THE GARUD STRIKES

by Mukul Deva

  ‘We were still a couple of kilometres short of Shyamnagar when we were day lighted. It was near about six or six-thirty in the morning. Right in front of us was the Titas river. There was not much water in it, but the riverbed and area around was very slushy and marshy. And across the river, about a hundred and fifty metres from us was the Akhaura railway station,’ Lieutenant Colonel B.B. Midha now took over the narrative. ‘Bravo was leading since the Company Commander Major Kharbanda had been on recce several times over this area and knew it very well. Now we were following precisely the route that he and the guides had reconnoitered. ’

  ‘What was your rank and task then?’ I asked, quite overwhelmed by the relentless barrage of information being thrown at me while I was still trying to sort out the basics.

  ‘I was then a Second Lieutenant, a platoon commander in Bravo Company. I had joined the unit just a few months ago,’ he said, as a smile creased his face as memories assailed him. ‘You know, when I was commissioned from the Officers’ Training Academy (OTA), I did not even know where 4 Guards was. They thought the unit was in Assam and I was given a railway warrant up to Amguri. When I reached there, no one seemed to have any idea where the paltan was. So finally, using civil transport I managed to make my way to the Mariami transit camp, about sixty kilometres away. The Officer Commanding (OC) was a fine guy. He also had no clue where the unit was, but told me to relax, and said they would find me. It took seven days but they did. The unit, which was actually in Aizwal, sent some men to pick me up from Silchar; that was the nearest railway station.’

  Midha gave an apologetic look, probably aware that he had meandered away from the war.

  ‘While on that journey, I realized that 4 Guards was very well known. Firstly, because it was a very old unit, and secondly, because Lieutenant General Sagat Singh, the 4 Corps Commander, had a lot of respect for our Commandant, Himmeth. They had probably served together for a while in the Infantry School. Anyway, as I mentioned earlier, within a couple of hours of reaching the paltan, I had landed on Himmeth’s demon’s list.’ There was no rancour in his grin. ‘But not for long. As the war clouds gathered, Himmeth began to focus on junior officers a lot. It was a major change that we all noticed. He would give us a lot of attention and often used to say that it was the young officers who were going to win the war for us. In those months, he put all of us through massive training. I remember, one day my company threw over four hundred grenades.’

  I was impressed.

  ‘In Himmeth’s dictionary, a soldier had to have two things: the ability to shoot straight, and the will to win. According to him, everything else was pointless,’ Midha paused; as much for a sip of tea as to streamline his thoughts. ‘So that day, on the morning of 2nd December, we were still a couple of clicks short of our objective, Shyamnagar, when daylight found us. Major Kharbanda told us to go to ground. We were not very sure where the Pakistanis were, and probably that is why Kharbanda was reluctant to move once the visibility improved. Everyone was relieved to get the load off their feet, since by now, we had covered four or five kilometres, most of it through horrible slush. But when Himmeth came to know that we had stopped, he was very upset at Kharbanda and gave him a piece of his mind on the radio. Very soon, we got moving again. Luckily, the fog had come down again so we could move undetected. However, by the time we hit the Titas river, the fog had lifted again and there was no way we could go ahead. Anyway, there wasn’t much ahead to go to,’ Midha concluded, as he leaned forward to show it to me on the map.

  ‘We found ourselves barely a hundred and fifty metres from the Akhaura railway station when the fog finally lifted. Naib Subedar Dhura Ram, whose platoon was leading the advance, thought there was some movement ahead, just past the railway station, and so we went to ground again. It may sound funny now, but we were all still in the training mode, even after all that artillery shelling the whole night. Or perhaps our minds had just gone numb. Everyone was so uptight about weapons, magazines, binoculars and everything else. That is when I realized I had lost one of my magazines. Major Kharbanda made us all check our controlled stores, and we found that several other men had also lost their magazines. It must have happened while we had been wading through the slush. Major Kharbanda was very upset, considering he had recently been admonished by Himmeth and the effect was still fresh,’ Midha recounted with relish. ‘He told me to go with Subedar Bikker's platoon and see if there was a Pakistani post ahead. He actually said, “I don't care if you find the post or not, but just get hold of some Pakistani magazines.”’

  ‘You’re kidding, right?’ I was incredulous.

  ‘I'm serious,’ continued Midha. ‘How do I explain? We had been so focussed on keeping our equipment secure during training, that it had gotten ingrained in our heads.’

  ‘So did you go and get the magazines?’ I asked.

  ‘Obviously! We started out towards the railway station… Bikker and I. We'd gone about a hundred metres when artillery fire intensified. It was so heavy that we had no chance of moving forward at all. We were wondering what to do when, luckily, Major Kharbanda called us back,’ his smile was gone now.

  ‘It was only then, when people started dying, that we realized this was no training exercise. We realized that the Pakistanis were actually deployed in a part of the railway station. There were a handful of Pakistani Razakars firmed in on the western bank of the Titas river, defending Shyamnagar,’ Midha elaborated.

  Bravo Company began to dig in, knowing that they would be sitting ducks for the Pakistanis who were in proper field fortifications, literally within touching range.

  The Pakistanis had spotted some movement and had called for speculative artillery fire, but they were still not completely aware of the full extent of the threat. Due to the fog, they were unaware that the enemy was already at their doorstep.

  ‘I think they confused us, either with the Mukti Bahini, or a commando raiding party, or a patrol… I'm not sure, but…’ Midha broke off as his thoughts scattered momentarily.

  After a while, the artillery fire petered off and activity on the Pakistani post increased as visibility normalized.

  No matter what the circumstances, men will be men and bodily functions do exert their inherent pressures. Answering to one such pressure, unaware of the guardsmen deployed yards away, several Pakistani Razakars headed across the railway tracks with their bottles of water, straight towards Bravo company. A few of them died before the others spotted the trenches that Bravo had dug, and that is when they realized how close the Indians were.

  ‘I can never forget the sight of that Frontier Force officer… He was a young, handsome chap, lying dead in the field with a water bottle beside him,’ Midha mused.

  That is when reality bit for the Pakistani defenders securing the railway station. Within minutes, hell erupted all around Bravo. Dhura Ram’s platoon, which was right up front, closest to the enemy, bore the brunt of it.

  Artillery began raining down on them, as did a host of machine guns and small arms. If anyone in Bravo had still harboured any doubts about being in a training exercise, those doubts died a rapid death then. The war had come home for Bravo Company!

  The Pakistanis must have noted the heaps of freshly dug mud that had suddenly sprouted in front of them. The freshly dug mud piled up in front of the foxholes provided excellent aiming marks for the Pakistani Razakars.

  ‘I can’t tell you how many slugs I found in the mud pile in front of my trench,’ Midha gave an inadvertent shudder. ‘The firing was so accurate that we could not even raise our heads. We knew we had to prevent the Pakistanis from bringing down aimed fire on us. Major Kharbanda asked Captain K.S. Sundaram, the Artillery OP deployed with us, to do the needful.’

  Sundaram was unable to direct fire from where he was pinned down. Braving heavy automatic fire Sundaram moved to a hut about a hundred metres to one flank. The Pakistani machine guns harried his operator and him every inch of the way, but he made it across and started to engage the enemy defen
ces.

  ‘But his luck did not hold out for long. Moments later, even as he was directing artillery fire, a Medium Machine Gun (MMG) burst found him,’ Midha’s tone was grave. ‘He took a bullet smack in the head. He didn’t have a chance! Neither did the man next to him. A couple of others were also injured.’

  Casualties mounted and the situation rapidly grew precarious for Bravo Company. So little was the gap between the Indian and Pakistani trenches that even the Pakistani 2-inch mortars were proving to be deadly accurate.

  ‘It was only then, when people started dying all around us, that we realised that lost magazines and all meant nothing… That we were really at war,’ Midha added, a near whisper.

  There was one particular machine gun that was making life really difficult for Bravo. Not only was the gun well sited, it was also manned by a very accurate gunner. Desperate to either destroy the machine gunner or at least force him to keep his head down, Kharbanda ordered Midha to take over Sundaram’s radio set and direct the artillery fire.

  ‘I only had a general idea of how to do that, but I must have done something right because the very first salvo was almost on target. It overshot the target by barely hundred metres,’ Midha’s tension was palpable in his voice even now. ‘But then, in all the confusion, I forgot that we had already crossed behind Akhaura and were now facing India, hence our artillery guns were in front of me, not behind me. So by mistake, I told them to add hundred, instead of asking them to subtract hundred. That almost got all of us killed. Another fifty metres, and the shells would have landed right on our heads. Major Kharbanda almost killed me,’ a tight smile indicated how severe the rebuking from Kharbanda must have been.

  Just then, the rumble of tanks was heard. By now, they all knew that their own tanks were stuck way back, so it could only be the Pakistani tanks coming up. The sound was still some distance away, but growing louder by the minute, approaching rapidly.

  Tension soared as Bravo steeled itself to meet the onslaught. However, though they did not know it yet, it would be their neighbours, Alpha Company, who were going to bear the brunt of the Pakistani armoured ire.

  ‘My company reached Kodda by 0700 hours on 2nd December. It was daylight already, but visibility was almost nil due to a thick fog. That was good for us, otherwise the Pakistani Artillery OP’s would have wreaked havoc on us,’ narrated Paunchy, who’d been commanding Alpha Company. ‘Despite the safety blanket of the fog, the last few hours had been hellish. It is funny now when one thinks of it, but I can clearly remember when we had been back in our base and I had been giving orders for our task to my company ‘O’ group. It had all seemed so simple then. Kodda was a nice little dot on the map, about five kilometres inside enemy territory, beckoning us. And the Titas river just a lovely blue line wavering curvaceously across the terrain. It had no water, no slush! It was just a wavy blue line, not at all daunting.’

  He lapsed into silence as his mind went back to all those years, and to that tiny, unremarkable company command post in some now forgotten, unmarked place along the border. I found myself holding my breath, scared to do anything that might disrupt his march down memory lane.

  Half of Alpha Company had already crossed Kodda, a longish village. Paunchy was halfway through the village when they spotted a Pakistani Razakkar. He was even more startled than they were. Then the Razakkar tried to make a run for it, but one of the guardsmen tripped him and he went down sprawling. Realizing that they could not be far from the main Pakistani position, and would be in serious trouble if the enemy soldier raised an alarm, Paunchy pushed his gun barrel into the man’s chest and shot him. The muffled shot went unheard by the Pakistani defenders.

  Paunchy’s laugh was mixed; part upset, part bewilderment. Perhaps still stunned by the ease with which he had killed another human being.

  It is not as though any of the commanders had underestimated the problem of getting eight hundred plus men, in full battle gear, with their arms, ammunition and a dozen other things that an Army carries into battle, across the Titas.

  ‘How are we going to cross the river, sahib?’ guardsman Veer Singh of Alpha Company had been forthright enough to ask his Company Commander.

  Paunchy gave a wry laugh. ‘Veer didn’t realize that his guess was as good as mine. Plans made in the sanctuary of the operations room seem so simple and do-able. But walking the talk?’ He gave me a level look. ‘The entire operation of finding a gap in the enemy defences, then going around their defences, deep into enemy territory, and then clearing some well planned defences and finally taking up position, with the enemy swarming all around us…’ he broke off with another half-laugh. ‘While giving orders, it had all been summed up in one simple statement — encircle Akhaura and establish a block at Kodda. When you put it like that, it sounds so simple, doesn’t it,’ he shrugged. ‘I guess it is what it is!’

  Paunchy was savvy enough to know that much would depend not just on the answer he gave to Veer Singh, but the confidence and panache with which he gave it. ‘We will swim across it, of course,’ he had replied, his tone ringing with the confidence that has been the hallmark of guardsmen down the ages. Nothing in his tone communicated even an iota of the apprehension that was coursing through him. He had studied and reconnoitered the river in detail, and knew that getting a combat-ready company across it was going to be a monumental task.

  Fully loaded, each man would be toting fifty-plus kilograms on his person. The battle-load (of ammunition, rations and other essential supplies) constituted another several tons. All of this had to be taken across the river. The country boats or streamers that normally ran ferry across the river were under the control of the Pakistani Army. The folding boats available to the Indian troops could be used to ferry only a part of the most critical ammunition and supplies.

  Adding to the complexity was the fact that the entire operation had to be carried out under cover of darkness; and therefore time was seriously short, since the sun rises early in this, the eastern part of the subcontinent.

  And of course, all this would be done under the merciless shadow of the enemy’s guns.

  But Paunchy, like the others, was also aware that no matter what the odds, it had to be done. There was no choice. It was now no longer just a task, but a matter of regimental izzat or honour. No shame could be allowed to fall on the Garud.

  If Veer Singh was taken aback or amused by the answer, he hid it well. With ten years of service under this belt, and a hundred years of Guards’ tradition in his heart, Veer Singh was also fully aware that his apprehensions and anxiety would be contagious. He knew that he had to stand by his Company Commander and show conviction in his decision by taking the lead himself. Which is why, when they hit the edge of the river, Veer Singh was the first man from his platoon to enter the water.

  The water was freezing and the river was shrouded with a thick layer of mist, reducing visibility to a few measly feet. Of course, just hours later, this same mist would prove to be their saving grace, by preventing the Pakistanis from bringing down aimed fire on them. But that was later. Right now it made the going miserable.

  ‘Within minutes, everything had gone numb,’ Paunchy mused. ‘We went in cold and numb and came out muddy, wet and even more numb.’

  Not the most glorious of starts for a war that history would later remember as one of the greatest military victories for the Indian Army.

  ‘War can be a real bitch,’ Paunchy remarked in a solemn, understated manner.

  Granthi arrived in Delta Company and took charge within minutes of Major Vijay Uppal being evacuated. The loss of their commander and the spate of casualties so early in the game had dampened the morale of the company. It had also ignited a lot of anger, and the men were eager to avenge their fallen comrades.

  Despite their best efforts, Delta Company was unable to infiltrate across to Chandi, their objective, since the Pakistanis were holding a position enroute.

  ‘We were going along when suddenly I saw a man in front of me. F
or a second, I thought he was one of ours. I then realized it was a Pakistani soldier. He was right there, in my face, barely a few feet away,’ Granthi looked equally surprised.

  The Pakistani was shocked by the group of men who erupted out of the fog suddenly. He had been on Listening Post (LP) duty with another of his comrades.

  ‘Obviously they had not been taking their task seriously or they would have heard us coming. Even his rifle was lying on the ground about five feet away from him. He ran for the rifle but one of my havaldars shot him,’ Granthi said as a matter of fact. ‘The second man on LP duty with him must have gone around the corner or something. Perhaps he heard the shot and ran away, because we never came across him.’

  Delta Company continued probing ahead in the fog. Almost immediately, they ran into another Pakistani post.

  ‘It seemed to be a small one,’ Granthi explained. ‘We could hear them talking to each other and could make out that there were not too many of them.’

  Captain Maninder, the Delta Company 2IC, who was with the leading platoon, called out, asking the Pakistanis to surrender.

  ‘I heard them hurl abuses in reply,’ Granthi gave a mischevious grin. ‘They were also speaking in Punjabi.’

  In addition to abusing them, the Pakistanis must have also called for artillery support because minutes later, Delta Company ran into a renewed hailstorm of artillery fire. Amongst those wounded was the company 2IC, the enterprising young Captain Maninder.

  By now, daylight was already upon them. And the fog too had started thinning out. It would not be long before the fog dissipated completely, leaving the guardsmen without cover, and exposed. Unable to move ahead to Chandi, Granthi conferred with Paunchy.

  ‘The artillery fire was pretty accurate despite the fog. I realized it would be suicidal for Delta Company to try and cross the five hundred odd metres of open ground, which lay between us and Chandi, so I told Granthi to dig in behind my company, till such time as the Old Man fetched up and we figured out what to do next,’ Paunchy said.