Walong, the garrison town, is home to tales of 'the Battle of Walong'

The Sentinel hills, that round us stand, bear witness that, we love our land, almost shattered rock, and flaming fire, on Namti plain. Lohit gently by us glide, pale stars above softly shine, as we sleep here, in sun and rain.

Deputy commissioner Bernard S. Dougal’s tribute to soldiers martyred in the October/November 1962 Battle of Walong

Kibithu, Oct. 27: Forty-seven years on, the lump that forms in the throat in Walong at the memorial to the soldiers who died fighting the invading Chinese, turns into alarm as you move closer to the border.

Memories of that 1962 incursion have come flooding back with China virtually taking over Hundred Hill, a vantage point near Kibithu, a small hamlet in Arunachal Pradesh, barely a kilometre from the McMahon Line.

The Hill, which towers over the Indian Army post here, is in a disputed area. Two smaller hills, Eighty Hill and Ninety Hill, are in Indian possession but Hundred Hill is apparently out of reach.

Beijing has nearly finished building a road on the northern face of the hill on the Chinese side where People’s Liberation Army trucks and Jeeps move up and down without even blowing up clouds of dust. Although not tarred, the road is of “very good quality” and can be used round the year, witnesses said.

It means, nearly five decades after the 1962 war, a tragic watershed in India’s military history, Delhi has again failed to pre-empt Chinese moves.

Control of Hundred Hill not only gives tactical advantage to the Chinese in this strategically important area close to the India-China-Myanmar tri-junction, it also shows a symbolic repeat of 1962 where India took a drubbing in this eastern theatre of war.

“Almost 90 per cent work on the road is over,” a source who witnessed the construction from the eastern side of the Lohit river while on patrol, told The Telegraph.

Although work on the road up Hundred Hill was apparently stopped in September, there is no doubt the hill is practically in Chinese hands even if there is no PLA post atop.

Through the year, Chinese trucks carried construction material up the hill. One summer day, local sources said, they heard as many as 90 gelatine blasts that showed how fast development was taking place across the Lohit, one of whose countless tributaries separates Kaho, the last settlement on the Indian side, from China. “The Lohit turned brown and muddy for days,” said a source at Walong, some 30km inland.

From May this year, the Chinese began construction at a frenetic pace. “Curiously, it was after a flag meeting in May between the PLA and the army at the forward post that the pace of work abruptly increased,” said a government source at Kibithu, where the first move of the Battle of Walong began on October 18, 1962.

Between Hundred Hill and Walong, hundreds of Indian soldiers laid down their lives in Namti plain, about 700km from Tezpur in Assam.

If the Chinese have a post on top of the hill, they would get an unhindered view for close to 10km as the crow flies with the Dong plateau in clear sight.

Dong village, a beautiful table-top on a small hill, is where the sun rises first in India.

Facing the Hundred Hill is Madan Ridge. It was occupied by 2 Assam Rifles in 1962 but is “disputed” now. There are fears that the Chinese would take over the Ridge too and cut off a vital route from Kibithu to the India-China-Myanmar tri-junction, three days of patrolling away.

“An area of almost 70sqkm threatens to be cut off if they (the Chinese) register their presence on the Ridge,” said a local source.

Residents, unwilling to be named, also said the army and the Indo-Tibetan Border Police were not seriously exploring patrolling routes from Kibithu to Goiliang, from where Hayuliang, the sub-divisional headquarters in Anjaw district, is just 15km away.