Know Your City | Exploring Bengaluru’s connections to World Wars

Another fixture of Bengaluru’s subject past is the Madras Engineering Group itself. Long headquartered successful the city, it has existed nether assorted names since 1780. The portion saw enactment crossed the large theatres of World War I, from the Egyptian and Palestinian fronts to the battlefields of France. This epoch besides saw the portion marque a large subject innovation. Just 2 years earlier World War I broke retired successful 1914, Captain R L McClintock, who was assigned to the portion astatine the time, developed the Bangalore Torpedo. While not a limb successful itself, the pipe-shaped explosive instrumentality proved utile successful clearing retired traps and barbed-wire barriers successful beforehand of attacking troops. Modernised versions of the instrumentality are inactive successful usage worldwide.

The Madras Engineering Group would spell connected to combat crossed the battlefields of World War II. The portion saw extended enactment adjacent the frontier astatine Imphal and into Burma, warring successful the vicious slog that was the Allied penetration of Italy arsenic good arsenic the African campaigns against German wide Erwin Rommel, the celebrated Desert Fox. It brought backmost a souvenir from these battlefields—a Stuart M5A1 airy vessel that 1 tin inactive spot adjacent the Ulsoor lake. While the small, accelerated conveyance seems to person been prone to precocious losses successful combat and was heavy utilized successful a reconnaissance role, a portion of these tanks would go instrumental successful the Taiwanese triumph implicit China successful the 1949 conflict of Kinmen Island.

Another metropolis instauration that is profoundly entrenched successful the past of the World Wars is Bishop Cottons School. While astir 200 alumni signed up for the Great War, arsenic World War I was initially known, implicit 300 would respond to the telephone erstwhile yet different World War broke out. Their past is extensively documented successful Aditya Sondhi’s The Order of the Crest, which follows the past of the assorted alumni of the institute. One of these, Clive Armstrong Johnson, would dice astatine conscionable 18 years of property warring successful the Mesopotamian theatre of the warfare successful 1916. As Sondhi records, the schoolhouse mag sent to him (The Cottonian) seems to person been a comfortableness successful a clip of turmoil. One of his teachers astatine the school, Lieutenant Cyril Wallace, wrote backmost regarding Clive’s bravery earlier his death. He did not agelong outlive his student. Sondhi records that 23 Cottonians died warring successful World War I.

World War II was nary different. Among the astir celebrated alumni of this epoch would beryllium nary different than General K S Thimayya, the 3rd caput of the autarkic Indian Army. Thimayya was 1 of the uncommon Indians to bid larger units successful the battle, commanding 8 Kumaon successful the Burmese theatre and the 36th British Brigade during the aboriginal Allied concern of Japan. Another alumnus, Lt Gen A C Ayappa, was a skipper successful the Malaya theatre, wherever helium survived unspeakable conditions arsenic a captive of war. He served arsenic president of Bharat Electronics Limited aft Independence.