The Brave: Param Vir Chakra Stories (18 page)
Read The Brave: Param Vir Chakra Stories Online
Authors: Rachna Bisht Rawat
Tags: #Biography, #History, #Military, #India
Col Hoshiar Singh was born on 5 May 1936 in a small village called Sisana in Haryana’s Sonipat district. He studied in a local school, later attending the Jat Higher Secondary School. He was a good student and an outstanding sportsman; an excellent volleyball player, he represented Punjab in the nationals. A senior officer of the Jat Regimental Centre noticed his excellent game at a match and implored him to join the Jat Regiment, which he did. He was enrolled into 2 Jat and later commissioned into 3 Grenadiers. Those who knew him remember him as a simple, down-to-earth man who was very fond of eating halwa-choorma but when it came to war tactics, he was said to have the cunning of a fox. After the capture of Jarpal when asked to indicate the location of his company, he did not do it from where the company was stationed. Instead, he moved 200 metres towards the enemy before firing the 2-inch illuminating mortar so that the enemy, if it was watching, would get confused. He conveyed the coordinates to his own CO on the radio set. He was a ground soldier and his field craft and understanding of enemy behaviour was one of the major reasons for the success in Jarpal. It was said that he could read the enemy’s mind like a book.
Brigadier (retd) Randhir, who served with Hoshiar after the war says that while Hoshiar was a natural leader, he was also much loved by his battalion and a big favourite with his jawans and JCOs. He would always be by their side, constantly monitoring and supervising what they were doing. He also did not like punishing his men; he preferred to correct them with genuine affection. He knew his troops very well and could tell exactly how each man would behave in a particular situation. He went on to become a full colonel and died of a heart attack on 6 December 1998. Of his three sons, two are serving in the Army, and his wife, Dhanno, lives in Delhi with her son’s family.
Brig. Randhir remembers the first time he went to join the battalion in early 1972 as a young officer. A ceasefire was in place, hostilities had ceased and though Jarpal was still to recover from the deadly shelling it had faced, sugar cane and wheat were growing in the fields, he says. Maj Hoshiar Singh and Maj Cheema were still holding fort at Jarpal after having chased the enemy right up to Barapind. He still remembers a prominent board that had been put up by the 54
th
Division just beyond the international border. It was a tribute to the big fight put up by the division, specially 3 Grenadiers, in capturing strategically important territory in Pakistan. It said: ‘You are now entering Pakistan. No passports required. Bash on regardless.’
S
iachen glacier, named after the pink sia blossoms that bloom across Ladakh in the summer months, has been called the battlefield on the roof of the world. Though no roses bloom in Siachen its beauty is not diminished for want of them.
Difficult to live in and visually striking, Siachen is home to some of the world’s tallest mountains, their snow-capped tops giving way to rivers of white that gleam in the sun as they fall over coloured rocks. It is a mesmerizing landscape of towering peaks, ridges, deep crevices and velvet folds, with ice walls that rise a mile high and hug the clouds.
For a soldier, however, Siachen is the place where hell freezes over. It has been more than 28 years since India and Pakistan have been at war at those 18, 000-feet-plus altitudes, where temperatures drop below -40 degrees and winds blow at speeds above 45 km an hour.
Siachen, the second longest glacier in the world, is a 75-km-long river of slow-moving ice surrounded by stupendous towers of snow. Men live in helicopter-maintained posts, they walk for days to reach their locations and are often out of touch with family and friends and the rest of the world. They lead a life of inhuman isolation in the most inhospitable terrain. They breathe air so cold and so deficient in oxygen that sometimes body organs cease to function, bringing a painful death. Fainting spells, loss of appetite, memory loss, loneliness and unbearable headaches are frequent. Sweat freezes inside gloves and socks, just another way for frostbite to chew its way through digits and limbs.
The enemy is not only hard to spot in the crevices and craters in the vast whiteness, he is also hard to hit. Rifles must be thawed repeatedly over kerosene stoves, and machine guns need to be primed with boiling water. While some troops fall to hostile fire, far more perish from the cold, the avalanches and from falling into snow-covered crevasses. The weather, they say, is your worst enemy.
Siachen has been a bone of contention between India and Pakistan soon after Independence. In the Karachi Agreement of 1949, both countries drew the ceasefire line across maps of Jammu and Kashmir from Manawer in the south to Khor in the north and then north to the glaciers through NJ 9842. When they came up to the glaciated wilderness of snow and ice they stopped at grid point NJ 9842, presuming that neither side would be interested in an area where not a blade of grass grows and it is a challenge to even stay alive and breathe here.
Pakistan however complicated the issue by ceding 5180 square kilometres of Indian territory to China in the area where the boundaries of India, China and Pakistan meet. Then they started permitting and assisting foreign mountaineering and scientific expeditions to explore areas that did not belong to them. Concerned by Pakistan’s activities and getting wind of Pakistan’s plans to move into the area, the Indian Army in 1983 made a pre-emptive move and occupied the Saltoro Ridge area on the glacier. In 1987, a misadventure was initiated by Pakistan when it ordered its troops to set up a post in Indian territory. A crack team of the Special Service Group (SSG) launched a surreptitious raid to occupy a key peak in Indian territory which they succeeded in and subsequently named Quaid Post after Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah. Quaid Post was at 21, 153 feet above sea level on a massive mass of ice known as Bila-Fondla.
This was a challenge that the Indian Army could not ignore. It became imperative to take the peak back, throw the Pakistanis out and this was where Sub Maj (Hony Captain) Bana Singh stepped in and earned for himself a Param Vir Chakra. The post was renamed Bana Post and it is a coveted assignment for battle-hungry young officers of the Indian Army.
Stephen P. Cohen, an authority on the Indian subcontinent at the American think tank Brookings Institution, has famously called the fight over Siachen, ‘a struggle of two bald men over a comb’. According to a statement made by Lt Gen M. L. Chibber, who was Northern Army Commander at the time of occupation of Siachen, ‘This bleeding ulcer has cost us nearly 20, 000 casualties in over twenty years and an estimated daily expenditure of two crores. India’s military occupation of Saltoro Passes in spring 1948 was meant only to deter the Pakistanis from getting there first. The Indian Army had no plans for permanent occupation. At the end of the day, the Siachen conflict was a mistake. ‘
‘Siachen is an awful place where you can step on a thin layer of snow and, poof, down you go 200 feet,’ Gen Khalid Mehmood Arif, retired former vice chief of Pakistan’s military, has said. ‘But no nation ever wants to lose a single inch of territory, so Siachen has psychological and political importance. Its value is in ego and prestige.’
There have been talks of making Siachen a peace park but many defence analysts feel that in matters of national security, neither expenditure nor casualties matter.
In the tiny village of Kadyal near Jammu, in a small house surrounded by mustard fields, an old Sikh gets up at 4. 30 every morning. He has a big glass of chai before heading to the neighbourhood gurudwara for ardaas (prayers), returning only at 8 a. m.
After a hearty breakfast of makke ki roti and sarson ka saag, he takes out his tractor and heads for the fields. It is the same routine through the year—the only thing that changes, with the seasons, is the crop: wheat in winter, sugar cane in summer, rice in the monsoon.
In January, however, retired Subedar Major (Honorary Captain) Bana Singh, Param Vir Chakra (PVC), opens his old black steel box and takes out his war medals to polish them till they sparkle. That is the time he goes to New Delhi to participate in the Republic Day Parade. Each time he holds the PVC in his hand, he remembers a very cold day in Siachen when the winds were blowing at 50 km an hour and sweat was freezing on his palms.
25 June 1987
Small and slight, Naib Subedar Bana Singh of 8 J&K Light Infantry (8 JAK LI) was wading through waist-deep snow, his AK 47 rifle slung across his back. Above 19, 000 feet, the days were no different from the nights and it was impossible to tell what time it was. A short while before, icy winds had been blowing at more than 40 km an hour, striking the soldiers like bullets on their open faces. No sooner had the winds dropped than a snowstorm had started. The visibility was down to near zero. An impregnable grey mist had dropped around Bana Singh and the two soldiers trudging wearily through the snow. The temperature had dropped to -45 degrees, making the sweat on their palms and the breath from their nostrils freeze into needle-like icicles.
For a moment, Bana Singh wondered if the task before him was even possible. But he shook his head and refused to even consider it impossible. Instead he concentrated on placing one weary foot after another.
Maybe it was best that they couldn’t see what was around, he thought. He was still to recover from the shock of seeing the bodies of his comrades, massacred in cold blood by the Pakistanis. Preserved by the extreme weather, they had been lying halfburied under freshly fallen snow, their faces grotesque masks of ice, their weapons fallen beside their bullet-riddled bodies. Though he had told his eyes not to look, they had ignored his command and continued to scan the faces of the dead soldiers scattered like rag dolls. He instinctively knew they had found what he didn’t want to look at. The crumpled body on the far side bore the handsome face of Second Lieutenant Rajiv Pande, his eyes blank and staring into nothingness.
Bana Singh froze. Only a few days back, the young and gutsy officer had been joking and laughing in the warm langar at Sonam Post. Now he was cold and dead. Bana Singh gritted his teeth and moved on.
Up ahead was the hazy outline of Quaid Post, at 21, 153 feet, where the enemy soldiers were holed up. His task was to capture the post. ‘I don’t care if we lose every man. We want that post. They killed our men. We cant let that go unavenged. Unit ki izzat ka sawaal hai (It is a matter of the unit’s pride),’ the cutting words of his commanding officer echoed in his ears.
Bana Singh gestured to his companions to stop. Their orders were to wait for three other soldiers being sent as reinforcement. Using their ice picks, the men cut into the snow wall and made place to sit huddled together, drawing heat from each other’s tired bodies. There they waited for the others to join them. Frozen, tired and hungry, they had to fight a war, when such a war had never been fought at those precarious heights ever before, anywhere in the world!
Saltoro Ridge, where Bana Singh and his men were operating, is close to the Everest in terms ofclimate and terrain. Not only were they above 19, 000 feet where the oxygen deficit made even walking a challenge, the temperature would fall below -45 degrees Celsius and just survival would become a challenge. Now they had to fight the enemy and recapture the post. What made it more challenging was that the enemy was sitting at a height and could fire down at them anytime. However, the task had to be done because the Pakistanis had not only occupied the post by stealth but they were also firing at helicopters and had fired at and killed unsuspecting men from the 8 JAK LI patrol that had gone there earlier.
Second Lieutenant Rajiv Pande, Nb Sub Hemraj and 10 jawans were in the first patrol that was sent on a reconnaissance of the area. The team was specially trained in skiing and mountain warfare, yet it was a Herculean task for them to fix ropes and scale the ice in that thin air. Every step was a challenge, but they persevered for over 48 hours in the sub-zero temperatures. When the post was just 500 m away, Pande asked his commanding officer Colonel A.P. Rai for further orders on the radio set. He was told to advance. The patrol did not realize that Pakistan’s SSG commandos were watching them from an overhang, waiting for them to come within firing range. The moment the unsuspecting men came closer, the Pakistanis opened fire, killing all but two soldiers. Pande and his men died but the ropes they had tied would show Bana Singh and his team the way. Their dead faces would also fill the soldiers with sadness and cold fury, giving them the strength to go on.
The very next day, shocked by the cold-blooded killing of the men, senior officers of the Indian Army rushed to Sonam Post. These included the corps commander, the Army chief, and the defence minister. Col Rai, who had lost his men in the terrible shootout, was bristling with rage. He pleaded for another chance to take over the post. A full-fledged attack was planned. A small camp was established ahead of Sonam Post. Five Cheetah helicopters did 400 sorties, flying on minimum fuel to maximize load-bearing capacity, and the post was equipped with rations, pup tents, arms and ammunition.
A team of two officers, three JCOs and 57 men was earmarked for the task. Nb Sub Bana Singh did not figure in the selected team but Col Rai handpicked him for the task. ‘Bana will go,’ he said, ‘I have a lot offaith in him. ‘No one knew at that time just how prophetic this inclusion was going to be. When Bana Singh was told he was going, he unquestioningly packed his rucksack, laced up his snow shoes and joined the others. Operation Rajiv had been launched to avenge the loss of 2
nd
Lt Pande and his team.
On 22 June, the first attempt was made to reach Quaid Post. During the night two jawans died of hypothermia, a dangerous condition where the organs start to shut down because of an extreme drop in body temperature.
It was decided that the next attempt would be made directly from Sonam Post. On 23 June, the men started climbing again at 8 p.m., but the high wind-velocity, deadly gaping crevasses and snowfall made it impossible to move ahead. The men also found it increasingly difficult to breathe in the rarefied air. By 4 a. m. they had only covered 150 metres.
They had to return to the camp disheartened, where they were met by a furious Col Rai, who had arrived by helicopter. ‘Hamari joota parade hui,’ Sub Maj Bana Singh now recollects with an embarrassed smile. ‘Aur honi bhi thi. Hamara kaam tha, hame karna tha.’ (We were summonedfor a dressing-down. And it was right too. It was our job. We had to do it. ) Col Rai told the men in no uncertain terms that he wanted the post. ‘The post has to be captured. We cannot let the deaths of Rajiv and his men go unavenged,’ he thundered as the men listened silently.
The very next day (24 June), the ropes were tied once again, this time in the same direction that Pande’s ill-fated patrol had taken. At 8 p. m., the climb began once again. The task force commander Maj Virender Singh was the first to go, saying he would not hesitate to shoot anybody who turned back. ‘The mission will be completed this time,’ he said, his voice colder than the wind. With that he turned and pulled himself up by the rope dangling in the snow. The men followed.
They reached the exact spot where the earlier patrol had been massacred. The bodies of their comrades lay buried in the snow around them. All discomforts were forgotten in the rush of adrenaline and the desire to seek vengeance. Right above the men was the critically positioned overhang from where the Pakistanis had shot the entire team. Luckily the snowstorm and cold winds that had reduced visibility drastically also made the enemy complacent in their confidence that the Indians would never think of an attack in such bad weather conditions. The terrible pall of grey around them was deadly for the climbing soldiers, since it hid the gaping mouths of treacherous crevasses. Two of the men slipped and fell to their deaths. Some were injured and had to be left behind. Some fell, but climbed back to rejoin the attack team. But no one waited for anyone this time. They just kept moving ahead. One by one, more soldiers were lost or evacuated because of injuries, chest trouble and frostbite.
Finally, only Bana Singh and two others managed to reach Quaid Post. About 15 m away from it, they sat huddled together in the shelter they had cut in the snow and waited for the other soldiers so that they could attack the next day.
Bana and his comrades had spent the night in the snow. They had hardly been able to sleep in the extreme cold. Soon they saw three hazy figures walking in their direction. In their white snow suits and shoes, they looked like ghosts. Bana’s blood froze and he reached for his rifle, but then he realized that the reinforcements had reached them. All five waited in the snow for a while and it was decided that they would attack the enemy post by 4. 30 pm. They closed their eyes in prayer, and then Bana told them to start moving. The heavy, persistent snowfall did not abate and they trudged on, keeping a sharp watch for craters that had been covered by falling snow and meant a painful death.
Nb Sub Bana Singh led his men alone along the extremely dangerous route, climbing in near darkness. He inspired them with his indomitable courage and leadership. Despite the bad weather and the screaming winds the six brave men reached the post and stormed it. Flinging grenades into the enemy bunker, the men charged at the enemy soldiers. Bana Singh reached for a grenade and flung it inside a bunker, latching the door from outside. He didn’t let the screams of the dying men distract him and charged with all his might, bayoneting those who were outside, taking them completely by surprise. Some ran down the slope into the Pakistani side, some were killed, others injured. Maj Virender Singh and two more soldiers had also joined Bana by then. With their light machine gun on single-shot mode since the guns had stopped firing more than once at a time in the extreme cold, Bana directed the fire at enemy soldiers who were trying to climb back. The soldiers were either killed or scared away. However, realizing that their post had been captured, they started shelling it.
Maj Virender received four bullets in his chest and stomach but refused to be evacuated. He told Bana Singh to try and capture the enemy alive, to which Singh shook his head and famously replied: ‘Sir, these bastards are not my cousins!’ It made the injured officer smile even in those moments when they were courting death. Rifleman Om Raj’s arm was blown off by a shell and hung loosely by his side as he gasped in shock and pain. Bana Singh tried to stem the bleeding with bandages from his first-aid kit, but he couldn’t. Both Om Raj, who was losing blood fast, and Maj Virender were taken a little lower down, where the weather had opened up and a helicopter could land to evacuate them. While Maj Virender survived and later rose to the rank of Brigadier, Om Raj died on the glacier in the arms of the men he had climbed up with. Both the men received Vir Chakras for their bravery.
On 27 June 1987, Brigade Commander Brigadier C. S. Nugyal climbed up to the post. In a rare, emotional moment he hugged fiercely the dirty and war-ravaged Bana Singh and his men. The post would thereafter be called Bana Top, he declared. Nb Sub Bana Singh was awarded the PVC for conspicuous bravery and leadership under the most adverse conditions. Operation Rajiv also resulted in the award of one Maha Vir Chakra, seven Vir Chakras and one Sena Medal, besides the PVC. The CO and the commander were awarded Uttam Yudh Seva Medals.