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| The arms recovered at Changlang. Telegraph picture |
Jairampur (Arunachal Pradesh), Feb. 9: In the remote Changlang area of Arunachal Pradesh, along the densely forested border with Myanmar, the army is not waging a war.
Instead, the men in olive are digging up the “history” of warfare.
The Assam Rifles has dug up multi-barrelled machine guns used by the Allied Forces during World War II, raising possibilities of a major historical find in the area, which is near the Stilwell Road.
The Stilwell Road was built by the Allied Forces led by Gen. Joseph Stilwell during the war with the objective of ensuring a supply route through which men and material could be sent.
Col Sandeep Chaudhary, commanding officer of the 18 Assam Rifles based here in Changlang, said “two machine guns” were recovered recently during an operation to clear a forested area for planting fruit-bearing tree saplings.
“We had decided to clear a portion of land almost adjacent to our main office complex to plant some fruit-bearing tree saplings. After clearing the area from jungle, our men were tilling the land with tractors when something very hard struck the blades of a tractor. Some more digging brought out two huge multi-barrelled machine guns. We are very happy with the recoveries,” Col Chaudhary said.
“Tracing out the details of the guns and their make would have been easy if we could have found any marks on them. At least we could have consulted historians and experts of such vintage material. We do hope we will be able to trace out their make. The guns were recovered only two weeks back,” the army officer added.
The recovery was made near the recently renovated Jairampur war cemetery, which has nearly 1,000 graves of Allied soldiers who fought in the war.
Col Chaudhury said they had sought help from experts to carry out extensive digging and hoped to find a “treasure trove”.
H.N. Sarmah, retired principal of Margherita College and a war expert, said, “The Second World War is not even 100 years old. There are chances that many more recoveries are to be made.”
