Beyond NJ 9842

by Nitin A Gokhale

  As 1980-81 dawned, Col Kumar was in ‘been there, done that’ kind of situation. After 28 years, his Army career was going nowhere. Many of his juniors had already become brigadiers. In mountaineering too, he had achieved much more than most people could dream of in a lifetime. So the veteran climber decided to hang up his army boots in early 1981, applying for voluntary retirement. The retirement date was set for 17 October 1981.

  But unknown to him, another, perhaps the most difficult challenge of his already distinguished mountaineering career, was still to come.

  Two days before Col Kumar was to go on six months leave prior to his eventual retirement, the Army decided to send another expedition to the eastern Karakoram, this time right up to Indira Col. “I thought to myself, yaar meine yeh shuru kiya hai, I should end it,” Col Kumar remembers as we sipped coffee in his modest apartment in central Delhi in mid-September 2013. There was a catch: Col Kumar was on leave and was about to retire, and to top it all, his medical officer pointed out that the veteran was placed in medical category ‘C’ because of earlier frost bite injuries, which meant he wouldn’t be permitted to climb beyond 7,000 ft! If he wanted to go, he would have to go at his own risk, Col Kumar was told by the Army doctor. There would be no medical cover provided!

  Col Kumar (left) with Lt Gen S.P. Malhotra,

  Northern Army Commander (1981)

  “I was aghast, but had no alternative but to give an undertaking that I would go on the expedition at my own risk!”

  Before going on the expedition, Col Kumar went to meet Army Chief Gen OP Malhotra, who was a month away from retirement. The Chief asked Col. Kumar what he needed the most. Col Kumar’s simple answer: don’t put the expedition on paper. “In the Army even a secret mission will go through six formations. I did not want anyone to know that this was a secret military expedition,” Col Kumar said.

  The Army Chief was only half convinced. But, he said the Northern Army Commander had to be on board, so Lt Gen SP Malhotra then heading the Northern Command was sent for and brought into the picture. The Army Chief told Lt Gen SP Malhotra of Col Kumar’s request. Despite his own reservations, the Northern Army Commander agreed to the suggestion of keeping the expedition out of army records.

  On the way back to Udhampur, which was the Northern Command HQ, Col Kumar hitched a ride on the Army Commander’s plane. Lt Gen Malhotra was still not comfortable with the decision not to put anything down in writing.

  Col Kumar recalls: “He was pacing up and down in the plane. Mid-way through the flight, the Army Commander remarked testily, ‘Col. you don’t want me to be your staff officer surely? Someone else must be in the loop apart from me.’ So I said all right, can we take BGS (Brigadier, General Staff) Brig. Dias, who later retired as Corps Commander, into confidence? Dias was six months junior to me and we had known each other earlier. The Army Commander agreed.”

  Col Kumar’s team on the Siachen glacier, circa 1978

  “I said tell Brig. Dias not to dub this expedition as a military mission. Let it be open. Since my background as a mountaineer was well known, I was certain if I led the expedition no one would give it a second glance,” Col Kumar reasoned. He was bang on.

  In all the photographs that the Pakistanis had taken of India’s 1978 expedition on the glacier, there were no weapons to be seen. So, as the Indians began climbing the glacier again in 1981, there was no undue alarm among the Pakistanis. This was seen as just another mountaineering expedition.

  And yet, as another member of the team, retired Major General BK Sharma, now a Distinguished Fellow at the United Services Institution (USI), then a young Captain remembers, a platoon of 9 Para Commandos and another of Ladakh Scouts were providing security to the mission. “We knew that we were on a high-risk, top secret mission”, Maj Gen Sharma recalls. He also remembers there were Films Division and Survey of India teams as part of the expedition. “But we did not have any maps of the area,” Maj Gen Sharma told me during an interview at the USI.

  The team had been flown by an Avro aircraft from Srinagar to Thoise, an airstrip near the Sector HQ of Partapur. From there it went by truck to Sasoma, the last road head normally used as a staging point for missions to Daulat Beg Oldie. From Sasoma, the expedition walked for four days to the snout of the glacier, almost to the location where the current Siachen Base Camp is located, Maj Gen Sharma remembers.

  Col Kumar came back from the mission and retired from service. He once again wrote an article (http://www.himalayanclub.org/journal/the-indian-army-expedition-to-the-eastern-karakoram-1981) and prepared a secret report for the Army on the importance of the glacier and evidence of Japanese and other expeditions allowed by the Pakistanis onto the glacier.

  Over the next two seasons, 1982 and 1983 (in those days it was believed you could climb the glacier only between May and October), India kept sending probing missions variously named Polar Bear I, Polar Bear II, Ibex I, Ibex II, etc. The 26 Sector at Partapur was getting increasingly focused on the ‘area beyond Sasoma,’ as one former Commander put it. The area beyond Sasoma was to soon become better known as Siachen!

  THE FIRST HELICOPTER LANDING ON SIACHEN

  Like the Army, even the Indian Air Force had hardly flown beyond Sasoma. Helicopters used to cross Khardung La (a formidable obstacle at 18300 ft!), go up to Thoise, Turtuk, Tyagshi but rarely ventured over the glacier.

  But in September 1978 all that changed.

  AVM Manmohan Bahadur, fresh out of Helicopter Training School (HTS) was posted to the 114 Helicopter Unit—114 HU—then headquartered at Jammu. Commanded by a Squadron Leader, there were 10 other Squadron Leaders and two Flight Lieutenants already posted in the unit. With so many seniors, Flying Officer Bahadur—the junior most and youngest—thought he would hardly get any flying opportunities. In those years, helicopter pilots from Jammu used to go on monthly detachments to Leh. In September however, much to his surprise, Flying Officer Bahadur was asked to go on temporary duty to Leh. It was a dream come true for a young flier!

  “The area was more beautiful than one could have ever imagined and flying was just out of this world,” he recalls.

  “Half way through the assignment, I was detailed to accompany the detachment commander Sqn Leader KDS Sambyal to the 3 Div (3 Infantry Division) HQ. We were briefed about the HAWS expedition led by Col. Narinder Kumar. Looking at the map, we realised we had never been there. We had in fact not thought about flying over those unknown areas. I remember the Colonel GS (General Staff) explaining to us the purpose of the mission: to show the flag on a territory, rightfully ours but opened to foreign mountaineering expeditions by Pakistanis. We were also told that Pakistanis and some western maps were now showing the area as belonging to Pakistan. We were told that the HAWS expedition was sent to the glacier to oppose Pakistan’s ‘cartographic aggression.’ That is the time I first heard the word Siachen glacier! We, as helicopter pilots were supposed to supply fresh rations and carry mail for members of the expedition. My log book shows 20 September 1978 as the date when the first air sortie on Siachen was launched by 114 HU!”

  As the Chetak flew over Siachen, the two pilots got their first glimpse of the magnificent glacier! “The black snout of the glacier was, to say the least, imposing and menacing, yet truly majestic. As we flew along, I looked left and right for any possible force landing sites. The glacier was full of ice. Or crevasses. A thought occurred to me: there were no skis on our machine! But the task had to be done, so we pressed on. As Camp I loomed ahead, the hepter was brought to a ‘hover’, the sliding door opened and out went the load. A little ahead was Camp II. The process was repeated.

  “Back from our trip—in retrospect a historic one—we discussed that it may be a good idea to pick up mail from the soldiers for their folks back home. So when the next requisition for another sortie came on 23 September 1978, we were ready. Sqn Leader JK Kaushik had meanwhile taken over as detachment commander. Again over Camp I, the hepter was brought to a hover, Sqn Ldr Kaushik (fondly known as Chacha
) opened the sliding window of the door and out went the main rotor tip cover at the end of a string. In the tip cover was a small note in Hindi which said, ‘we will be back in 10 minutes. Please write your letters and put them in the bag.’ As we drew away, ‘Chacha’ pulled the string up, as if drawing water from a well!”

  At Camp II, Bahadur remembers repeating the same process.

  On their return trip, the two pilots came back to Camp I, sure that the soldiers down below would have quickly scribbled something for their loved ones and send those letters back home. But they were in for a shock.

  “As we again hovered over Camp I, out went the string with the tip cover and but instead of letters, the soldier put in a small object. I kept signalling for letters but to no avail. We were already running low on fuel. As the string was pulled up, out came a tattered tiny carton of an eye ‘drop’ medicine. Inside the carton was a crumpled piece of paper! On it was written (in Hindi) Sahib hamare pas likhne ke liye kagaz nahin hai. Kripaya likhne ke liye kuch saman le aaiye (we don’t have paper to write, please bring some pen and paper to write on!)” After so many years, I vividly recall there was a lump in my as well as Sqn Leader Kaushik’s throat! Luckily, there were some free issue inland letters meant only for armed forces personnel lying around in the helicopter. We gave those to the soldiers and thereafter on every trip, dropped and picked up mail for our gallant soldiers via the ‘drawing water from well’ method!”

  As Air Force helicopter pilots learnt new tricks of flying at impossible heights with very little oxygen, little did Bahadur know that he and his senior Sqn Ldr SK Monga were about to enter history books in less than a month after the first sortie over Siachen.

  As we sat sipping beer in his well-appointed house, I was taken back once again to 1978.

  After doing two trips over the glacier in September, Bahadur was back in Jammu.

  In early October, there was the requirement for an engine change in a Chetak helicopter located in Leh. So Bahadur, as the youngest pilot in the unit, was assigned to carry the engine to Leh along with Sqn Ldr Hoon. They flew out early morning from Jammu to Srinagar, refuelled at Srinagar and then made the two-hour flight to Leh. The idea was to come back to Jammu the same day. As the replacement engine was being offloaded, the base received a distress call for casualty evacuation (CASEVAC) from the glacier. A member of Col Kumar’s expedition needed urgent medical treatment and had to be lifted out from the glacier.

  As coincidence would have it, both the pilots on detachment in Leh that day—Sqn Leader Monga and Sqn Leader Dogra--had not done their run to the glacier. Bahadur was the only one—by a sheer stroke of luck—to have done at least two sorties to the glacier the previous month. So Sqn Ldr Monga asked him to be his co-pilot on what they presumed would be a quick run to the glacier.

  “As a youngster, you are happy to do these adventures. Meanwhile, I had a cup of coffee as we prepared to fly to the glacier. This was about 10 am. Since the morning I only had an apple to eat. So after the mandatory checks, we were off. Now the Chetak, unlike the Cheetah, is an under-powered machine, not designed to fly at those altitudes. So we used to hug the hills and utilise the up drafts (wind that rises up along the cliffs in mountains) to power our engines to help the helicopter gain altitude and cross passes. That’s the only way we could cross Khardung La and Chang La (two of the highest passes in Ladakh at 18,000 plus feet). Today no one believes that we used to fly Chetaks in the high mountains of Ladakh just as we couldn’t believe that our predecessors used to operate Mi-4s in the 1960s. So the Chetaks would fly just 20 feet away from the hill side at 35 knots, one eye on the air speed indicator (should not drop below that), and the other looking at the getaway direction, in case the up draft did not materialise. The rotors used to claw their way in the thin rarified air and make a funny phut, phut, phut sound and use the ‘up draft’ to gain lift to cross the pass.

  “Sometimes you didn’t get the updraft so you turned sharply, down in to the valley, and came up again to attempt another crossing, courtesy another updraft! Anyway, that day we crossed Khardung La in the first attempt, carried on, went across Sasoma, crossed the base camp and flew further. I was on the map. I was supposed to know. We were given the Lat-Long (Latitude-Longitude reference) of the place so we went looking for the spot from where the casualty had to be evacuated. We crossed Camp I, Camp II and the spot where the Kumar Camp now stands, but there was no sign of the casualty. So we kept flying further. I am quite sure we went right up to Indira Col (the northern most tip of the glacier) and turned back. We had apparently missed a crucial turn. We kept looking for the spot from where we had to pick up the sick soldier. After some time, we spotted the group. Sqn Ldr Monga made the mandatory low recce to check whether we could land. And land we did. It was a tremendous feat of flying by Sqn Ldr Monga, I can assure you,” Bahadur, remembers vividly even now, over 35 years later.

  Over that beer session one Sunday afternoon at his Gurgaon residence, he in fact, fished out a log book page for that day (see pix – notice just 439 hours of total flying experience then!!).

  It showed an entry for 6 October 1978 which read: Chetak Z-1410

  Sqn Ldr (Squadron Leader) Monga/self—Leh-Siachen Adv Base Camp-Thoise, 2 hrs, 50 mins!

  That, from all accounts, was the first landing ever on the Siachen glacier, then an unknown area.

  The young Manmohan Bahadur

  As CO, 114 HU

  Air warriors line up at Leh to make a ‘human’ chain denoting ‘IAF’

  The historic logbook page showing the first landing on Siachen

  But the adventure didn’t end there for Bahadur, who went on to command the very same 114 HU in Leh, 16 years after he was first posted to the unit.

  “As we landed on the soft snow, Sqn Ldr Monga got out, asked me to take controls. He got an officer and a soldier into the chopper, strapped them, and closed the door. All this while the rotors were still running. He was panting. Remember we were at an altitude above 18,000 feet. The lack of oxygen, without acclimatisation, makes movements very difficult at that altitude. Sqn Ldr Monga, entered the chopper, quickly took a few puffs of the oxygen (the oxygen used to be like a hookah, a bottle and a pipe attached to it) and we were ready to take off. One hair-raising take off it was! The weight had increased, we were at 18,000 feet plus. But the moment we were steady, he gave me controls though I was a rookie. The Sqn Ldr desperately needed oxygen since he had exerted himself in the process of getting the patients into the cabin. We needed to refuel so we decided to hop over the ridge to Thoise instead of heading for Leh.

  “That’s when something happened to me. I broke into a cold sweat, got a clammy feeling, there was suddenly a pit in my stomach. I was feeling desperately sick. But I was barely 23 years old. How do I tell an older guy that I was not feeling well? But there was no other way. Sqn Ldr Monga looked at me and asked: ‘Have you had anything to eat since the morning?’ I told him I just had an apple and a cup of coffee. He understood.

  The moment we came in radio contact with Thoise, the first thing he told the base ‘get something to eat on the helipad.’ I was sick because my blood sugar had gone down drastically. As soon as we landed at Thoise, the first thing they did was to give me slices of handmade bread toasted over some fire and a slab of butter. The moment I wolfed down the bread everything was back to normal, as if by some instant magic. The biggest lesson I learnt that morning was: never fly in the hills on an empty stomach, especially at high altitudes! There has never been a day after that in my flying career when I hadn’t eaten before starting to fly.”

  AVM Bahadur is candid enough to confess that a major part of this resolve was fulfilled by his wife Vinita, who ensured that even if it was 4 am, he never left the house without eating something!!

  Since that first landing on 6 October 1978, helicopters have remained the most precious life line for those deployed on the Siachen glacier.

  Col Kumar making a film on a 16 mm movie camera in 1978

  Ite
ms left behind by Japanese expeditions that had climbed to

  Siachen through Pakistan

  Col Kumar’s team members trying to free the tents stuck in hard ice

  Col Kumar with Gen T.N. Raina, Chief of Army Staff, 1978

  II

  Weighing the Options

  “Pakistanis were not buying snow clothing for a picnic”

  Col Kumar’s expeditions in 1978 and 1981 and a couple of others in between, had given the Northern Command a fair idea about the civilian expeditions that were now increasingly coming into Siachen via Skardu and Gilgit. Clearly, Pakistan was throwing open the Karakorams for mountaineering expeditions. It began as an experiment to encourage tourism in the Northern Areas, but soon turned into what Indian officials described as a bit of “mountain poaching”, in which the Line of Control was extended to the Karakoram Pass from NJ 9842 showing the Siachen glacier as part of Pakistan!