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Lt Col Dilbag Singh Dabas (Retd)
During Operation ‘Cactus Lily’ on the eastern front, among the seven Brigadier-rank officers awarded the Maha Vir Chakra (MVC) was Brigadier Kailash Prasad Pande, an artillery officer who was considered more than capable to command an infantry brigade.
Affectionately known in the Gunners’ fraternity as ‘Tom’ Pande, he was born in 1925 in an illustrious Brahmin family of Gwalior in the then Central Provinces of undivided India (now Madhya Pradesh). Kailash had his secondary education at Victoria College (now Rani Laxmi Bai Government College) where Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the former Prime Minister, was his classmate. The family had a tradition of its male members joining the Army and after Senior Cambridge, Kailash was commissioned into the Gwalior State Forces on August 25, 1945.