As the sun began to set over the Himalayan peaks, Colonel Santosh Babu and his unarmed platoon of 50 Indian soldiers on Monday set off on a patrol across the strategically crucial Galwan Valley in Ladakh. Their mission was probably the most important in recent Indian history – to ascertain whether Chinese troops had withdrawn, as per an agreement between senior army officers from the two nations, from territory which had previously been administered by India for decades. Instead, to their surprise, what Colonel Babu’s men found were temporary Chinese all-weather tents and roughly enemy 100 soldiers waiting at a location called Patrolling Point 14. Despite being outnumbered, the Indian soldiers confronted the Chinese troops. Some started to remove the tents, sparking a long and brutal man-to-man brawl that has brought the two superpowers to the brink of war. In an initial clash, Colonel Babu and two other soldiers were killed. Soon after 17 Indian troops met the same fate, many either falling or being pushed off a ledge into the freezing waters of the Galwan River below.
