In January 2004, I came across two different stories and I realized that the two central characters had the same name. Do read the following. The web links given here are active and working as of today......
A STORY OF TWO UDAYS
The lives of two young men ended within a couple of days of each other thousands of miles away from each other. Both were in the twenties (one was 21 and the other 28), both were Indian citizens, both were in the army, both came from army families, both were fighting terrorists when they died and both had the same name......... Uday Singh.
The similarities end there. US army specialist Singh, 21, died on December 1st (2003) after an attack in Habbaniyah in Iraq while Indian army Special Group Major Singh, 28, was killed in a midnight operation against militants in Rajouri district of Jammu and Kashmir on November 29th (2003).
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The 21 year old U.S. army Singh was born, raised and schooled in India and had migrated to the US as recently as 2000, the family said. He apparently first visited the US in 1998 and took up a job in a local McDonald's outside Chicago, earning his own paycheck as a teenager for the first time and discovering the magic of immigrant opportunity in America. "He loved it," said his aunt, Harpreet Datt told the local Chicago Tribune. "He saw that the country gave him opportunities on a personal level. He had freedom to try new stuff, he had the freedom to earn a living." The teenager then returned to India to finish high school and came back to the US in 2000, when he enlisted in the Army and served briefly in Kuwait while waiting to advance his Green Card into US citizenship (permanent residents are allowed to serve in the US military).
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Right from when he passed out of the 100th batch of Indian Military Academy, the 28 year old Singh served in counter-insurgency operations — first in Assam, then in Kargil and subsequently in the Kashmir Valley. A former colleague who served as his team commander remembers Singh’s outstanding maturity in the face of aggression. ‘‘Uday was always very keen on joining the Special Forces. He could read the ground situation brilliantly. Once in the Valley, there were just the two of us and we came across 15 or 16 militants holed up in a house,’’ he says. In such a situation, he says, one has to take a split-second decision — whether to attack immediately and face the risk of the militants overwhelming you and escaping into the night; or if one should call for back-up, which could mean the terrorists escaping anyway. ‘‘That night, Uday volunteered to go back for reinforcements, and because of his cool head in the presence of danger, we managed to get every one of them that night,’’ he says. Singh went on to receive the Indian Army Sena medal for bravery.
Singh’s mortal remains, which were flown in from Srinagar by a special flight, was cremated with full military honors on December 1st. I hope U.S. army Uday Singh’s remains will also get the same treatment and not be flown under the cover of darkness to an “undisclosed location”. (Update: His body was flown to India where he was cremated)
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Terrorism is taking its toll all around the world. I pray for God to give the families of all the Uday Singhs of the world the courage to withstand such terrible life events.
The worst is yet to come.
News articles on these two stories can be found at:
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/338052.cmshttp://cities.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=69471
