The Battlefield of Peace by the late Lt. Col M.G Abhyankar, India's foremost military historian, is an outstanding account of one of the earliest United Nations peace-keeping operations in the Congo in 1961-63 in which the Indian Army was involved. The author was commissioned by the United Nations in 1963 when in the Indian military contingent which was part of ONUC Organisation des Nations Unies au Congo. The Congo crisis, as it came to be called, arose due the Western-backed secession of the mineral-rich province of Katanga from the recently liberated Belgian Congo. While the UN Force fought and reversed the secession it was clear that the Congo had become a front-line state in the 'hotting up' of the Cold war in the shadow of the Cuban missile crisis between the United States and the Soviet Union. The killing of Patrice Lumumba, the country's first elected Prime Minister and the suspicious death in a plane crash of Dag Hammarskjold, the UN Secretary General, were defining tragedies which had a profound effect on the situation. The author's first- hand narration describes the series of military operations placing them in the larger context of the international political climate between the great powers and the UN Security Council. By the time the United Nations was ready to publish the book Moise Tshombe, the self-declared President of Katanga had become President of Congo. The book finally sees the light of day both because of the exemplary nature of the narrative and because Congo's tragedy (which became Zaire and now is the Democratic Republic of the Congo) continues to this day. An Indian military contingent is once again part of another United Nations Peace-Keeping operation. The rich lessons the author has drawn from the Congo operation of 1961-63 hold validity even today