Norse_Code

India didn't send combat troops to Korea. It sent something else: an airborne medical unit. The 60th Parachute Field Ambulance arrived in late 1950 and served for more than three years. Doctors, surgeons, nurses' aides, and medics, all trained paratroopers. They lived right alongside the frontline troops, including British and Commonwealth units, and treated anyone who came to them. Soldiers, civilians, refugees, even enemy prisoners. When the UN retreated from North Korea in the brutal winter of 1950, the Indians stayed with the rearguard, treating wounded under fire. In March 1951, they did something no medical unit had done in the war. They jumped out of airplanes with the US 187th Airborne at Munsan-ni and set up a field hospital in enemy territory to treat the paratroopers as they fought. Over the course of the war, the unit is credited with treating more than 200,000 cases and performing thousands of surgeries, often in tents or ruined buildings. Their commander, Lt. Col. A.G. Rangaraj, received India's second-highest wartime gallantry award. After the armistice, India played another huge role: an Indian general led the neutral commission that oversaw tens of thousands of prisoners who refused to go home. India never fired a shot at the enemy in Korea. But it saved an enormous number of lives.