अपशिंगे मिलिटरी

Apshinge Village of warriors
==HISTORY of those BRAVE 46==
The Nikams are not just a family of armymen, they are a family of armymen who’ve fought wars — big ones like the First and Second World Wars, and the 1971 India-Pakistan War. Brigadier Mohan Nikam (Retd), 64, credits his family’s wartime profile to his village, Apshinge, “where every boy dreamt of being in the Army”. Speaking with the prec

ision of a soldier, he says, “Apshinge is approximately 16 km south of Satara and 2 km off the Mumbai-Bangalore highway.” During World War I, he says, “90 per cent of the able-bodied men in Apshinge were employed with the British Army.” One of them was his grandfather, Havaldar Dhondi Nikam, of the 1/103 Maratha Light Infantry.