With Lieutenant General Devendra Sharma, General Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Army Training Command (ARTRAC), superannuating on August 31, the curtains come down on a century of collective military service by a family.A second-generation officer, he had rendered 39 years of service. His father, late Wing Commander Shiv Kumar Sharma, was an Indian Air Force fighter pilot who saw combat in four operations – Goa in 1961, Fukcheh and Demchok in 1962, Halwara in 1965 and Pathankot in 1971. Shot down over Sargodha in 1965 and ejecting with a spinal fracture, he fought his way back to fitness to fly fighters again by 1971.His father-in-law, Brigadier Sarjeet Singh Kaler (retd), saw combat in all three major wars – Rezangla in 1962, with 1 Jat in the Amritsar-Lahore Sector in 1965 and as the Adjutant of 1 JAT in 1971. He later commanded 2 Mechanised Infantry (1 JAT).General Sharma’s elder brother, Air Commodore Shailendra Sharma, (retd), was a Mirage 2000 pilot who had flown strike missions over Kargil, Dras and Mushkoh during the 1999 Kargil conflict.An alumnus of Mayo College, Ajmer, and the National Defence Academy, Khadakvasla, General Sharma won the coveted Sword of Honour for being adjudged the best cadet and the Sikh Light Infantry Medal for being the best sportsman. He was commissioned into the Scinde Horse, an old armoured regiment, in December 1987. He is the first Lieutenant General and Army Commander from this regiment and its longest-serving officer.Early in his career, while serving with 11 Rajputana Rifles in counter-insurgency operations in Jammu and Kashmir, he was decorated with the Sena Medal for Gallantry. He went on to command the Scinde Horse, an armoured brigade, an infantry division and a pivot corps – all along the Western Front. In addition, He has been deputed for foreign service twice, first with the Indian Military Training Team in Bhutan and later with the United Nations Peace Keeping Mission in Congo as the Chief Military Personnel Officer, administering over 21,000 troops from 52 Nations.He took over as the ARTRAC chief in July 2024, following which the Command promulgated the Chief of Army Staff Quadrennial Training Directive 2025-2029; pioneered drone warfare training with over 50,000 personnel being trained in their domain.During his tenure, ARTRAC initiated the establishment of Maneuver Warfare Ranges, Urban Warfare Nodes and Cyber and Electronic Warfare Ranges. The Command also institutionalised ‘Vidur Vakta’, the cognitive Red Teaming for pan-Army adoption and delivered 74 publications, five seminal doctrines and steered 15 establishments as Centres of Expertise to absorb 33 niche technologies by 2030.ARTRAC is also working on the Land Warfare Doctrine 2026, a blueprint for the Indian Army Futures Training Command (IAFTC) to build a proactive, adaptive, technology-enabled and future-ready force, absorption of new-generation equipment and emerging technologies and exam cell reforms to preserve meritocracy.In an address to all officers before hanging up his boots, General Sharma highlighted the transformation of ARTRAC into a key driver of multi-domain readiness and outlined crucial training imperatives for the 21st century battlespace while calling for an institutional shift from ‘process orientation’ to ‘product delivery’.