Major General Rajpal Punia (Author) Major General Rajpal Punia, YSM, has served for over thirty-five years in the Indian Army. As the orchestrator of Operation Khukri, the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone, West Africa, General Punia was awarded the prestigious Yudh Seva Medal by the President of India in 2002.
Damini Punia (Author) Damini Punia is a proud daughter of a brave soldier and wife of an engineer group officer. She is the official commentator at Rajpath for India's Republic Day Parade.
Did you know that 233 soldiers of the Indian Army were cordoned off for almost three months without food in the jungles of Africa?
How did a UN peacekeeping mission turn into a war for dignity, a war for the Indian tricolour?
The year was 2000. Sierra Leone, in West Africa, had been ravaged by years of civil strife. With the intervention of the United Nations, two companies of the Indian Army were deployed in Kailahun as part of a United Nations peacekeeping mission.
Soon, the peaceful mission turned into a war-like standoff between Major Punia's company and the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels in Kailahun, with the Indian peacekeepers cordoned off for seventy-five days without supplies. The only way home was by laying down their weapons.
Operation Khukri was one of Indian Army's most successful international missions, and this book is a first-hand account by Major Rajpal Punia, who, after three months of impasse and failed diplomacy, orchestrated the operation, surviving the ambush of the RUF in a prolonged jungle warfare twice, and returning with all 233 soldiers standing tall.
