THE GARUD STRIKES (19 page)

‘I don’t blame Pradhan, but there was no way I could allow that… I would have had no manpower left for anything. Already Himmeth was putting a lot of pressure on all of us to get going.’ At his wit’s end, Paunchy threw the ball at Himmeth, who, with no other options available to him, took the hard call; he ordered Pradhan to muster up something and cremate the bodies wherever he was and send Paunchy’s men back to him immediately.

That is why it was almost 2200 hours by the time the unit managed to get going. The casualties had been tended to, the serious ones sent back to the ADS (Advanced Dressing Station) at Agartala, ammunition had been replenished and redistributed, and food and water distributed. More than anything else, everyone’s morale was at a new high.

‘We were supposed to start out at 2000 hours. This two-hour delay would cost us dearly, as we learnt later,’ Paunchy looked woebegone.

DAY SIX

06 December 1971

‘W
e must have gone about an hour when we saw some men coming towards us,’ Sube Singh said. ‘At first we thought they were our own boys, but as they were crossing us, someone suddenly shouted that they were Pakistanis. Before I could realize what was happening, my men began to run after them.’

Realizing the importance of keeping the platoon intact and ready to deploy and provide fire support at short notice, Sube Singh ran around and got his men back into order. By then the mortar platoon had captured two of the fleeing Pakistani soldiers.

Passing on the prisoners of war back towards the rear, the mortar platoon resumed its advance towards Arhand, approximately six kilometres away.

Flying in the dark, literally, Tuffy, who was leading the battalion’s advance, had been banking on his local guides to get him to Arhand. However, even they got confused, and missing Arhand, landed bang on National Highway No 1.

Finally figuring out where they were, Tuffy got them going again and managed to hit Arhand by about 0300 hours on 06 December 1971. As instructed, he halted about half a kilometre short of Arhand and deployed. Following hard on his heels, the rest of the
paltan
quickly built up on Tuffy’s position.

Himmeth ordered Paunchy to move ahead and recce out suitable deployment positions for the companies and for the roadblock.

‘I had gone ahead with my radio operator and two riflemen to check out deployments positions when we suddenly heard the sound of people moving and the rumble of vehicles. We made it off the road just in time,’ said Paunchy. Crouching by the side of the road, Paunchy and his trio of men saw about forty or fifty Pakistanis marching down the road, moving away from Arhand.

‘We were just off the road, so close,’ Paunchy pointed towards a flowerpot at the end of the corridor, about ten metres away. ‘And not just the men, a whole Pakistani artillery battery moved past and we could only watch helplessly. It was perhaps not scary, but decidedly hair-raising,’ he chuckled at the memory. ‘It also made us realize that had we moved out from Akhaura in time; the road block would have been in position by now and we could have captured the whole battery without any hassles,’ he gave a rueful cluck. ‘It was a pity. This same artillery battery would cause many casualties later.’

As soon as it was safe to move, Paunchy returned to the battalion HQ and briefed Himmeth on the lie of the land.

Arhand is a small grove on the Brahmanbaria-Comilla highway. On this road were two culverts. Paunchy chose the area between the culverts to set up the ambush. Himmeth agreed with his suggestion and the unit began to deploy.

Till they were forced to vacate it due to Indian counter bombardment, Arhand had been a major Pakistani gun position. The shattered remains of several concrete bunkers, a gun pit, and the smouldering wreckage of three ammunition trucks bore mute testimony to the effectiveness of the Indian counter-bombardment fire.

Himmeth had ordered the company commanders to place physical barriers on the road. Not having anything else to do it with, the guardsmen piled up empty shell cases left behind by the Pakistani artillery battery on the road.

‘We were tempted to put some live artillery shells also in the heaps,’ Glucose gave a mischievous grin, ‘but we were also worried about the damage they might cause to us, since our boys were deployed pretty close to the road block.’

By 0430 hours, the roadblock had been established and the companies deployed so that they were covering all approaches to and from Arhand. Between Alpha Company deployed to the south with the battalion HQ, and Charlie Company manning the road on the other side, the road had now become a death trap for any one coming down the road, from either side.

The
paltan
had barely finished deploying when a Pakistani one tonner came along. The driver speeded up when he saw the empty cases piled up on the road, and crashed through them easily. However, he was unable to escape the waiting guns of the guardsmen.

‘I was amazed to see Himmeth take over one of my machine guns and start shooting at the Pakistani one-tonner,’ said Paunchy, grinning at the memory. ‘Himmeth was an excellent shot and had lightning reflexes. Did you know that he had failed the IMA entrance examination in 1947? However, he was so keen on joining the Army that he enrolled in the Jaipur State Forces. He did very well there. So much so that when he did finally join the IMA, in 1949, he was the only cadet who had already won a medal.’

Shortly thereafter, still unaware that the Indians had reached this far and were now in control of the road, another convoy of six vehicles came along. Within no time, the guardsmen had destroyed a jeep, one 1-tonner and five 3-tonners, as well as killed one Pakistani officer and thirty-one soldiers and captured another three. A little later, another small group came down the road and another six Pakistanis died in the ambush.

In addition to the actual physical damage that the Arhand roadblock inflicted on the Pakistanis, it also wreaked havoc on their morale, and must have also added to the confusion in the heads of their commanders. Unaware of the speed at whi
ch 4 Guards was moving forward, it must have seemed to the Pakistani higher command that the Indian Army was everywhere, and there were more of them than it had appeared initially.

With morning also came some Indian three tonners, as the rear echelons fetched up to the old Bravo Company location at Shyamnagar.

Loading up the dead and wounded, Midha started out for the ADS. For him, it was a poignant journey as they traversed the same ground on which the enemy had given them such a hard time. The debris of war was all around.

‘We got held up at the bridge for a while. There were hundreds of our engineers clustered there. They were trying to see if the railway bridge could be re-configured to handle road traffic,’ Midha added by way of explanation, ‘because that would have allowed our vehicles to cut straight through and keep up with the advancing forces. The option was a hundred kilometre detour before the road swung back towards Ashuganj.’

Eventually, the injured guardsmen got through, taking their dead with them. A couple of hours later, they reached the ADS; the same journey that had taken them the whole night through slush and enemy fire.

‘They were processing and cremating the dead bodies right then and there,’ Midha sounded grim. Time had obviously not taken the sting out of the loss, as was evident. ‘And those of us who were wounded ended up in the field hospital. I was attended to by Captain Vinay Kumar, who later joined our unit as the RMO.’

Delighted at the progress of operations, the Indian high command decided to seize the moment and exploit the gains made thus far. Sagat took the decision to maintain the speed of advance and the momentum of operations.

The Brahmanbaria-Comilla-Chittagong highway happened to be the main link between the two Pakistani divisions tasked for the defence of this area. With the guardsmen now in control of this highway, this vital artery had been snapped. Also, barring small pockets of resistance, a sixty-seventy mile wide corridor was now available for the Indian 4 Corps to advance on Meghna.

The original plan had been for 4 Corps to now turn and clear the area down towards Chittagong. This would give enough space for the interim Bangladeshi government to be established. Chittagong was also important since the American 7th Fleet was deployed off that coast and busy making threatening noises in support of its ally, Pakistan.

It is possibly now that Lieutenant General Sagat, seeing the opportunity open up for him, decided to launch a heliborne operation across the Meghna and head for Dacca, the bigger prize. And to do that, he needed to ensure that the isolated pockets of Pakistani troops in this corridor were cleared. This task fell to Bravo and Charlie companies of 4 Guards.

Consequently, 0900 hours of 6 December 1971 saw two platoons of Bravo Company under Major Kharbanda moving from Arhand to capture the Ujjainsar Bridge.

Held by a Pakistani section comprising mixed elements, the bridge was a vital link on the Comilla-Brahmanbaria road and its capture was critical to open the lines of communication to Agartala via Kasba.

The enemy offered only a token resistance and withdrew as soon as the preparatory artillery bombardment of their location began. They ran leaving behind large quantities of small arms and ammunition.

Simultaneously, Charlie Company under Tuffy Marwah moved to secure the concrete bridge at Sultanpur, three miles south of Brahmanbaria. This bridge was held by mixed elements of about company strength, but here also the enemy offered no resistance. They panicked and fled when Charlie Company was closing up to the bridge. Once again, they abandoned a large cache of arms and ammunition, including an RCL gun.

Charlie Company was still consolidating its position on the bridge when they were ordered to hand over the security of the bridge to the brigade following up behind them and fall back to Arhand.