Prithipal Singh Gill

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Colonel Prithipal Singh Gill (11 December 1920 – 5 December 2021) was an Indian military officer who served in all three branches of the Indian Armed Forces—the Air Force, Navy, and Army—making him unique in Indian military history. Born in Patiala State, he loved flying and earned a pilot’s license in Lahore. In 1942, he secretly joined the Indian Air Force. While training in Karachi, his family’s concerns about flying led his father to arrange a transfer to the Royal Indian Navy. He became a Sub-Lieutenant in the gunnery branch on 25 January 1943 and served on minesweepers and escort ships guarding Persian Gulf shipping during World War II. Afterward, he trained as a gunnery instructor and left the Navy in 1948, briefly working for the Punjab government.

In 1951 he joined the Indian Army. He began in the artillery, serving with the Gwalior Mountain Battery and later the 34 Field Regiment. He was promoted to Major in 1956 and Lieutenant-Colonel in 1962. In the 1965 Indo-Pak War, he commanded the 71 Medium Regiment and led a mission to recover four guns cut off by the enemy in the Sialkot sector. He was promoted to Colonel in 1968 and served as a sector commander with the Assam Rifles in Ukhrul, Manipur. Gill retired from the army in 1970. He married Preminder Kaur in 1950. He passed away on 5 December 2021 in Chandigarh at the age of 100.