“YOU are going to march on the land where our ancestors made the supreme sacrifice” -- these were the words Captain Aman Jagtap told the rank and file of an Indian Army contingent led by him, shortly before it stepped on the magnificent Champs-Élysées in the heart of Paris to participate in the Bastille Day Parade. An Indian tri-services contingent took part in the historic military parade on July 14, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi as the guest of honour. Three Rafale fighter jets of the Indian Air Force, along with French fighter jets, joined the flypast. Captain Jagtap, who led the Punjab Regiment contingent of the Army, said in an interaction with PTI on his return that “this was our tribute to the Indian soldiers who laid down their lives over a century ago” while fighting on that foreign soil. Soldiers from the Punjab Regiment, one of the oldest units of the Indian Army, took part in both World War I and World War II, he said. An old monochrome photograph taken during the World War I (1914-1918) of Indian troops marching on the streets of France and a French woman pinning a flower to the uniform of a soldier is perhaps one of the defining images of the contribution by Indians and sacrifices made during the Great War. Captain Jagtap said this image and other photographs of Indian soldiers in France during the war “were playing at the back of our minds when we reached Paris”.

 

Asked what was going through his mind when he was leading the troops on the great French avenue Champs-Élysées, he said, “The josh was super high among us all”. “Shortly before our march started, I told members of our contingent -- ‘You are going to march on the land where our ancestors made the supreme sacrifice. March today as if the land is on fire’. This is what I did to motivate them to give their best, and they did,” Captain Jagtap told PTI. The 242-member Indian contingent consisted of the Punjab Regiment, followed by a band contingent, the next being the navy contingent led by Cdr Vrat Baghel and then the IAF contingent led by Sqn Ldr Sindhu Reddy, a helicopter pilot of the Indian Air Force, an Army official said.

 

Army Chief General Manoj Pande on Monday felicitated members of the tri-services contingent, which participated in the Bastille Day Parade in France on July 14, and said they made the armed forces and India proud. At an event held at the Manekshaw Centre here, the Army chief said the Indian contingent that went to France played a significant role in boosting country’s image. “You have not only made the three services -- Army, Air Force and Navy -- proud but also the nation,” he said in his address. Gen Pande also mentioned that some members of the Punjab Regiment got to visit the war memorial at Neuve-Chapelle, a World War I memorial in France built in memory of the Indian soldiers who laid down their lives, and paid their respects there.