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 precision 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.