India’s Most Fearless

by Aroor, Shiv

  ‘When the doctor came, he just pressed my hand and went away. He later told me that no matter how much anaesthesia I was under, whenever he asked me how I was, my thumbs were up. He couldn’t explain it,’ Capt. Singh says. ‘And neither could I.’

  In July 2016, 16 years after he decided to operate on a commando against his best judgement, Lt. Col. Ravi Kale (who retired as Major General) would write a letter to Capt. Singh. The man he had helped save was about to take over as CO of India’s first MARCOS unit. He wrote:

  What kept you alive was your cool, not crying or taking big gasps when your chest was shattered. This kept the rest of the lung okay. If you had shouted with pain, the chest cavity outside of the lung would have got filled with air and compressed your lung and heart.

  You also had a large grenade splinter going from your right chest to embed in the left second intercostal space. Again if you had jumped with pain this would have torn your heart or the aorta with no chance of recovery. So friend, it was your cool which saved you. I was just a small cog in that wheel.

  Take care.

  (Private communication, 12 July 2016)

  After the encounter, Capt. Singh spent a week in intensive care in Srinagar before being declared stable enough to be airlifted to Delhi. In his own words, he spent the next 2 years begging nurses for morphine injections at both Delhi’s Base Hospital and the Army R&R Hospital. His arm shattered, doctors had installed external fixators with metal rods bypassing the smashed humerus.

  Teams of doctors fought valiantly to match the courage and inexplicable cheer the young commando displayed in his hospital bed. But even they knew that Capt. Singh would never fight again. His injuries had taken an enormous toll. Eventually, he was medically downgraded by the Navy—a process that keeps officers and soldiers in service, but for duties other than combat. If Capt. Singh was not already dealing with the agony of his injuries, he now had to stomach never being able to go to war again. It was a devastating blow for any soldier, especially a young commando.

  When his family visited him for the first time at the R&R Hospital in Delhi days after the encounter, Capt. Singh’s 3-year-old daughter, Shivani, clambered up on the bed her father lay in. Holding his forearm, she said, ‘My daddy strongest!’ It was one of only a handful of occasions in which Capt. Singh allowed himself to weep.

  ‘My wife is an amazing human being. She preserved the sanity of our family when everyone thought I was dead. She rushed from Rewa in Madhya Pradesh to neighbouring Satna where my parents lived. They had nearly collapsed. She kept the family together. I can never thank her enough,’ Capt. Singh says.

  It soon became clear to Capt. Singh’s superiors that the wounded commando would not be confined to a hospital bed. His right arm nearly useless, he trained himself to play squash and fire a weapon with his left hand. In and out of hospital for cardio-thoracic therapy that would never really stop, Capt. Singh proved instrumental in setting up a training wing for the MARCOS in April 2002 in Mumbai. Three months later, his son, Sarthak, was born.

  ‘Sarthak wants to join the MARCOS. He’s still young, but he seems determined,’ Capt. Singh says. His daughter, Shivani, who would become more aware of her father’s mission as she grew up, would be filled with a ferocious anger that her parents fought to calm.

  ‘She started hating Pakistan. She was at a very impressionable age. She could never understand why it was I who got hurt for a national cause. She had lots of personal questions. Some of those we could answer. Many of them we couldn’t,’ he says.

  For Capt. Singh, being given command of INS Karna was an unspeakable privilege, one he still cannot fully personally fathom.

  ‘The men I train are my brothers. Unless we train together, we cannot fight together,’ Capt. Singh says.

  ‘When they look at me, I know what they’re thinking: This man has seen death. We will follow him to our deaths if necessary.’

  11

  ‘This Is India’s Honour. We Cannot Fail’

  Commander Milind Mohan Mokashi

  Port of Aden, Yemen

  12 October 2000

  It was an attack that shook the world—one that may have grown deeper roots in wider public memory had it not been overshadowed less than a year later by the 9/11 attacks. In more ways than one, what happened that day was a shattering trailer to 9/11. As the United States Navy’s formidably armed Arleigh Burke-class destroyer USS Cole docked for fuel at the harbour, a small fibreglass dinghy approached the 500-feet, 6000-tonne warship. On board, its sailors were lining up for an early lunch.

  The boat, steered by 2 Al-Qaeda suicide bombers, carried a 300-kg explosive device that the 2 men detonated once they reached the Cole. The explosion killed 17 American sailors and tore a frightening 40-feet hole in the ship’s hull—a ship that no force in its right mind would mess with. Images of the fearsome vessel being helplessly towed away for repairs scarred a nation that depended on battle groups featuring ships like the USS Cole to project power far from American shores, and support the most difficult foreign military operations.

  Two decades later, the bombing of USS Cole is a relatively vague memory, if it is remembered at all. In navies around the world, however, it remains a terrifying touchstone—a reminder of just how vulnerable menacing ships of war really are in the face of a threat that doesn’t play by any rules. If a ship armed to the teeth with enough weapons to level a small town could be paralysed by 2 men in a tiny motor boat, then the game had changed forever.

  Arabian Sea

  31 March 2015

  It was the inevitable first thought that crashed through Cdr Mokashi’s mind that morning, as he captained the Indian Navy’s patrolling warship INS Sumitra on an escort mission for vulnerable merchant vessels transiting through pirate-infested waters and out into the Arabian Sea. Cdr Mokashi and the 150 men under his command had arrived in the Gulf of Aden just 20 days before and had already ensured the safety of a continuous line-up of freight ships making their way through the internationally recognized trade corridor.

  That day in March, Cdr Mokashi had just received orders to immediately pull out from the escort mission, turn his ship around and steam at full speed towards Yemen’s Port of Aden. His instructions were clear: he was to reach Aden and hold position 20 miles out at sea.

  Like all good military men, Cdr Mokashi was fully prepared. When his ship had arrived in the Gulf earlier that month, the situation in Yemen had already turned volatile, with a violent civil war drawing air strikes from a Saudi-led coalition. On 26 March, as Cdr Mokashi and his men were sailing towards the tiny African nation of Djibouti across the Gulf of Aden to refuel and stock up on supplies (termed ‘operational turnaround’ in military parlance), the crew was told that Saudi Air Force Typhoon jets had begun bombing runs in Yemen. Cdr Mokashi was focused on his anti-piracy mission. But he also knew that his ship and crew were in the best possible position to dash to Yemen to rescue the huge numbers of Indian citizens who worked there, if things got worse.

  On the night of 29 March, as a fully fuelled INS Sumitra sailed out of Djibouti on its escort mission, Cdr Mokashi summoned the ship’s executive officer (XO). While the 2 men stood on the ship’s deck watching the sun sink beyond the horizon, the skipper spoke his mind.

  ‘We need to do our homework. We need to be ready in all respects for Yemen,’ he said.

  Over the next 36 hours, the ship and its crew quietly prepared itself. This would prove the first of many challenges that lay ahead. The INS Sumitra was practically brand new, commissioned into service barely 6 months before its deployment to the Gulf of Aden. Built to be versatile and nimble at sea, it is still a daunting exercise to reconfigure and realign a warship and its crew for a completely different mission—mentally, physically and materially. In this case, they needed to switch in bare hours from being a fearsome armed platform that nobody dared approach to a humanitarian relief vessel that would rescue Indian citizens from a war-torn country.

  Very few men on the INS Sumitra slep
t that night. Over the hours, the crew worked out what lay ahead. A ship built to carry a carefully calculated number of battle-trained young men would soon see a flood of women and children, senior citizens and possibly the wounded. With limited rations, accommodation and medical supplies on board, Cdr Mokashi and his XO wondered how they would manage. But like all good military men, they knew they did not have a choice but to fight with what they had.

  When the orders finally came on 31 March, there was a quiet lack of surprise on board the INS Sumitra. It took no more than 10 minutes for the ship to set course for Aden. With no charts and maps, essential to safely and easily sail into the port, Cdr Mokashi decided to wait until he had brought his warship to waters off Aden. Then he would deal with the very serious predicament of making his way into an unfriendly port without the essential charts for such sailing.

  Now mentally prepared for the mission that lay ahead, Cdr Mokashi decided to use the few hours he had before arrival at Aden to sharpen all preparations. Speaking to his crew over the ship’s intercom system, he briefed them. The crew were split up into units with specific tasks, including baggage screening, personnel screening and documentation.

  But that would come later. Inevitably, the chief concern was security. Every single man on the INS Sumitra knew about the USS Cole. And now they knew they were headed to precisely the same place where that American ship had been ambushed 15 years before. Worse, they were headed there at a time when the country was mired in open hostilities. Frayed nerves became apparent on board the Indian vessel as it sliced through the waters of the gulf towards Aden.

  The team of 8 MARCOS on the INS Sumitra was prepared with weapons and boats. Armed and ready for antiterror operations, this crack team would ‘sanitize’ the area surrounding the ship and provide a formidable layer of security. Other protective measures included a group of armed sailors who prepared themselves for possible ground combat. Six months old and on its first humanitarian mission, the INS Sumitra had just stepped into a war zone.

  On the afternoon of 31 March, Aden loomed into view, the forbidding jagged rim of the ancient dormant volcano of Kraytar visible on the horizon. Thirty miles out and approaching, Cdr Mokashi and the rest of INS Sumitra’s crew heard the first sounds of war. The low thud of shells and the reverberating shatter of airdropped weapons wafted across the water. The old port in the distance was swathed in wisps of smoke.

  About 22 km out, the INS Sumitra stopped. The port was closed for normal operations. And without clearance from Saudi Arabia, which now controlled airspace over the port and whose jets were carrying out uninterrupted strikes, moving the ship any closer could be catastrophic. Looking through binoculars at what had become one of the most dangerous ports in the world, Cdr Mokashi waited. The Saudis were taking their own time to respond to his request. With no eyes on the ground and very little information, the CO signalled his headquarters.

  India’s diplomats in Yemen, key facilitators of information and data crucial to a humanitarian mission, were all in the country’s capital, Sana’a, over 400 km away. The only representative they had in Aden was the principal of an Indian school there, who doubled up as honorary consul. Cdr Mokashi dialled him, praying the call would connect.

  It did, opening the first and very welcome conversation with an Indian on the ground and amidst the hostilities in Aden. Things would hopefully move faster now, Cdr Mokashi thought, as he ordered his crew to prepare a final approach into the port. But the Indian at the other end of the line was tense. ‘Anything beyond 1730 hours is dangerous. We cannot be on the jetty beyond that time. It is extremely risky,’ he told the Indian warship’s Captain.

  It was already 1600 hours. And there were still no orders to move closer. Cdr Mokashi waited, wondering if he should move in anyway. But a quick calculation in his mind told him it was futile.

  The ship’s crew watched as the sky began to darken at dusk. A planned daylight rescue operation had just been sunk. With the spreading darkness, the crew of INS Sumitra knew that their mission had just become infinitely more dangerous—for the ship and for them.

  In that darkness, as flashes of light erupted from Aden 14 miles away, Cdr Mokashi ordered his MARCOS to lower their vanguard boat and set out for the port. Led by an officer and armed with assault rifles and sidearms, the 8 commandos sailed through the darkness of the ancient harbour to ‘sanitize’ the ship’s intended path. Peering through the darkness and careful not to give themselves away, the 8 men scanned the area for suspicious boats that may have entered after sunset. Terror groups or rebels would have anticipated the arrival of foreign warships and may have wanted to spring another USS Cole-like incident, or worse.

  The waters were quiet, almost lake-like placid, their surface disturbed only gently by the distant rumbling. Reaching the barely lit port, the commandos docked their boat and stepped quietly on to land, their weapons cocked in every direction. The team leader signalled back to the ship that the area was tentatively secure, but they needed to be prepared for any eventuality.

  As dusk gave way to night, the INS Sumitra was finally ordered to proceed towards the port. The deserted city was shrouded in a darkness that was lit up intermittently by gunfire and flares. Guided by a rudimentary map, Cdr Mokashi’s crew downloaded a steady stream of inputs from the Indian Navy Headquarters in Delhi and the Western Naval Command in Mumbai.

  Four miles off the coast of Aden, Cdr Mokashi got a call from his MARCOS team leader at the port. The commandos had found groups of Indian citizens sheltered inside shipping containers. This was good news. But the commando wasn’t finished. The numbers were more than double of what the crew of INS Sumitra had prepared for or expected. There were 350 people waiting to be rescued. And not one of them could be left behind.

  At 1945 hours, INS Sumitra docked at the deserted port of Aden. A sole Yemeni individual at the harbour, possibly a port official, approached the ship as it docked. Aware of why the Indian ship had come, he issued an ominous instruction.

  ‘You have 45 minutes to dock fully, get your people and leave,’ he said.

  Cdr Mokashi and his XO glanced at each other. 45 minutes. Both knew that demand was beyond the realms of the possible. Even if the crew screened and embarked 1 Indian per minute, it would take 6 hours to board the 350. Of course, it would take far longer than a minute per person. Apart from regular screening for contraband, the ship’s crew needed to deal with another threat—the possibility of a suicide bomber sneaking on board with the crowd. If the pressure at hand was not enough, the Navy Headquarters in Delhi called Cdr Mokashi to board the Indians and get out of Aden as soon as possible.

  Wasting not a moment more, the crew of INS Sumitra began their work. Unused to the logistics of humanitarian screening, the crew started tentatively, gradually increasing the tempo and getting into the rhythm of their mission. Minutes before they began, their Captain had a word of advice for them.

  ‘This is a mission of honour. These are our people. They’ve just been through a lot of trauma. They’ve had to leave their homes and belongings. Many of them will be women, children and the elderly. We have to deliver them out of this place in a very short time. But let’s be as gentle with them as we can. No high-handedness. No harshness. Be firm, but not impolite. Let us imagine what they have been through,’ Cdr Mokashi said to his men, as he formally called for the embarkation process to begin.

  Around the berthed INS Sumitra, there were 2 layers of security. The 8 armed MARCOS who had arrived earlier formed a wide outer cordon ready to engage with any threat that emerged from the darkness. An inner layer of armed naval sailors formed a QRT near the embarkation point. On board the ship itself, 2 MARCOS sat perched on one of the ship’s masts. While 1 kept a watch with his binoculars, the other sat with his Israeli Galil 7.62-mm sniper rifle, his head bent to the telescopic sight, scanning the port for anything he potentially needed to take down.

  The boarding finally began, with the Indian citizens being scanned, photographed and boarded. Thei
r luggage was scanned separately and loaded into a different part of the ship that could be accessed once boarding was complete.

  The Indian Navy does not yet deploy women on board warships. So to screen the many women among the 350 people, the crew of INS Sumitra enlisted senior women from the group who appeared relatively calm. Several of the Indians boarding needed immediate medical assistance for heart ailments and diabetes. Others needed to be calmed down after the trauma of escaping a bombed city. Many hadn’t eaten in over 24 hours.

  The crew had already vacated their cabins and quarters for the rescued Indians. Women, young children and senior citizens were given priority accommodation in the officers’ and sailors’ mess decks, carefully chosen so they did not need to climb the steep ladders between decks that make up the inside of any big warship.

  A galley equipped to cook for 150 men was now fired up beyond its capacity to churn out meals for 500 persons. No sailor ate a morsel until every one of their 350 guests had been served and made comfortable.

  While the journey from Aden to Djibouti was only 7 hours, Cdr Mokashi knew the Indians under his care needed rest and access to facilities on board his ship. Strictly functional and based on community existence between brother sailors and officers, privacy on board the warship needed to be taken care of with sensitivity. The ship’s crew, all 150 of them, made it a point to make the women on board as comfortable as possible, staying out of their way and only appearing when someone needed help.

  After the last Indian had been boarded, the MARCOS and naval sailors finally relaxed from their ready-to-fire positions and got back aboard their ship. As the ship pulled away from its berth, several people remained at Aden awaiting rescue. But the INS Sumitra had permission to board only Indians—a restriction that would change a few days later.

  Through that night, INS Sumitra sailed at full speed across the Gulf of Aden. After a few hours of adjustment, exhausted from worry and exertion, most of the rescued Indians fell asleep. Safe in the confines of the 2200-tonne warship from home, they were likely too tired to dream that night.