1914 – 1918
The First World War
Soldiers of the British Indian Army serve far from home — across Mesopotamia, in present-day Iraq, and in East Africa.
Remembered by
Brig. Nagendar Singh, whose grandfather served in both theatres and returned carrying, above all, a sense of pride.
1939 – 1945
The Second World War
Over two and a half million Indians serve — one of the largest volunteer forces in history. The Burma campaign is among the hardest fought.
1947
Independence and Partition
A new army takes shape amid upheaval, and the first troops move into the Kashmir valley as winter sets in.
Nagendar Singh's father joined that year — and, with the road not yet built, walked to his first winter posting near Gulmarg.
The year
Brig Amarjeet Singh Bedi’s family lost forty-one villages and some twenty thousand acres on the other side of the new line, and was resettled on a little land at Fazilka.
1962
The Sino-Indian War
Fighting in Ladakh and the North-East Frontier Agency. At Se La, at some thirteen thousand feet, mines are cleared by crawling every inch of the ground.
1965
The Second India–Pakistan War
Conflict across Jammu & Kashmir and the western front.
A second war in the service of one family — fought by Nagendar Singh's father.
Commissioned that June,
Brig Bedi reached the Ichhogil Canal on the outskirts of Lahore — then was ordered back two miles, and spent the rest of the war retaking them.
1971
The War for Bangladesh
India's decisive campaign in the east leads to the creation of Bangladesh.
A captain at an armoured brigade headquarters at Samba,
Brig Bedi watched the western front stay still: “like an exercise, but with live firing.”
1974
A new generation joins
A young officer reports to his first unit in Poonch, along the Line of Control.
Brig. Nagendar Singh is commissioned — and, within days, meets the human cost of war for the first time.
1976
The train that did not come
A cyclone on the Andhra coast cuts the railway to the south in the week the Rashtriya Indian Military College closes for the summer.
Twelve years old and with no money left,
Lt Gen P.N. Ananthanarayanan waited four days in Delhi, travelled two more without food, and paid a porter in a T-shirt — the story he chose, nearly fifty years later, as his Keystone.
1977
A boy from Warangal
An eleven-year-old with no military family in living memory boards the GT Express for Dehradun, and finds a trunk in his compartment marked for the same school.
Vice Adm Vennam Srinivas joins the 112th batch at RIMC. The boy with the trunk, Anil Joseph, is still a friend forty-nine years on.
1984
A year of unrest
The aftermath of that year tested units across the army, and the bonds within them.
The setting of
Lt. Gen. Brar's Keystone — the father who asked the army to expel his own son — which he lived as a Brigade Major.
Commissioned into 3/8 Gorkha Rifles that December,
Lt Gen P.N. Ananthanarayanan went straight to a lantern-lit post in Mizoram, the only officer among his men, and learned Nepali from them at night.
1985
A kite over Sirsa
A bird strike on final approach at a MiG-21 station in Haryana. The engine fails at a hundred and fifty metres, with no runway left to reach.
The four seconds
AVM Sanjeev Deshpande chose above his whole career — and the story he sent by email, days after the interview had ended.
1987
Tanks into Jaffna
The Indian Peace Keeping Force deploys to Sri Lanka. Main battle tanks are flown onto a short runway of loose gravel, and a weekly courier begins carrying men out of the war and home within two days.
1988
Ten seconds of runway
On the night of 3 November, India intervenes militarily in another country at its elected government’s request for the first time: an airborne landing, in darkness, on an island airstrip three and a half thousand kilometres from the departure airfield.
Commanding 44 Squadron,
Grp Capt Anant Gopal Bewoor flew the lead Il-76 into Hulule on Operation Cactus. His father, who had been Chief of Army Staff, learned of it from the newspapers.
1990
To sea
A cadet trained on land for eight years steps aboard ship, and meets the open ocean for the first time.
1999
Kargil — Operation Vijay
High-altitude conflict in the Kargil sector, fought largely by very young soldiers.
1999
IC 814
On 24 December an Indian Airlines flight is hijacked minutes after leaving Kathmandu, and flown eventually to Kandahar.
Maj Gen Alok Kacker was at the Embassy of India in Kathmandu, with colleagues aboard the aircraft.
2001 – 2002
Operation Parakram
After the attack on Parliament, the largest Indian mobilisation since 1971. Squadrons move to operational locations and hold them for months.
2005
The Himalayan frontier
Confidence-building patrols trace the China border at the furthest edge of Uttarakhand.
On 18 October,
Brig. Nagendar Singh's helicopter loses its engine near Kalapani. He survives — and chooses that story above all others.
2010
A career closes
After thirty-six years, one of these voices retires from active service.
2020
The pandemic reaches the fleet
Lockdown closes over India in March. Naval bases still have to be secured, and ships still have to sail.
Vice Adm Vennam Srinivas had taken over Maharashtra Naval Area on 8 February, a month before the first case appeared among some fifteen thousand people in his charge; in Delhi,
Maj Gen Alok Kacker was given a bare field at Manesar and a deadline, and built the country’s first isolation facility on it.
At Mhow, the lockdown sent home the workers finishing the Infantry Museum;
Lt Gen P.N. Ananthanarayanan, then Commandant of the Infantry School, carried it to “some semblance of finality” regardless.
2025 —
The listening begins
A student sits down with these men, one by one, and begins to write their memory down before it is lost.
The Living Epics Project — from a grandfather in the trenches of Mesopotamia to a recorder switched on a century later.