Indian army, Artillery, oldest mountain batteries

30 May, 2011

My Army Days

Coming back to Indian Mountain Artillery once again as promised in  my  previous blogs, it is interesting to know the historical back ground under which these oldest five Mountain  Batteries were  raised and deployed.

As we know, the frontier area in the extreme West side of the then undivided India was - and still is - the home of mixed tribes who always believed in their own rules and tribal ways of administration. They never reconciled to the Mughal rule over their territory and kept asserting for independence. In the years after the Mughal rule, Maharaja Ranjit Singh of Punjab, using his Zum Zum guns and cavalry, established control over the whole of the Frontier area. His empire thus included not only Punjab but also what today is Pakistan, POK (Pakistan Occupied Kashmir), and Jammu & Kashmir.

Later, when the British Raj took root in India, their Governor General Dalhousie, could not resist the temptation to extend British control further West. Taking into account that Ranjit Singh was already crippled by two paralytic strokes, Dalhousie, in October 1848, declared war against the Maharaja. By March 1849, after a series of battles, the Sikh Army finally surrendered and Punjab Empire was annexed outright by the British.

Soon after the annexation,  the British Army  raised four new Mountain Artillery Batteries in which most of the Indian Gunners from the disbanded Artillery units of Ranjit Singh were re-recruited. These  four Batteries were initially known as Punjab Frontier Force (PFF) Batteries & designated as:-

Ist Kohat Mountain Battery (PFF).

2^nd Derajat Mountain Battery (PFF)

3^rd Peshawar Mountain Battery (PFF) and

4^th Hazara Mountain Battery (PFF)  

Incidentally, the 5^th Bombay Mountain Battery had been raised much earlier in 1827 as the Bombay Foot Artillery as is the oldest Indian Mountain Battery. It was however, never part of PFF.

A brief account of each battery to follow in my subsequent blog posts.

More on My Artillery Days

20 May.2011
My Army days.


Hi folks, One most amazing advantage of serving in the Army is that you are required to  perform some duties which actually are your hobbies. For example, playing polo is one of them. As a young officer we always performed such duties very enthusiastically.

And the best part of being a Mountain gunner was that one could always find some patch of land even in the operational areas in the hills to practice polo. The picture below was taken in 1965, just before the move of our Battery from one forward location to the other on the Western front (up in the mountains) to participate in the Indo-Pakistan war.

Hi folks,

In old days, horses were the only mode of transport for the Mountain Artillery officers.Hence we all used to look after our chargers well.. The picture above is  of the writer while pampering his horse taken some where in operational area in 1963-64.

Devlali revisited

In December 2010, I visited the Artillery Centre, Devlali after a period of  47 years to attend the Re-Union of my elite Regiment, (popularly called the Victoria Regiment). This Regiment, being the oldest Artillery unit of the Indian Army, was initially a pack unit. This means that the guns were carried on mules while the officers rode on horses.

The picture below depicts how the pack units used to move in operational areas. If one sees the picture minutely, you will find detachments of 4 guns, led by Gun Number One - or the lead gun - of the unit. Serving as a mountain gunner not only required a very high standard of physical fitness but also meant being a very good horse rider.