BATHINDA: After nearly six years, two obsolete artillery guns have placed on the pedestal of Naib Subedar Nand Singh’s statue in Bathinda It is after a long drawn communication that the Army granted permission for placing guns at one of the busiest roundabouts of Bathinda, now known as Fauji Chowk.Earlier, there was a proposal to set up a tank near the statue. However, as the Army authorities did not give permission for it, the district administration decided to add guns at the site.A Maha Vir Chakra (MVC) and Victoria Cross (VC) recipient, Nand Singh was one of the heroes of the 1947 war against Pakistan in Kashmir. Born on September 24, 1914 at Bahadurpur village, now in Mansa district, he had singlehandedly captured three Japanese-held trenches at Arakan in Burma (now Myanmar) during World War II in 1944. Then a British Indian Army soldier, Nand was grievously wounded but had killed seven enemy soldiers with his rifle bayonet. At Uri in Kashmir in December 1947, while fighting for the 1 Sikh Regiment, he had engaged the enemy in hand-to-hand combat and killed five of them before a burst from a machine gun killed him.Officials said the 88mm 25 Pounder gun, placed at the roundabout, is a dual-purpose British field gun. It is a common artillery weapon among the Commonwealth nations.The field gun weighs 1,633kg and is 4.6m long with 2.47m long barrel. It uses high explosive anti-tank shells that can weigh up to 11.5kg with fuse.The gun has a caliber of 87.6mm and vertical sliding block breech with hydro-pneumatic recoil.The gun has a range of firing rates, from 6-8 rpm in gun fire to 4 rpm in rapid fire and 1 rpm in very slow fire as required“The Army employed the 25 Pounder into the late 1970s. They used them against Pakistan during the 1947, 1965 and 1971 wars and against China during the Sino-Indian War in 1962,” Col Maninder Singh Randhawa (retired), Sainik Welfare Department deputy director in Bathinda, told TOI.Bathinda mayor Balwant Rai Nath said, “We had been in communication with the Army headquarters for the last six years.“Now, the Army authorities have provided us the guns which were placed at the square on Sunday evening — three days ahead of the 71st Independence Day of India. The guns at Nand Singh roundabout are a tribute to his bravery and will inspire our soldiers.”Naib Subedar Nand’s story finds detailed mention in Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh’s book ‘Lest We Forget’.It states how Nand, at the age of 33 and then a jamadar, who was not even required to go into the battle chose to lead his platoon of D Coy in a desperate but successful attack to rescue his battalion from an ambush at Uri in Kashmir in December 1947.He was killed in action but his body was never recovered.

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