Life Stories
Here are 75 stories to mark the 75th Anniversary of the partition of India. These moving, and inspirational, life stories document the fascinating facts and the first hand evocative experiences of the people of undivided Panjab. These 75 handpicked stories are compiled with the aim of making the ordinary, and often less famous, Panjabis all the more worthy of note and thereby enabling us as readers to fully engage with them to comprehend, if we can, the unseen side of history.
The stories teach us how the partition survivors struggled in life to deal with the tragedy of losing their homes and possessions; moving to a new territory to start from scratch; the myriad emotions they went through for breaking ties with the known and moving into the unknown; thereby making their life stories more human.
Uday Singh
Chittorgarh
He (born 1982–died 2003) was the first U.S. Army soldier of Indian descent to die during Operation Iraqi Freedom. He was born in a Punjabi Sikh Saini family. His death in Iraq was widely reported in the Indian and American media.
Sergeant Uday Singh was born in Jaipur, Rajasthan, India on April 23, 1982. He was born to a distinguished military family. His grandfather, Wing Commander Kartar Singh Taunque, was the first member of Indian Air Force to win a gallantry award for operations in Waziristan during Waziristan campaign (1936–39). He lived with his parents at various military stations until 1994. In 1994, he moved to his grandparents' home in Chandigarh.
In Chandigarh, he enrolled in St. Stephen's School, Chandigarh. English was his favourite subject. In 1995, Singh's parents and sister also moved to Chandigarh. Singh, completing school in Chandigarh in June 2000, left for the U.S. with his father and sister.
Singh enlisted in the U.S. Army on 28 August 2000 and following completion of initial training at Fort Knox was assigned to Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 34th Armor Regiment, based at Fort Riley, Kansas.
Singh's unit was deployed to Iraq in September 2003. On, December 1, 2003, Singh was serving as the gunner in the lead Humvee of his platoon while on reconnaissance mission in Habbaniyah. The platoon took fire and Singh returned fire, pinning the insurgents down until reinforcements arrived. Sergeant Singh was shot in the head, just below his helmet, during the engagement and died while en route to the hospital. The mission led to the capture of a number of insurgents and large cache of weapons.
For his actions that day Uday received the Bronze Star and Purple Heart.