THE GARUD STRIKES (10 page)

Up ahead, the rifles companies of 4 Guards were not faring any better either, with the Pakistanis laying down a deadly curtain of fire on them.

With the skies raining death and the ground sucking them down, every step was excruciatingly slow and painful. Despite all this, the Gods of War seemed to have been watching over the guardsmen that day.

When the first streaks of dawn stained that death-laden night, it brought with it a thick blanket of fog. Visibility was barely a few yards, at times so terrible that it was hard to see the man in front. Probably that is why, despite having started out two hours later than planned, the battalion managed to get into position unseen by the enemy. Not that the Pakistanis stopped firing. But there is no doubt that their fire would have claimed many more casualties had the guardsmen been visible in daylight.

By 0700 hours, on 2 December 1971, the unit had reached Barisal. The battalion headquarters deployed there along with C Company. And the other three rifle companies took off for their objectives. A Company was to secure and deploy at Kodda, B Company at Shyam Nagar, and D Company was to take Chandi.

‘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 defences.

‘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.