A Century and Eight Years On, Tura Remembers the Men Who Crossed the World for Duty
Tura, July 16: More than a century after they marched away from their villages in the Garo Hills, the memory of the men of the Garo Labour Corps returned to the streets and stages of Tura on Thursday, as the town marked the 108th anniversary of their call to service in the First World War.
It is a story that still carries weight precisely because of what it asked of ordinary men. In 1917, hundreds of Garo villagers — farmers, hunters, sons of a land far removed from the war then consuming Europe — were recruited into the Labour Corps and sent across oceans and continents to France. They arrived not to fight with rifles but to dig trenches, build roads, carry supplies and keep the machinery of war moving, often within range of enemy shelling. They did so through one of the harshest European winters in living memory, in a cold utterly foreign to men raised in a subtropical hill climate, wearing clothing and living in conditions never designed for such extremes. Many did not live to return home. Those who did came back forever marked by what they had seen and endured.
It is that act — leaving home, family and familiar climate for a war not their own, and enduring a winter that tested their very survival — that Tura paused to honour this week.
Wreaths at the Cenotaph, silence for the fallen
The day’s observance, organised by the Tura Municipal Board, began at the Cenotaph at the Urban Marketing Hub Parking in Ringrey, where wreaths were laid in tribute to the fallen. Leading the tribute was Thomas A. Sangma, Speaker of the Meghalaya Legislative Assembly, joined by Marcuise N. Marak, Minister in-charge of the Housing Department and PHE and Chairman of the Committee for Preservation of Garo Culture and Heritage, and Vibhor Aggarwal, IAS, Deputy Commissioner of West Garo Hills, alongside senior officials, public representatives, civil society members, senior citizens and students.
The District Police, Tura, and the 2nd MLP Battalion, Goeragre, rendered a ceremonial salutation, after which the gathering observed two minutes of silence for the departed souls of the Corps. Fr. Januarius S. Sangma, Principal of Don Bosco College Degree Section, led a prayer service invoking blessings on the memory of the fallen.
Descendants honoured, history brought to life
The programme moved to the District Library-cum-Auditorium, where Tura Municipal Board Chairman J. D. Sangma delivered the welcome address. Smt. Chryslin T. Sangma, a retired Meghalaya Civil Service officer and former Director of Fisheries, spoke on the historical weight of the Corps’ service and the responsibility of preserving that legacy for generations still to come.
Cultural performances by Harding Theological College, Bosco Mount, Rongkhon, and the Do-kaku Art & Cultural Association brought Garo tradition and heritage to the stage, while an audio-visual presentation traced the history of the Labour Corps — men who travelled thousands of miles from the hills of Meghalaya to the battlefields of France in service of the Allied war effort.
In one of the day’s most moving moments, mementos were presented to 17 descendants of Garo Labour Corps personnel by the Research Committee for Preservation of Garo Culture and Heritage — a gesture of recognition for sacrifices made more than a century ago, now finally reaching the families who carried their memory forward.
Three lessons for a new generation
In his address, Speaker Thomas A. Sangma drew three lessons from the lives of the Labour Corps men for today’s youth: loyalty to duty, courage in adversity, and trust through keeping promises.
Today’s youth, he said, may never be summoned to a distant battlefield, but they are called every day to serve in classrooms, workplaces and public institutions — and loyalty to duty means honouring those responsibilities, as students, teachers, workers or public servants, even without recognition or reward.
He pointed to the endurance of the Corps’ men — enduring unfamiliar terrain, brutal winter conditions and relentless hardship without retreat — as the model for facing today’s economic and social pressures with resilience and discipline. And he called trust the foundation of both governance and community, sustained only through honesty and transparency across generations.
As a mark of support for preserving that legacy, Sangma announced a personal contribution of ₹2 lakh to the Research Committee for Preservation of Garo Culture and Heritage.
A promise to keep searching
Minister Marcuise N. Marak told the gathering that the Cenotaph’s reconstruction, ordered years earlier by the Chief Minister, had led the government to form both a Sub-Committee for its development and the Research Committee tasked with tracing descendants of Corps personnel. That research, he said, had culminated in this year’s felicitation of 17 families — with more to be identified and honoured in the years ahead.
He appealed to elders and custodians of Garo oral history to come forward with what they know, to aid the committee’s documentation efforts, and closed by reaffirming the community’s duty to safeguard the Corps’ legacy as an enduring source of inspiration.
The programme closed with a vote of thanks and the singing of the State Anthem.
Why July 16 matters
Observed every year on July 16, Garo Labour Corps Day commemorates the hundreds of Garo men recruited into the Labour Corps during the First World War and sent to serve — far from home, and far from anything they had known — in the war zones of Europe. A century and eight years later, their journey across the world, and the winter they survived to serve a cause not their own, remains one of the defining chapters in Garo history: a lasting testament to courage, discipline and service to humanity.
