Two institutions deeply entrenched in Bengaluru’s history of the World Wars are the Madras Engineering Group and Bishop Cottons School.
While walking through the cities of Europe, one can still see the scars and memories of the World Wars, with the occasional bomb being discovered even today. On the other side of the world, Bengaluru was far from these earthshaking conflicts, but it nevertheless took part in them. And if you know where to look, the World Wars have left clues to the city’s participation in them, too.
One of the better known such remnants is the World War 1 Sappers Memorial at Brigade Road, in tribute to the 449 slain soldiers of the Madras Pioneers who fought in war theatres across the Indian frontier, the Middle East, and Africa. The other faces of the memorial recall the dead of other pioneer units, one of which, the 61st King George’s Own Pioneers, lost 235 men. They were also part of the “Bangalore Brigade,” which saw action in the defence of East Africa during World War I.
Another fixture of Bengaluru’s military history is the Madras Engineering Group itself. Long headquartered in the city, it has existed under various names since 1780. The unit saw action across the major theatres of World War I, from the Egyptian and Palestinian fronts to the battlefields of France. This era also saw the unit make a major military innovation. Just two years before World War I broke out in 1914, Captain R L McClintock, who was assigned to the unit at the time, developed the Bangalore Torpedo. While not a weapon in itself, the pipe-shaped explosive device proved useful in clearing out traps and barbed-wire barriers in front of attacking troops. Modernised versions of the device are still in use worldwide.
The Madras Engineering Group would go on to fight across the battlefields of World War II. The unit saw extensive action near the frontier at Imphal and into Burma, fighting in the vicious slog that was the Allied invasion of Italy as well as the African campaigns against German general Erwin Rommel, the famous Desert Fox. It brought back a souvenir from these battlefields—a Stuart M5A1 light tank that one can still see near the Ulsoor lake. While the small, fast vehicle seems to have been prone to high losses in combat and was heavily used in a reconnaissance role, a unit of these tanks would become instrumental in the Taiwanese victory over China in the 1949 battle of Kinmen Island.
Another city institution that is deeply entrenched in the history of the World Wars is Bishop Cottons School. While nearly 200 alumni signed up for the Great War, as World War I was initially known, over 300 would respond to the call when yet another World War broke out. Their history is extensively documented in Aditya Sondhi’s The Order of the Crest, which follows the history of the various alumni of the institute. One of these, Clive Armstrong Johnson, would die at just 18 years of age fighting in the Mesopotamian theatre of the war in 1916. As Sondhi records, the school magazine sent to him (The Cottonian) seems to have been a comfort in a time of turmoil. One of his teachers at the school, Lieutenant Cyril Wallace, wrote back regarding Clive’s bravery before his death. He did not long outlive his student. Sondhi records that 23 Cottonians died fighting in World War I.
World War II was no different. Among the most famous alumni of this era would be none other than General K S Thimayya, the third head of the independent Indian Army. Thimayya was one of the rare Indians to command larger units in the battle, commanding 8 Kumaon in the Burmese theatre and the 36th British Brigade during the later Allied occupation of Japan. Another alumnus, Lt Gen A C Ayappa, was a captain in the Malaya theatre, where he survived terrible conditions as a prisoner of war. He served as chairman of Bharat Electronics Limited after Independence.
source/content: indianexpress.com (headline edited)
