Raised in 1949 from four senior battalions as an all-India, all-class regiment, its soldiers include Param Vir Chakra winner Albert Ekka of 14 Guards.
Ganga Sagar, 3 December 1971
At about 2 am on 3 December 1971, 14 Guards attacked the Ganga Sagar complex in East Pakistan, west of Agartala. The objective took in the railway station and several positions around it. Lance Naik Albert Ekka was in Bravo Company, the left forward company.
Ekka attacked a light machine gun bunker, killed its two-man crew and silenced the gun. He was seriously wounded in doing so and kept fighting. Further on, a medium machine gun firing from the upper floor of a fortified building was holding up the attack. He crawled to the building and threw a grenade through a loophole, then climbed a side wall, got into the bunker and silenced the gun. He died of his wounds after the objective fell. The battalion had the complex by about 10.30 that morning, according to The Tribune's account. Ekka received the Param Vir Chakra posthumously.
He came from Zari village in what was then Ranchi district, born on 27 December 1942. A subedar major of 7 Bihar, Bhagirath Soren, noticed him at a district hockey tournament and enrolled him. In January 1968 his company of 7 Bihar was assigned to the newly raised 32 Guards at Kota. That unit was redesignated 14 Guards in April 1971, eight months before the attack.
Four Battalions Under Cariappa
Field Marshal K. M. Cariappa, the first Indian Commander-in-Chief, founded the regiment in 1949 on the model of British foot guards, the Coldstream Guards in particular. Its recruitment was open to all regions, castes and creeds.
He built it by moving established battalions out of their old regiments. The 2nd Battalion of the Punjab Regiment became 1 Guards, and the 1st Battalions of the Grenadiers, the Rajputana Rifles and the Rajput Regiment became 2, 3 and 4 Guards. The transfers ran into the early 1950s and sources give varying dates for individual units. 2 Punjab, handpicked in April 1951, had been raised in the eighteenth century and redesignated many times. Lt Col Shivinder Singh was its first commanding officer as a Guards battalion.
The serving Chief of Army Staff was Colonel of the Regiment until 1964. Brigadier N. C. Rawlley became the first officer to hold the post in his own right on 1 January that year. The regimental centre opened at Delhi Cantonment in 1950, was at Kota by 1956, and has been at Kamptee, near Nagpur, since October 1976.
Tain Dhar
The regiment's other Param Vir Chakra came with one of those transferred battalions. On 6 February 1948, the 1st Battalion of the Rajput Regiment held pickets on the Tain Dhar ridge north of Naushera. At 6.40 am, in fog and half-darkness, Pakistani forces closed in on the posts.
Naik Jadunath Singh commanded the forward section post of the second picket. His citation puts its garrison at nine men. The section beat off a first assault with four men wounded. In the second, Jadunath Singh was hit in the right arm, took over the Bren gun from a wounded gunner and held the post, though by then all his men were casualties. When a third attack came in, he left his sangar and charged alone with a Sten gun. The attackers withdrew. Two bullets, in the head and chest, killed him. The award was gazetted under Notification 16 Pres/50. Lieutenant Kishan Singh Rathore of the same battalion also received the Maha Vir Chakra.
8 Guards at Hilli
Hilli, on the border of East Pakistan, was fought in two phases: 22 to 24 November 1971 and 10 to 11 December. Morapara fell in the first phase while Hilli itself stayed in Pakistani hands. The garrison did not formally surrender until 18 December.
8 Guards received three Maha Vir Chakras from this fighting: its commanding officer Lt Col Shamsher Singh, Second Lieutenant Shamsher Singh Samra, and Lance Naik Ram Ugrah Pandey, who was killed in the November phase while leading a section in the attack. Sources give his date of death as either 23 or 24 November. Samra's award was also posthumous. Hilli is one of the regiment's battle honours, with Akhaura, Burki, Gadra Road, Naushera, Gurais, Shingo River Valley, Sylhet and Ganga Sagar.
Mechanised from 1988
When the Army enlarged its mechanised infantry in the 1980s, Guards battalions began to convert. 10 Guards went first among those with recorded dates, in 1988, followed by 3 Guards in 1991, 1 Guards in 1994, 8 Guards in 1998, 7 Guards in 2003 and 11 Guards in 2011. Most of the regiment now serves in the mechanised role, with others in reconnaissance and support or as anti-tank guided missile units. Its men train alongside the Mechanised Infantry at Ahilyanagar.
10 Guards is the regiment's Ashoka Chakra battalion. In Operation Blue Star in June 1984 it entered the Golden Temple complex from the north under Lt Col Israr Rahim Khan, losing 19 killed and 50 wounded. Captain Jasbir Singh Raina received the Ashoka Chakra and Khan the Kirti Chakra.
The newest addition to the list has an unusual origin. 24 Guards began in 1966 at Bikaner as a camel battalion of the Grenadiers, and joined the regiment in 2023.
At a glance
- Raised: 1949
- Regimental centre: Kamptee, Maharashtra
- Motto: Pahla Hamesha Pahla (First Always First)
- War cry: Garud Ka Hun Bol Pyare