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AT 5 on the morning of 20th October 1962 massed Chinese artillery opened up a heavy concentration on the weak Indian garrison, in a narrow sector of the Namka Chu Valley, of Kameng Frontier Division, in the North East Frontier Agency (NEFA). Massive infantry assaults followed, and within three hours the unequal contest was over. The route to the plains of Assam lay wide open. The Chinese exploited their initial successes and advanced 160 miles into Indian territory down the southern slopes of the Himalayas, reaching the Brahmaputra Valley by 20th November. They swept aside the so-called impregnable defences at Sela Pass; Bomdilla was literally overrun; the monastery town of Towang fell without a fight. India’s panicky reaction included the scrambling of ill-equipped, ill-trained for mountain warfare and unacclimatised military formations from the Punjab - over 1,600 miles away. They were merely funnelled into the Chinese bag, as there were no pre-planned and prepared defended zones in depth. The Chinese were amazed at this grave military blunder, as they had assembled a huge army opposite NEFA (estimates vary between 30,000 and 50,000) without alerting the Indian Government, much less provoking the Indian Army into undertaking the minimum necessary strategic counter-measures. The Chinese had fit the fuse on 8th September 1962 by intruding into the Thagla Ridge area; but this was not treated as a prelude to a full-scale invasion; it was dismissed as yet another minor border incident which could be “localised and dealt with firmly”.