On 23 October 1962 Subedar Joginder Singh of 1 Sikh held a position at Bum La in the Tawang sector against successive Chinese assaults. He was wounded, refused evacuation, fought until his ammunition was gone and then led a bayonet charge with the men he had left. He was captured and died in Chinese custody.
He was from Mahla Kalan in Moga district. He was awarded the Param Vir Chakra posthumously.
The 1962 war was a defeat conducted at altitude by troops without winter equipment, in a sector where the supply line was a footpath. The Sikh, Kumaon, Garhwal and Gorkha battalions in it were asked to hold positions that could not be held.
Punjab's connection to that war is the men in it and almost nothing else. The fighting was two thousand kilometres away and no Punjabi ground was involved.
Chinese forces returned his remains and his ashes were sent back. A memorial stands at Bum La and another at his village.
Punjab-recruited units were in the Tawang sector in the 1962 war, in country and at altitudes nothing had prepared them for.
The defeat was a failure of equipment, clothing, acclimatisation and command, and the men holding the positions had been sent up in cotton uniforms.
The families that lost men in 1962 are in the same Punjab villages that lost men in 1947, 1965 and 1971. No village keeps a single memorial covering all of it.