{"id":57392,"date":"2016-08-07T00:54:03","date_gmt":"2016-08-07T07:54:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=57392"},"modified":"2016-08-07T00:54:03","modified_gmt":"2016-08-07T07:54:03","slug":"in-memory-of-a-great-commander-and-an-exceptional-leader-with-deep-human-qualities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2016\/08\/07\/in-memory-of-a-great-commander-and-an-exceptional-leader-with-deep-human-qualities\/","title":{"rendered":"In memory of a great commander and an exceptional leader with deep human qualities"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em>Ranjith Soysa<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n<p>It was on 8<sup>th<\/sup> August 1992 -24 years ago- the Lt Gen Denzil Kobbekaduwa was killed in Arali ,Jaffna when he was planning to wrest the control of the peninsula \u00a0from the LTTE tamil tiger terrorists.<\/p>\n<p>He joined the army in 1960 and had completed 32 years serving the country during one of the most unenviable periods of the nation\u2019s history.<\/p>\n<p>Lt Gen Kebbekaduwa was a man with high integrity, superior in intelligence, just and humane in his approach to the war and victims of the war.<\/p>\n<p>At a time when the leading heroic defence forces\u2019 members who since led the war against the Tamil Tiger terrorists and their efforts in the battle field are underestimated and also vilified by some quarters , the story\u00a0 of the late Lt Gen Kobbekaduwa who almost crushed the LTTE in Vadamarachchi in 1987 conveys to the Nation that it is the men in battle hardened uniforms who will form the last line of defence and save the Country when confronted by the internal and external enemies.<\/p>\n<p>They shall not pass\u201d.. Gen Petain<\/p>\n<p> Not with dreams but with blood and iron-Shall a nation be moulded at last\u201d \u2013 Swinburne<\/p>\n<p>Ranjith Soysa<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ranjith Soysa It was on 8th August 1992 -24 years ago- the Lt Gen Denzil Kobbekaduwa was killed in Arali ,Jaffna when he was planning to wrest the control of the peninsula \u00a0from the LTTE tamil tiger terrorists. He joined the army in 1960 and had completed 32 years serving the country during one of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forum"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57392"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57392\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}