring to the fore the stories of courage and sacrifice of our soldiers and to engage people in getting to know more about our armed forces. The literature festival has been conceived by the Governor of Punjab, VPS Badnore, and the Chief Minister, Capt Amarinder Singh, who himself is an Army historian.

“We will host writers and experts talking about the famous Battle of Naushera in 1823 fought between Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s forces and Afghan tribals. Then there are so many stories of victory and loss, of love and longing that soldiers had to face fighting for the country. These are a part of our military history,” said Col HP Singh, Director, war memorial and museum.

Apart from these sessions, creative workshops in calligraphy, umbrella painting and music will also be held. The highlight of the festival would be a documentary titled Half Moon Stories, an account of the soldiers taken prisoners and detained at Halfmoon camp during the First World War. The documentary has recorded voices of Indian prisoners of war during the First World War that had been archived and kept among thousands of voice recordings at Humboldt University’s Sound Archive, Lautarchiv, Berlin.

Sourced and shared by Chandigarh-based Col Parminder Singh Randhawa, from German filmmaker Philip Scheffne, the documentary has voices of about 70 soldiers from Punjab, who shared their days, talked about missing their families and home, while kept detained at camp Halfmoon.