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Battling for Life Former Indian Army Chief Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw was battling for life in a military hospital in

Wellington in TamilNadu. According to the military hospital sources he was undergoing treatment for a lung cancer. When the reports last came in he has slipped into coma and passed away late Thursday night on June26. He was in extremely critical condition and the doctors feared the worst. Manekshaw had been suffering of old age-related ailments for the past few years and was being treated at the Army Hospital in New Delhi and at the Military Hospital at Wallington, where he settled down after retiring as the army chief on Jan 15, 1973 after four decades of military service.Life and Career Manekshaw was credited with crafting the campaign that led India to victory in the 1971 Indo-Pak war and creation of Bangladesh after the war. Field Marshal Sam Hormusji Framji Jamshedji Manekshaw, born in Amritsar, Punjab on 03 April 1914, joined the first batch of 40 cadets at Indian Military Academy (IMA), DehraDun on 01 October 1932, after completing his schooling in Amritsar and

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College, Nainital. He passed out of the IMA in December 1934 and was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the Indian Army. During his military service of four decades he fought five wars from the British era and World War II, to the three wars against China and Pakistan after

India’s independence in 1947.

Honor Sam Manekshaw was the first of only two Indian military officers to hold the highest rank of Field Marshal of the Indian Army. He was awarded by the President of India, Padma Vibhushan in 1972, conferred the honorary rank of field marshal on 1 January 1973, for his stellar leadership during the Bangladesh campaign that saw the surrender of more than 90,000 Pakistani troops on December 16, 1971 in Dacca, then the capital of East Pakistan and which has now been renamed Dhaka.

Contribution During his four decades of military service he showed, acumen for planning and administration while handling the issue related to partition in 1947, uncommon ability to motivate the forces, coupling with it a mature war strategy. He is known for, as Chairman of Chiefs of Staff Committee, welding the Army, Navy and Air Force in to a well-knit team, well planned and well executed operations during the war against Pakistan in 1971.