Sergeant Uday Singh, salute

AS the Defence Attache in Washington DC, I received many phone calls from Indian children in the US wanting to know how to join the Indian Army. I was quite surprised that these children did not want to stay on in the ‘promised land’ but return to India to serve in the military.

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One day in 2003, I got a similar call from a boy in California which ended up in a very interesting chat. Uday went on to tell me that he had come to America on a tourist visa and that much against his mother’s wishes, he had got enlisted in August 2000 into the US 1/34 Armor Regiment (that’s when I first learnt that one could become an American soldier without being a citizen). I soon discovered that his father, Lt Col PM Singh, was not only a good friend of mine, but that we had been neighbours in Babina when Uday was a little kid. I told Uday to try for a commission in the US army as they offered excellent incentives to become an officer, but he was insistent on joining the Indian Army in the footsteps of his father and grandfather.

In September 2003, his unit moved to Iraq. Barely three months later, on December 1, young Uday, all of 21 years old, lay dead on the battlefield, gone forever. He became the first Indian in the US army to have been killed in Iraq, living up to the motto of the First Infantry Division: ‘No mission too difficult. No sacrifice too great — Duty first’.

On December 11, Uday was cremated with full US honours at his hometown Chandigarh in the presence of a large American contingent. In his homage, General James Campbell, Commander of the US Pacific Army, who flew in from Hawaii, said, “Today, we stand tall as a nation and an army and in our grieving take enormous pride in saluting Sergeant Uday Singh for his noble stance to make the world safer, his sense of honour and commitment and his loyal and faithful service to our country.”

On January 8, 2004, the urn containing Sergeant Uday’s ashes was laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery, Washington DC. Amongst the mourners stood his parents, relatives and the three Indian Military Attaches in full ceremonial dress. There was not a single dry eye as both parents, in very emotional eulogies, spoke of their son, who lived an Indian but died under the flag of the United States in another foreign land. As the seven-member rifle squad fired three volleys in salute and Sergeant Major Henry Sgrecci’s bugle call adapted from ‘Extinguish Lights’ faded away, Brigadier General Mark O’Neill presented the parents with the US flag, citations posthumously awarding Uday Singh the Bronze Star for valour and the Purple Heart and citizenship of the United States.

Today, Grave Number 8,122 in Section 60 of Arlington National Cemetery is just like thousands of other graves of US soldiers, except that the headstone has a ‘khanda’ instead of a cross and under it lie the ashes of Sergeant Uday Singh, the gallant young soldier from India who could not don stars on his shoulders or the badge of 2 Lancers, his father’s armoured regiment.

A salute to you, warrior Uday. May you be at peace at the hallowed Hall of Valhalla.