RACHNA BISHT RAWAT

KARGIL
Untold Stories from the War

PENGUIN BOOKS
 Contents

A Note on the Author

Message from the Raksha Mantri

Foreword

Introduction

1. Unbroken

2. Not without My Men

LADAKHI BOYS TURN PORTERS IN WAR

3. Haneef

4. The Last Letter

BURYING THE DEAD

5. Premonition

ENDORSING THE ENEMY’S BRAVERY

6. Endgame

THE BLADE RUNNER

7. The Doctor with a Maroon Beret

KARGIL’S ONLY WOMAN WARRIOR

8. The Legacy

DESH

Illustrations
People and Organizations Working for Martyrs
Acknowledgements
Follow Penguin
Copyright
 A Note on the Author

Rachna Bisht Rawat is mom to a wise seventeen-year-old, walk partner to

a crazy golden retriever and gypsy wife to a happy-go-lucky Army officer
whose work takes the family to some of the most remote corners of India. It
is in these cantonments, where time slows down, that she gets time to read,
listen to music or sit with a cup of tea and her MacBook to write stories
about the Army which, she says, is the only world she knows.
A 2005 Harry Brittain fellow, her first story, ‘Munni Mousi’, was
declared the winner of the 2008–09 Commonwealth Short Story
Competition. Kargil is her fourth book after The Brave,1965 and Shoot.
Dive. Fly., all published by Penguin Random House India.
For more about the author, you can log on to www.rachnabisht.com or
write to her at [email protected]. Her Instagram handle is
rachna_bishtrawat.
 By the Same Author

Shoot. Dive. Fly.

1965: Stories from the Second Indo-Pak War
The Brave: Param Vir Chakra Stories
 Advance Praise for Kargil

‘Compelling and mind-blowing stories about the heroes of the Kargil War
that capture the very essence, ethos and motivation of the Indian soldier. A
must-read for every Indian citizen.’ Maj. Gen. Ian Cardozo, AVSM, SM
(Retd)

‘Kargil stories have become the stuff of legends, stories that deserve to be
shared and told over and over again. Rachna Bisht Rawat takes a deep look
at the human face of warfare in the high Himalayas and comes out with a
moving insight of the psyche and raw courage of Indian soldiers. Rachna’s
account will undoubtedly swell any Indian’s heart with pride.’ Rehan Fazal,
BBC

‘Kargil is not a linear account of a war Indians saw beamed into their living
rooms via television. It goes beyond the tales of sacrifice, love and
remembrance that families, friends and regiments have kept alive these past
twenty years. The book addresses why, in a world where these young men
could have been anything, they chose the way of the warrior and the old-
fashioned, rare ideals that go with it. This is something that stays with you
long after the last bullet has been fired and the last page has been turned.’
Deepa Alexander, Deputy Editor, The Hindu
For the soldiers who did not return from Kargil, and their families, whose
debt the country can never repay
‘To live in the hearts we leave behind, is not to die’
—Thomas Campbell
In early 1999, exactly twenty years ago, Pakistani regulars, disguised as
jihadis, crossed over into the cold barren heights of Kargil, and established
posts in Indian territory. Their brazen infiltration triggered a sharp limited
war between India and Pakistan. It was a tough war, fought on sheer grit
and courage, as gutsy young officers, most of them in their twenties, led
equally brave soldiers up naked rock faces and managed to evict the enemy
within weeks. On 26 July 1999, the Kargil conflict officially came to an
end. The Indian Army announced complete eviction of Pakistani intruders;
but a price was paid for it in blood and tears. We had lost 527 of our brave
soldiers; 1363 came back wounded.
 Message from the Raksha Mantri

I am happy to learn that, when the nation is celebrating the twentieth

anniversary of Kargil Vijay, Ms Rachna Bisht Rawat is coming out with a
book narrating the untold stories from the Kargil War.
We remember India’s war heroes and fallen soldiers by revisiting their
stories of sacrifices. We rejoice by celebrating the victories in war and, in
this process, renew our resolve to safeguard the honour of the Tricolour.
I am hopeful that this well-timed book on Kargil warriors will revisit
their stories, rejoice in their victories and keep the memories of our brave
soldiers alive for coming generations.
I extend my best wishes to the author and hope for its successful
publication.

Rajnath Singh
New Delhi
15 July 2019
 Foreword

I am the proud father of Kargil martyr Lieutenant (Lt) Vijyant Thapar

(Robin), Vir Chakra (VrC), who laid down his life for his country at the age
of twenty-two. Losing Robin, our young son, in the Kargil War, when he
had the best years of his life ahead of him, has been a terrible personal loss
for both my wife and me. It broke our hearts forever. However, it is also the
greatest honour of our lives. Besides being Robin’s father, I am also an
Army officer and I believe dying in battle for the country is a privilege. It is
what all of us in uniform dream about, but very few get the opportunity.
Our son was a fortunate man indeed.
When death comes is inconsequential, as come it must. What really
matters is how and where it comes. Life is never measured in terms of its
length but in terms of its depth or the intensity with which it is lived. What
Robin and the other martyrs of Kargil achieved in their twenties was far
greater than what many long insipid lives did. All of us who lost their
children in this war, and the wars before, are so proud of them. I am sure the
same applies to the young wives who lost their husbands and children who
lost their fathers. We live with the loss and the pain, but we also live with
our heads held high. We believe these men we loved so much shall continue
to live—till we remember their sacrifice. The onus of keeping them alive
rests on us, the ones left behind. The nation has the responsibility to
remember them with reverence because that was the trust with which they
fell. We must ensure that their stories are passed down the generations.
Kargil: Untold Stories from the War is a great effort in that direction.
Every book is a monument; it enshrines an event, a person or a thought.
This book immortalizes the spirit of the officers and soldiers of the Indian
Army who made the Kargil War an expression of dedication to duty,
indomitable spirit, bravery and sacrifice. It is a testimony to the courage,
grit and determination of the young men to get on the objective, despite
death staring them in the face. The stories epitomize all that makes the
Indian Army great. It also chronicles the graceful and dignified acceptance
of their loss and pain, by mothers and wives who lost their sons and
husbands.
Whenever the story of Kargil is told, it shall be incomplete without
paying homage to the steely resolve and cold courage of these young men
who went to fight for their nation knowing that they might never return.
Barely out of the academy, they fought against all odds, with single-minded
devotion, and set new benchmarks in heroism. Their spirit and daring will
be difficult to replicate.
Every young officer in every new batch that graduates from the Indian
Military Academy (IMA) and the Officers Training Academy (OTA) takes
the ‘Antim Pag’ only after taking the oath: I will observe and obey all the
commands of the President of the Union of India and the commands of any
officer set above me, even to the peril of my life. They have proved true to
this oath time and again. Alongside they have their regimental pride to
uphold.
A victory in war is achieved because battles are won. Battles are won
when soldiers put duty before themselves. This book pays tribute to this do-
or-die spirit of the Indian armed forces. Soldiers who put their lives at stake
in wars and war-like situations expect nothing in return. But what the nation
owes to them is recognition and gratitude. Documenting the sagas of their
sacrifices is a part of this process. These tales need to be part of not just
military history but also school textbooks, so that every generation of our
country is reminded of the sacrifices made by its soldiers and young people
are motivated to emulate the same.
I am sure that the stories written by Mrs Rachna Bisht Rawat, who writes
from her heart, will continue to inspire future generations of soldiers and
motivate them to follow the footsteps of the brave young heroes who won
the Kargil War for us.
 I take this opportunity to recognize the contribution of every single
soldier of the Indian Army who fought for our country and shall continue to
do so. I salute their sacrifice and selfless devotion to duty. I take great pride
in having been a part of an army of such exemplary men. It is indeed an
honour that I, my son, my father and his father before him have served this
splendid organization where we give our all and ask for nothing in return.

Jai Hind!

Col. V.N. Thapar (Retd)

 Introduction

With the exception of my young readers, who are not yet twenty, all of us
have lived through the Kargil War. Some of us saw it unfolding on our
television screens while others had a closer look. I was a reporter with the
Indian Express, Ahmedabad, newly married to Captain (Capt.) Manoj
Rawat of 3 Engineer Regiment when the war broke out. My husband’s unit
was among those immediately deployed on the Rajasthan border because of
a perceived threat.
Even as I watched the goings-on of war with a sinking heart, the entire
cantonment was emptied of men and machines within a few days. Noisy
messes, where ice cubes clinked in crystal glasses, were suddenly quiet; the
stomp of DMS boots was not heard in parade grounds any more; parks no
longer rang out with the laughter of dads throwing balls to little children
with poised bats. I would stand in my balcony and watch convoys of Army
trucks head for the border carrying soldiers in combat greens, rifles slung
across their backs, faces sombre. My handsome husband bid goodbye with
a curt handshake, since an officer will not be seen hugging his wife in front
of his troops. He did smile at me lovingly from the driver’s seat and, with a
crisp salute, told me to take care, that he would be back soon. He then drove
off, his jeep disappearing in a cloud of dust. The solace of my life is that he
did return. So many husbands never did.
The war was eventually restricted to Kargil. My twenty-five-year-old
brother, then Capt. Sameer Singh Bisht, fought it alongside his unit, 5 Para.
Those were terrible days indeed. I would scan every newspaper, watch
every news channel, stay awake in my bed with Sufi, the cat, and wait for
dawn to break. In the morning, I would go to work and beg, borrow, steal
any war-related assignments I could from my editor, Derick D’Sa.
Accompanied by a photographer, I would travel to villages where the
bodies of martyrs were being brought home. I would cover funerals, join
processions and watch grieving families and little children whose lives
would never be the same again. I would think of the men in my life who
were at risk too and my heart would sink. Late evenings, returning from
office, I would park my bright blue scooter at an STD (subscriber trunk
dialing) booth and call home in Kotdwar, a small town in Garhwal
(Uttarakhand), where my parents lived in a mango tree-surrounded
bungalow ever since my paratrooper father, Brigadier (Brig.) B.S. Bisht,
Sena Medal (SM), Vishisht Seva Medal (VSM), had retired. It was always
Mom who picked up the phone.
Dad, she said, was glued to the television watching war bulletins, trying
to figure out where my brother could be. He had almost stopped eating and
would sit silently in the veranda late at night with the light switched off; his
head held high, a cigarette dangling from between his fingers, a glass of
whiskey by his side and Farida Khanum’s voice wafting out of our sitting
room window from the old cassette player inside. His suffering ended when
his son returned from Kargil a decorated officer. He was lucky. There were
many whose sons never did.
In the course of writing Kargil, I met some of these fathers—and
mothers. And children with hazy memories of that man called father, a
stranger in olive green, who had left home one day and never come back.
When I asked Kargil martyr Lance Naik Bachan Singh’s son, Lt Hitesh, to
share some memories of his father, he said he hardly had any. ‘My twin
brother and I were four when he died, but I do remember his funeral,’ he
told me. Mrs Kamesh Bala, Hitesh’s mother, told me that in the seven years
of being married she had spent just five months with her husband. He had
promised to take her and the twins along in the peace posting he was
expecting, but that day never came. Bachan died at twenty-nine in the
Battle of Tololing.
Capt. Saurabh Kalia was twenty-two when he signed the first cheque of
his life soon after being commissioned and handed it to his mother proudly,
telling her, ‘Don’t worry about money any more, ab main kamane laga hun
[I am earning now].’ Mrs Kalia showed me the cancelled cheque with tears
in her eyes. It was never cashed. Saurabh was dead before his first salary
was credited to his bank account.
Mrs Meena Nayyar told me how the pampered Anuj would keep
pestering her and her husband for a new car that he wanted them to buy for
him before he got back. ‘I would get exasperated each time the phone rang.
We didn’t think he would never return,’ she said. Anuj was to get married to
his school sweetheart in September 1999. In July, he was dead.
I met Capt. Haneef-ud-din’s mother, Mrs Hema Aziz. Haneef’s body lay
on the frozen snow in Turtuk for forty-three days. When the then Army
Chief, General (Gen.) Ved Prakash Malik, visited Mrs Aziz and told her that
they were not able to retrieve his body because the enemy was firing
constantly, she assured him that she did not want another soldier to risk his
life to get her son’s body. She even refused the petrol pump that was offered
to her on Haneef’s martyrdom.
I am sure there are heartbreaking stories like this on the other side of the
border too. I marvel at how men who are fathers, sons, brothers, husbands
and lovers just lace up their boots and go to war, honouring their sole
responsibility as soldiers. War stories might sound romantic, but the reality
is that war is terrible. It destroys lives, shatters families and leaves behind a
legacy of sadness and hate. I sincerely hope that the martyrs of Kargil are
the last ones we have to grieve. This book is a tribute to their courage and,
even more so, to the courage of their families, who have faced their loss
with such dignity. We are under their debt—a debt that can never be repaid.
In his last letter to his father, Lt Vijyant Thapar had hoped that the
sacrifices of his men would not be forgotten. This book is a step in that
direction. I hope that Kargil: Untold Stories from the War shall keep the
memories of these brave soldiers alive in public memory. That is the least
we can do for those who willingly gave up their lives for the country.
Soldiers don’t die on battlefields; they die when an ungrateful nation forgets
their sacrifice. May the 527 martyrs of Kargil live in our hearts forever.
 Chapter 1
Unbroken

A young officer is tortured to death in enemy custody. His father vows to

get the guilty punished.

14 May 1999
2.30 p.m.
Somewhere near Bajrang Post, Kaksar, Kargil

It has been more than four hours of walking in the chilling wind. The cold is
seeping into twenty-two-year-old Capt. Saurabh Kalia’s bones. Most of the
climb from 99 Top, where he received orders to take a surveillance patrol to
Bajrang Post, has been along a frozen nullah. He knows the nullah is
deceptive. There is ice on top but biting-cold water flows underneath. One
wrong step and a man could fall in and freeze to death.
The chill in the air is making his eyes water. He uses the back of his hand
to wipe them dry. The air seems to be freezing on his eyelashes; he runs his
tongue over dry chapped lips. A Himachali, he is used to the cold but the
temperature is unbearable even for him.
For a moment, he stops and his thoughts wander to Palampur’s brilliant
blue skies and jade-green tea gardens. And home. He thinks about his
parents and Vaibhav, his happy-go-lucky younger brother who is still in
college, and it suffuses his heart with warmth. He wonders how his five
soldiers are faring. Turning his head slightly to look back, he finds them
plodding on tenaciously.
Pulling his balaclava lower over his ears, Saurabh shakes his fingers to
get the blood flowing again and starts walking. His carbine hangs behind
his back. Up ahead, he can see Bajrang Post. Located at 17,450 feet on the
southwestern flank of Kaksar, it overlooks the vast, open glaciated area but
has been vacated by the Indian Army for the winter months, when it lies
buried under heavy snow. As per a long-standing agreement between India
and Pakistan, both sides vacate these posts during winter and reoccupy
them in summer. Saurabh has been sent to check if the snow has melted
enough for the post to be manned again. He has no intention of returning
before he completes his task.
Gritting his teeth, he moves on, unaware that the enemy is watching him.
Taking advantage of India’s trust, Pakistan has slowly been moving its
troops into Bajrang Post during the past few months. Even as the
unsuspecting soldiers of 4 JAT climb to what they think is their own vacant
post, they are being watched by the enemy who is waiting for them to come
within firing distance. At 2.30 p.m., Saurabh loses radio contact with his
men from Charlie Company at 99 Top.

21 December 2018
Gaggal airport
Kangra, Himachal Pradesh

On a cold December morning, when the temperature has dipped to 5

degrees, a tiny ATR-72 aircraft taxies down the runway and comes to a
smooth stop. Wrapping mufflers tighter around their necks and slipping into
warm jackets, the passengers pull their cabin baggage down from overhead
storage compartments and queue up to alight. Mesmerized by the stunning
view that accosts them, most stop to take selfies with the twin-engine plane
and the magnificent snow-covered Dhauladhar range as a backdrop.
Walking across the tarmac to one of the smallest airports I have seen, I
don’t share my co-passengers’ euphoria though the view and the fragrant
roses blooming outside do take my breath away. I am taking a taxi to
Palampur to meet Dr Narinder K. Kalia, the seventy-year-old father of late
Capt. Saurabh Kalia who, along with his five comrades, was captured by
Pakistan in 1999. The men were tortured for more than three weeks and
their bodies returned to India after they were shot through the head. I have
read the post-mortem reports and they have kept me awake many nights.
What was done to Saurabh and his men is beyond human imagination. I too
have a son and I shudder to imagine the lifetime of pain that has befallen
Saurabh’s parents. Dr Kalia has written to every important government
department, every prime minister, every embassy and consulate he could
find the addresses of to take up this case of human rights violations and
flouting of the Geneva Conventions by Pakistan, but nothing has come of it
so far.
Meeting Dr Kalia is my personal effort to walk a small distance with him
in his long and relentless fight for justice. It is also an effort to absolve
myself of some of the guilt that comes from being the citizen of a country
that could not stand by its soldiers. But right now I am preoccupied with
other thoughts. Like, how do you start a conversation with a father whose
young son faced the most horrific end? Is there anything one can say to take
away some of his pain? How did a simple middle-class man from a small
hill town, who retired as a senior scientist from the Council of Scientific
and Industrial Research, who stutters when he talks and struggles to form
the words he wants to say, find the courage to take on the government of his
country? How has he managed to fight with the same passion for nineteen
long years, with hardly any small victories on the way? I find no answers to
my own questions and, switching off my mind, look out of the window
instead.
Around me are breathtaking mountains that chill the air and send it fresh
and crisp straight into my lungs. Beside me, the winding blue-green Neugal
Khud meanders lazily through Palampur.
This is where Saurabh Kalia—Naughty, as his parents called him—grew
up and went to school, first to DAV Public School and then to Kendriya
Vidyalaya in the cantonment, where he watched, with long-lashed luminous
eyes, the splendours of life in uniform. This is where the little boy was
seduced by the discipline, smart uniforms, the romance of putting your life
at stake for your country and decided he wanted to be an Army officer too.
 In the small hill town of Palampur, you don’t need addresses to reach the
houses of martyrs (the late Capt. Vikram Batra, Param Vir Chakra (PVC),
was from here too and I had the same experience when I came looking for
his house five years ago while researching my book The Brave). This time I
am wiser—I haven’t insisted that Dr Kalia send me his complete address as
I had done with Mr Girdhari Lal Batra, Vikram’s father, when he had said,
‘Beta, Palampur mein kisi se bhi puch lena, humare ghar ka rasta bata
denge. [Ask anyone in Palampur, they will direct you to our house.]’
All I do now is put my head out of the window and ask, ‘Kya aapko
Capt. Saurabh Kalia ka ghar maloom hai?’ [Do you know Capt. Saurabh
Kalia’s house?]’ People smile and nod. Women with shawls draped over
their heads, a bespectacled tailor oiling his sewing machine, an old man
smoking a surreptitious bidi, and effervescent salwar kameez-clad
schoolgirls with pink cheeks and ribbons in their braids guide me with
gestures of the hand and tilts of the head.
Crossing tea gardens strewn along the roadside like emeralds in a
necklace, we weave our way past houses with bright red and green roofs.
Vipin Ji (my taxi driver) and I don’t bother with road signs or Google Maps;
we follow directions that lead us in no time to a house with a sign at the
gate that tells us we have reached a family that has borne personal loss. It is
the internationally recognized icon of an upside-down rifle with a war
helmet placed on top—a tribute to fallen soldiers. The dates 29 June 1976
to 9 June 1999, inscribed on black marble beneath Capt. Saurabh Kalia’s
name, are a reminder that he died before the best years of his life, before he
could dream and stretch out an arm to reach for whatever he wanted. He
chose to be a soldier but he could be one only for six months. His lone
nameplate at the gate tells me that he continues to live here, if only in the
hearts of his parents and his brother who never felt the need to have their
own names there.
Dr Kalia greets me with a smile. Mrs Vijaya Kalia, Saurabh’s mother,
pushes aside my folded hands and envelopes me in such a long hug that all
my professional apprehensions and personal sadness melt away. My eyes
fill with tears at how much she has lost and how much she is still capable of
giving.
We cross a room that has Saurabh Smriti Kaksh written outside. ‘We will
bring you here later. First you must have breakfast,’ Dr Kalia tells me,
escorting me up to the terrace where a glass hut protects us from the chilly
wind but allows us to soak in the sun and the surreal view of the snow-clad
mountains.
I spend the entire day with the Kalias, with Vaibhav, their younger son,
joining us, and my guilt slowly dissipates in the warmth of their affection.
They tell me how Naughty was as a boy—quiet and reticent, fond of
cooking for his family and friends. They joke about how difficult it was to
wake him up in the mornings and how when Mrs Kalia was told that in the
IMA early risers were ordered to wear boots and run on top of late risers,
she quickly got Saurabh an alarm clock, telling him worriedly, ‘Tu toh
subah uthta hi nahi hai beta; tere upar toh woh roz boot waale ladke
daudayenge. [You can never wake up early, son; they will make boys with
boots run on top of you every day.]’
Vaibhav doubles up laughing when he tells me that when Saurabh came
back on his first term break from the academy, he had lost so much weight
that his friends joked, ‘Faujiyon ne toh alu chheel diya! [The Army seems
to have peeled our potato!]’ He also tells me that Saurabh wanted to be a
doctor earlier but he was captivated by the charms of the Army cantonment
when he started going to school there. ‘Unka kya discipline hai, hum logon
se ekdum alag. Main bhi sochta hun Army mein chala jaun. [What fantastic
discipline they have; they are so different from us. I also think I will join the
Army]’, he would tell Vaibhav when the brothers were together.
Saurabh had given his medical entrance exams but could not get into a
good college. He knew his parents would find it difficult to afford a
capitation fee. Mrs Kalia says that she had told him that if he really wanted
to be a doctor, they would manage the money somehow; but Saurabh had
looked at her with a disdainful smile and walked out of the room saying,
‘Mujhe thappe wallah doctor nahin ban na. [I don’t want to be a doctor
with a fake stamp.]’
 After graduating from C.S.K. Himachal Pradesh Agriculture University,
Palampur, Saurabh had cleared his Combined Defence Services (CDS)
exam and joined the IMA in August 1997. Both his parents had gone for his
passing out parade on 12 December 1998 after which he had come home on
a short break. Delighted that he would now start getting a salary, he had
given a blank signed cheque to his mother, telling her magnanimously, ‘I
have started earning. You don’t have to worry about money any more. ‘Jab
zarurat ho nikal lena. [You can withdraw money whenever you need it].’
Ironically, neither he nor his mother withdrew any money from his bank.
When his first salary was credited, Saurabh was dead.
After spending about fifteen days with his family, Saurabh had taken the
train to Bareilly where he had to report to the Jat Regimental Centre on 29
December, before joining his battalion, 4 Jat, in Kashmir. Proud that he was
joining one of the longest-serving and most decorated regiments of the
Indian Army, he had waved goodbye to his parents as the train started
moving and had stretched out an arm as if to touch his mother’s feet. ‘Maa,
tum dekhna ek din aisa kaam kar jaunga ki saari duniya mein mera naam
hoga [Mother, just you wait, one day you will be proud of me],’ he had
said. She had laughed and replied, ‘Bada aaya naam kamane waala. Tu
theek se Bareilly pahunch ja bas utna hi kaafi hai.’ [Really! If you reach
Bareilly safe, that should be enough for me].’
There had been a few letters from him after that, one after his dining in,
telling his parents that in his first speech in the officers mess he had shyly
told his unit, ‘Today, I am proud to be in 4 Jat. One day 4 Jat shall be proud
of me.’ He had called home on 30 April 1999 to wish Vaibhav on his
twentieth birthday. He had said he was going ahead to the forward posts and
might not be able to stay in touch for a while. ‘Don’t worry about me if I
don’t call or write. I shall be home for my birthday (29 June),’ he had said.
And then there had been silence. Saurabh Kalia was never to call the family
he loved so much again.
In the first week of June, Vaibhav was shocked to come across an Indian
Express report saying Radio Pakistan in Skardu had reported the capture of
an Indian Army officer. Without saying anything to his mother, he had gone
across to his father’s office and they had both visited Holta Cantonment.
They were horrified to learn that Saurabh had been missing since early
May. On 9 June at 7.30 p.m., Pakistan returned six mauled and disfigured
bodies to India. The dead were identified as Capt. Saurabh Kalia, and
Riflemen Arjun Ram Baswana, Mula Ram Bidiasar, Naresh Singh
Sinsinwar, Bhanwar Lal Bagaria and Bhika Ram Mudh of 4 Jat. Saurabh
had been twenty-two, Arjun Ram just eighteen.
It was later revealed that Capt. Saurabh Kalia and his men were kept in
captivity from 15 May 1999 to 7 June 1999 (over twenty-two days), and
were subjected to torture as became evident from the injuries to their
bodies. Post-mortem examinations revealed that the soldiers had been
tortured with burning cigarettes, piercing eardrums with hot rods,
puncturing eyes before removing them, breaking most of their teeth and
bones, fracturing their skulls, and cutting off lips, noses and private organs.
They had finally been shot dead, as evidenced by bullet wounds to the
temple. The post-mortems also confirmed that the injuries were inflicted
ante-mortem (before death).
Then Army Chief Gen V.P. Malik says in his book Kargil—From
Surprise to Victory that the Army had requested the International
Committee of the Red Cross and the Indian Red Cross to carry out the post-
mortems but both agencies declined. Ultimately, the post mortems had to be
done by the Army Hospital, Delhi Cantonment, and torture was confirmed.
A shocked and visibly upset external affairs minister Jaswant Singh, a
former soldier himself, had briefed the media personally after seeing the
reports and had called it a civilizational crime against all humanity, a
reversion to barbaric medievalism.
Vaibhav says he went to the cantonment when Saurabh’s body was
finally brought to Palampur. ‘They showed me his face to reconfirm his
identity. It was in a shocking state, there was almost nothing on it except his
eyebrows. I told my parents not to look.’
Saurabh was cremated in Palampur, the beautiful land of blooming roses,
sparkling water and snow-capped Dhauladhars, where he had grown up and
spent the happiest years of his life. Mrs Vijaya Kalia, who suffered a heart
attack the day she heard Saurabh had gone missing, gave up her
government job soon after his death but says she did not shed a single tear
for him. ‘It would have diluted the magnitude of his sacrifice. I am very
proud of my son. He gave his life for his country.’
A shattered Dr Kalia vowed that he would fight for the human rights of
his son and five comrades who were subjected to torture for more than three
weeks and make sure that the guilty were punished. ‘In those days in
captivity, they fought the Kargil War, alone and unarmed,’ he says.
Dr Kalia’s journey has been long and painful with roadblocks at every
stage. ‘Saurabh was a soldier. He was doing his duty. For parents to know
that their son gave his life for his country is a matter of great pride. But to
know that he was so brutally tortured in enemy custody is something that no
parent, no Army and no country should tolerate,’ he says. ‘It doesn’t matter
whether I get any success or not. I shall continue to fight for these soldiers
till I die.’ The quiet dignity on his face stays with me for days.
Over the years, visitors to Palampur have continued to walk into the
Kalias’ home, offering condolences for what their son had to undergo.
Letters of support have been brought to them from the Palampur post office
in sacks. Dr Kalia’s mailbox continues to receive emails of support. There
are more than two lakh signatures on a public petition for justice filed by Dr
Kalia. A young artist has visited with a beautiful painting of Saurabh, his
young face looking out from inside the fluttering Tricolour; a scientist from
European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), who had come for a
lecture to Hamirpur, travelled to meet the Kalias and implored them to
come and live with her in Switzerland, offering to buy tickets for them. One
of the most touching tributes came from a Pakistani settled in the US, who
sent Dr Kalia a copy of the Quran and some seeds of flowering plants. ‘I am
very sorry for what happened to Saurabh,’ he wrote, with deep regret. ‘Our
country is now controlled by mullahs.’
Before leaving, I take off my shoes and take a round of Saurabh Smriti
Kaksh that Saurabh’s parents have put together with so much affection. The
room holds the few photographs the Kalias have of him in uniform, his
black tin trunk, his uniforms, his voter ID card, six pairs of shoes that he
owned, a bottle of Chelpark ink, an alarm clock with his name on it, a Park
Avenue aftershave lotion, the wallet that was recovered from his body, a
poster of Aishwarya Rai that he had put up in his room at the IMA and a
photograph of late Capt. Amit Bhardwaj, of 4 Jat, who led a patrol to search
for Saurabh a day after he went missing. The patrol had come under
devastating enemy fire and Capt. Bhardwaj had been martyred near the
same post, along with two other soldiers. His body could not be recovered
for fifty-seven days. My heart is heavy when I take the flight back to Delhi.
Typing out the story on my laptop in my blower-warmed study a week
later, I go through my cell phone’s photo gallery. I spend many minutes
looking at a picture I took of Dr Kalia standing beside Saurabh’s garlanded
portrait in uniform. There is an uncanny resemblance between the father
and son. They share the same bone structure, the same lips and nose, there
is the same quiet resolve in their eyes, and they even wear similar
moustaches. I look at another picture I have taken from their family album.
A younger Dr Kalia is laughing with an arm around Saurabh, who must
have been in college then. I wonder if he has ever laughed like that again.
Another picture has Saurabh in a thick sweater, shyly hugging his mother.
They are both smiling into the camera.
While Saurabh remains twenty-two forever, in photographs, in memories
and in conversations, the Kalias have aged considerably. Mrs Kalia has a
heart condition and walks slowly on arthritis-afflicted legs. Dr Kalia’s hair
is almost grey. They both smile but the shadow of a heartbreaking sadness
lurks constantly on their faces. I sincerely hope that one day, there will be
justice for Saurabh, and some of that pain will go.

Author’s Note

In spite of incriminating evidence, and then external affairs minister

Jaswant Singh’s initial outrage, the Indian government did not move the
International Court of Justice (ICJ) against the treatment meted out to the
six soldiers stating that it did not have jurisdiction over Indian and
Pakistani matters that needed to be sorted out bilaterally as per the Shimla
Agreement.
Dr Kalia continues to fight a case in the Supreme Court to pressure the
central government to demand an international probe. Those in diplomatic
circles say that Pakistan had moved the ICJ immediately after the Kargil
conflict when the Indian Air Force (IAF) had shot down a Pakistan Navy
Atlantique aircraft in Gujarat. However, India had then cited a 1974
declaration that ruled out the jurisdiction of the ICJ over cases involving
present or past Commonwealth Nations. If India approaches the ICJ with
the Kalia case, Pakistan is likely to use the same provisions to block the
move. Alternatively, if the Indian government does approach the ICJ, the
safeguard will become invalid and open India up to international
arbitration on issues such as Jammu and Kashmir (J&K). Pakistan will
then have the option of approaching the ICJ in the future if it wants to rake
up any issues against India, such as human rights violations in Kashmir.
However, India has approached the ICJ in the Kulbhushan Jadhav case.
Jadhav was sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court on charges of
espionage and terrorism in April 2017. A ten-member ICJ bench on 18 May
2017 restrained Pakistan from executing Jadhav till the case was
adjudicated on. This has given new hope to the Kalias.
This chapter is based on conversations with the Kalia family and their
advocate in the Supreme Court, Arvind Sharma, who holds copies of the
post-mortem reports. Saurabh’s last patrol description has been recreated
from an interview with Naib Subedar Pinku Kumar, one of the survivors
from late Capt. Amit Bhardwaj’s patrol that had gone looking for Saurabh.
 Chapter 2
Not without My Men

A Ladakhi Buddhist officer climbs a glacier to reach his men who have
been pinned down by the enemy and are fast running out of ammunition.

30 May 1999
10.30 a.m.
BSF Base Camp
Handangbrok, Batalik

The AN/PRC-25 (Army Navy/Portable Radio Communication) radio set is

buzzing for the third time this morning. Sonam, who is having a steaming
hot mug of langar chai, puts it down and responds.
‘Sahab, dushman ka fire aur tez ho gaya hai. Aap nahi aaye toh hum
zinda nahi bachenge [Sir, enemy fire has intensified. If you don’t come, we
will all die].’
There is so much disturbance on the radio set that Sonam cannot
recognize which of his men is speaking, but he can hear the panic in the
voice. To him, it sounds like his comrade of many daring missions,
Havaldar (Hav.) Sonam Rigzin, one of the bravest soldiers he has known.
‘Chinta mat karo, main aa raha hun [Don’t worry, I am coming],’ Sonam
says, his voice steely. Picking up the static line, he asks to be connected to
the Subsector Commander at Dah.
‘Sir, my boys are in grave danger. I need to go to them,’ he says.
‘I’m sorry, Sonam, the Brigade Commander is busy in briefings. You will
have to wait for orders,’ the officer replies, expressing his helplessness.
 Broad-shouldered, tanned and finely muscled, with a physique built not
at a gym but by climbing mountains in the course of duty, Sonam gets up
and goes looking for his Commanding Officer (CO). Though Colonel (Col.)
A.S. Chandoke has not been in the chain of command since the Kargil War
started, and Sonam’s company is on a mission directly under 70 Infantry
Brigade, he is visiting to see how his men are faring.
‘Sir, it has been an hour and a half since my boys have been asking for
help,’ Sonam says. ‘If their ammunition runs out, they will either be killed
or captured. If anything happens to them, I will never be able to forgive
myself. Please let me go.’
‘OK, Sonam,’ Col. Chandoke replies, his brow furrowed, ‘Go! I’ll take
responsibility for you.’

October 2018
Beverly Park Apartments
Dwarka, Delhi

The bell rings just once. Though I take a while to open the door, outside
there is unhurried calm. Col. Sonam Wangchuk, Maha Vir Chakra (MVC),
waits patiently with a gentle smile on his face, radiating a monk-like
tranquillity.
There is so much that I have read and heard about the legendary Buddhist
warrior that seeing him in my house feels a little surreal. He has driven
down from Khel Gaon, where he is staying on his visit to see his son, who
studies in Delhi.
It has been nineteen years since the Kargil War. Col. Wangchuk retired
from the Army earlier this year and now helps out with the administration
of a vipassana centre in Leh, where he is a trustee. He shakes hands with
my pleased husband, compliments him on his physique and backslaps our
son, Saransh, who is just back from school and has dumped his bag to rush
to the sitting room to see what the Kargil hero looks like in real life. Within
minutes Col. Wangchuk has our golden retriever sprawled at his feet and
the three of us sitting around him, completely captivated. Leaning back on
our old red sofa, a cup of coffee in hand, Col. Wangchuk tells us his
amazing story of grit and courage.
Strangely enough, this war story begins with the Dalai Lama.

25 May 1999
His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s residence
Jivetsal, Choglamsar

It is a beautiful summer morning in Ladakh. The sky is the deep cerulean

blue of impressionistic paintings, the air is crystal clear and the sun seems
to be smiling at the colourful prayer flags fluttering in the breeze. It is hard
to imagine that not too far away, dark, brooding war clouds are looming.
Clad in maroon robes, a gentle smile on his face, the Dalai Lama stands
on the porch, arms outstretched in blessing. He is facing a large contingent
of Ladakhi soldiers in uniform. Bareheaded and unarmed, they step up to
him one by one, heads bowed in reverence. His Holiness reaches out to hold
their faces in his hands; he places a srunga (sacred thread) around each
one’s neck. The lamas standing with him hand out small packets of chinglap
(small balls of prasad). Both signify the Dalai Lama’s blessings and are an
assurance to the soldiers that they carry his protection to the battlefield.
In the age group of twenty-five to thirty-five, the men are accompanied
by their Company Commander, Major (Maj.) Sonam Wangchuk. They have
come from Karu, 25 km away, and will soon be on their way to Batalik to
join the war with Pakistan. All the men are Buddhists but this is their time
to do their duty as soldiers of the Ladakh Scouts, a border-guarding force
that functions directly under the Defence Ministry. Maj. Sonam has joined
them from 4 Assam Rifles; he is on deputation from the Indian Army.
Meeting over, the men sprint back to the parking area. Their trucks wind
their way back to Karu. Sonam, sitting in front with the driver, rests against
the seat. Hearing the soldiers talking in the back of the vehicle, he can sense
their lifted spirits. Assured that his men are now mentally ready for battle,
he silently mouths the prayer ‘Ki ki so so, lhar gyalo’, meaning victory to
the gods.

That morning with the Dalai Lama was very crucial, Col. Wangchuk tells
us. ‘When we received orders to join the war, it was not clear who the
intruders were. We had heard they were not regular soldiers of the Pakistani
Army but mujahedeen. The langar gossip was that the men manning those
heights were brutal, cruel and inhuman. Seedhe aankhon ke beech mein goli
maar dete hain [They shoot to kill]. The morale of our young soldiers had
plummeted. They were apprehensive about going to fight an enemy they
knew nothing about.’
Col. Wangchuk says this was conveyed to him by senior Junior
Commissioned Officer (JCO) Subedar Tsering Stobdan, VrC. ‘Yeh log toh
pehle se hi haar maan ke baithe huye hain. Kuch karna padega, Sahab
[These fellows have given up before even starting. We’ll have to do
something],’ Tsering Sahab had told him. ‘Dalai Lama aaye huye hain,
agar unke darshan karwa sakte hain toh karwa dijiye [The Dalai Lama is
here. A meeting with him could lift their spirits].’
When Col. Wangchuk requested His Holiness to bless the soldiers going
to war, he immediately agreed.
‘We call the Dalai Lama Chandrazig, god of compassion. His blessings,
the chinglap and the holy thread he’d given made us feel that he was with
us. I don’t think anyone ate the prasad; all of us kept it in our pockets. It
was an assurance that he would protect us on the battlefield,’ he explains.

26 May 1999
6 a.m.
Karu
To the battlefield
An Army Aviation Cheetah helicopter carries Sonam from Karu to Dah, a
distance of 165 km by road. His troops climb into Shaktiman trucks and
start around the same time. While Sonam reaches Dah in half an hour, the
soldiers take seven hours to travel 150 km and reach Achinathang, 15 km
short of Dah, where they set up camp. After two days at Dah, Sonam is told
to report at the operational base camp at Handangbrok, the last post before
the Line of Control (LoC) in the Chorbat La subsector of Batalik.
On May 28, Sonam collects his troops from Achinathang. His rocket
launcher and medium machine gun (MMG) detachments are taken away for
other operations, and so are some of his soldiers, who will be used as guides
by new units who are not familiar with the terrain.
He starts for the base camp at Handangbrok, at a height of 14,000 feet,
with a strength of forty soldiers and JCOs. Maj. B.S. Katoch, Second in
Command (2IC), Indus Wing, Ladakh Scouts, is not there but he briefs
Sonam over the static line. He tells him that, according to some reports
received, the Pakistanis have been concentrating in large numbers (nearly a
brigade strength of 2,000) on the LoC. They are suspected of trying to come
in through Chorbat La. Sonam is asked to take a surveillance and
domination patrol of one JCO and ten Other Ranks to Area Rock Fall on the
LoC and verify these reports. The patrol’s task is to stay there, observe and
report back on a daily basis. Sonam is told to settle his patrol and then
return to Handangbrok.

29 May
5 a.m.
On the glacier

Sonam and his team of Naib Subedar Tondup Dorje and fifteen others trek
down to the roadhead. They have with them three mules carting tents,
ammunition and rations. The soldiers cross into the valley and start
climbing the glacier that looms right ahead. Since they don’t have special
insulated white clothing that blends into the snowy terrain, all of them have
put on their warmest clothes—thick brown Bhalu jackets, woollen khaki
trousers and rubber insulated snow boots. They wear thick balaclavas on
their heads and thermal inners to protect themselves from the icy wind that
stings the eyes and makes their noses run. Heads down, the soldiers plod
through the snow for more than five hours, covering a distance of 8 km. By
10 a.m., they reach Area Rock Fall, at a height of 18,000 feet. The air is
thinner, the temperatures have fallen further and the men can feel the cold
settling into their bones. They set up camp here. Tents are erected quickly
and a stove fixed so that rejuvenating hot tea can be made.
Sonam takes two soldiers with him and climbs the ridge in front, trying
to find out if there are any Pakistani soldiers on the other side.
‘Everything seemed peaceful so I assumed the reports of enemy build up
were incorrect,’ he says.
Relieved, he spends the afternoon with his men. Around 4.30 p.m., he
returns to camp with five of the soldiers, leaving instructions with Dorje
Sahab to climb up the hill at first light every morning, keep the Pakistani
side under observation through the day, and climb down in the evening. He
has absolutely no idea that the enemy is actually around on the vast
ridgeline and that the situation will change overnight.
The very next morning he gets a phone call from his team of eleven men
saying they are pinned under enemy fire and fast running out of
ammunition.

30 May 1999
12 p.m.
Operation Rock Fall

Within an hour of getting permission from his CO, Sonam is out of the
camp. He has with him three JCOs and twenty-five Other Ranks, fully
armed, and also an MMG detachment from another unit. The soldiers walk
down to the roadhead and cross over to the glacier, carrying on their backs
30 kg haversacks weighed down with ammunition, winter jackets, sleeping
bags, socks, sweaters, food etc.
Talking to me nineteen years later, Col. Wangchuk says he almost ran
through the knee-deep snow. ‘There was only one thought on my mind. If
something happens to my men, log kya kehenge? Company Commander
aaram se baitha raha, uske sipahi maare gaye [People would have said, the
Company Commander ensured his safety while his men were slaughtered].
I couldn’t have lived with that shame.’
The Ladakhis could keep up with him but the non-Ladakhi component of
the team—soldiers who formed the MMG detachment—were not used to
the glaciated terrain and slow down, delaying the main body. ‘In two hours
I had reached the mouth of the U-shaped ridge with the LoC on my left,
where the Pakistanis were sitting. When I stopped to count the men with
me, there were just four. The rest were trailing almost 800 metres behind,’
Col. Wangchuk remembers.
Sonam decides to carry on, hoping the rest will catch up soon. When he
is about 700 metres short of where he had left his own team, he hears
enemy fire. Soon the snow around Sonam and his men starts flying, which
means the shots are close enough to kill. Sonam orders his men to drop to
the ground and take cover when a scream rents the air.
Hav. Tsewang Rigzin has taken a direct burst on his heart. As the others
watch in horror, a deep red stain spreads on the snow under the fallen
soldier. They crawl towards him and slip a groundsheet under him but he is
losing blood fast.
‘He kept saying, “Sahab, bahut thand lag rahi hai [Sir, I’m feeling very
cold].” There was nothing we could do except wrap him in a blanket,’ Col.
Wangchuk recounts, his voice heavy with regret. He says the fire coming at
them was so intense that he ordered his men to stop returning it and
concentrate on hiding instead. ‘The enemy was at a height and out of range
of our INSAS rifles. There was no point in wasting ammunition.
Hav. Rigzin stays alive for half an hour. With tears in their eyes, his
helpless comrades watch him die, while keeping their own heads down to
avoid getting hit.
 Then, just as suddenly as it had started, the fire stops. By then, Rigzin is
gone. The soldiers shut his eyes and wrap him in a blanket. When the fire
does not resume, Sonam and Hav. Nawang Rigdol—popularly called Hav.
Number Gyareh [Number Eleven] as per the Scouts tradition of identifying
a soldier by the last two digits of his army number if his name is difficult to
remember—decide to go further. They leave one man behind with the
martyred soldier while another is sent down to find the team trailing behind
and direct them to take a different route so that they come up behind the
enemy soldiers.
Sonam and Hav. Number Gyareh move on, wondering why the enemy
has stopped firing.
They learn later that the Pakistanis had also run out of ammunition and
were lugging it from down below, which gave Sonam time to reach his
stranded patrol. ‘Just as I had feared, the patrol had run out of ammunition
and my men were hiding from enemy fire to save their lives,’ Col.
Wangchuk recounts.
A relieved Dorje Sahab tells him that early morning, when he and Hav.
Sonam Rigzin, along with two men carrying a light machine gun (LMG),
had climbed up to watch the Pakistan side of the LoC, they had received a
big shock. Peering down they had found a steep drop where, in the weak
orange glow of the morning sun, they could discern four Pakistani soldiers
climbing up. They were wearing Koflach boots with spikes to get a firm
foothold in the snow. Each was holding two pickaxes, one in each hand,
which they were using to pull themselves up over the treacherous wall of
ice.
Dorje shot down the first two while the two behind slipped down and ran
away. For some time there was quiet on the enemy side but then the
Pakistanis made an attempt to retrieve the bodies of the two dead soldiers.
Dorje managed to shoot down one more enemy soldier. Meanwhile, the
enemy post on the ridge located the Indian patrol camping on the foothill
and targeted them with continuous fire, pinning them down till they ran out
of ammunition. Had Sonam not come to their rescue, they would have all
been killed or captured.
10.30 p.m.

A bright white moon hangs in the sky, lighting up the snow-clad mountains
in an eerie glow. Sonam makes two attempts to climb the ridge but is sent
backtracking each time by a volley of enemy fire. He realizes that he and
his men are under enemy observation. He also knows that whoever gets to
the ridge first shall be in a dominating position. He was aware that the
enemy was probably trying to climb as well.
Around midnight, the moon slips behind dark clouds. Since the enemy
cannot see them in the darkness, Sonam tells his men to move fast. Eleven
of them start climbing, using their hands to pull themselves up as quickly as
they can, rifles slung behind their backs. By the time the moon appears
from behind the clouds, Sonam and his Ladakhi warriors are standing on
top of the ridge, gasping for breath.
The Pakistanis are still directing prophylactic fire at their base camp
every fifteen minutes. This is good news for the Ladakh Scouts. It means
the Pakistanis do not know that they have climbed up. Sonam’s party moves
quietly along the ridge and discovers an enemy camp at a 40-metre drop
from their position. They can see a tent with three sentries outside wearing
camouflage white; even their rifles are covered in white making them very
difficult to be spotted.
By then, Sonam’s party with the MMG detachment, which had been
trailing behind, shows up on the other side. The Pakistanis get sandwiched
between the two teams of Ladakh Scouts.
The machine gunners open fire on the enemy camp below. The firefight
continues through the night and till noon on 31 May. The enemy soldiers
eventually lose their nerve.
Standing on the ridge, Sonam spots nearly sixty Pakistani soldiers below,
folding their tents and withdrawing.
‘We could see at least two platoons there but they managed to escape. We
fired at them but they were out of our range. Since I had no radio
communication with my base, we could not get artillery fire upon them
either,’ he recounts.
Soon the Ladakh Scouts run out of ammunition. They start rolling
boulders down the slope. The enemy sentries who had taken cover inside
their tents are crushed. The bodies of five other Pakistani soldiers killed in
the crossfire lie on the ridge but the slope is so steep that Sonam’s men
cannot recover them to serve as proof to the media that Pakistan had a
presence inside the LoC.
The Ladakh Scouts capture four Pakistani posts on the ridge. By then,
besides ammunition, they have also run out of food. Since their radio set
has also broken down, Sonam decides to go down to Handangbrok to get
reinforcements.
Sonam and Rifleman Qadir start from the ridge at 5 p.m. Taking a tricky
alternative route down through rocks and ice since they don’t know if there
are still some enemy posts from where they are being watched, they plod
through snow and painstakingly climb down to their camp at Handangbrok.

Mission accomplished
31 May
11 p.m.
Handangbrok

Night has fallen when the two soldiers, dirty, bedraggled, tired and hungry,
walk out of the valley bathed in the pale translucent rays of the waning
moon and take the roadhead to their camp. Maj. Katoch is relieved to find
them returning safe.
When Sonam informs him that the ridgeline has been cleared of the
enemy, a smile of disbelief spreads across his stressed face. He hugs Sonam
and Qadir and congratulates them on a job well done. Sonam tells him that
they have come back to replenish ammunition and rations but before that
they would like to eat because they are famished.
 Steaming hot chow mein is immediately ordered from the cookhouse and
the hungry warriors shove it into their mouths with loaded chopsticks. They
drink big mugs of hot sugary tea and, energy levels up, decide to trek back
to Area Rock Fall before sleep can claim them. Sonam fears that if they
delay, the enemy might regroup and attempt a counter-attack.
Three sturdy mules are loaded with ammunition, rations and medicines;
seven additional soldiers, fresh and spirited, are provided. At midnight the
team starts back for the glacier. Their path is lit by the moon that has bathed
the entire snow-capped landscape in a ghostly white glow. The soldiers are
in no mood to enjoy the ethereal beauty of the terrain. They trudge on, one
weary step after another, the route relatively familiar by now. They cross
into the mouth of the mountainous semicircle where they were earlier
ambushed by the enemy. It is silent now, but they remember Rigzin’s
bleeding body lying on a groundsheet on the snow. Their hearts grieve for
the loss of their brave comrade.
By 5 a.m., they have reached the rest of their team, who are relieved to
see food and ammunition.
‘We spent the next fourteen days patrolling the area. On the enemy’s side
also we could see Pakistan Army patrols but they did not attempt another
incursion,’ Col. Wangchuk recounts.
The bodies of the three enemy soldiers who had been crushed in their
tents are taken down, along with their I-cards and letters from home that
prove beyond doubt that they were regular soldiers of the Pakistan Army.
The battalion 14 Sikh is flown down from Delhi and its soldiers positioned
in the secured areas. They take some time to realize that guns jam in the
freezing temperatures and have to be thawed over stoves to get them
working, but they go on to do very good work.
Finally, on 14 June, Sonam returns to Handangbrok. His task is complete
and, having been granted seven days of casual leave, he is now on his way
to Leh. In the officers mess at Dah, he is shown a copy of India Today that
has a detailed article on Operation Rock Fall. It mentions that he has been
recommended for a MVC, while three of his men have been recommended
for VrCs.
 Sonam reads it over a glass of rum with hot water and leaves for Leh the
next morning. His wife, who he has not been in touch with for more than
fifteen days, bursts into tears of relief when she sees him walking into the
house. His ageing parents and sisters, who had been praying for him all
these days, rush down to hug him in relief. His son, Riggyal, whose first
birthday he missed on 11 June, looks at him with wide innocent eyes and
gurgles happily. Sonam picks him up and holds his close to his heart,
relieved that he has returned alive to the people he loves the most in the
world.

An Army Band Comes Marching

‘I spent most of that week in bed recovering from the intense physical and
mental fatigue I had undergone. I would meet people who came to see me
and then go back to my room to rest. Having my family around me was a
blessing,’ Col. Wangchuk says.
After his leave was over, he moved back to Karu and further up to his
company position at Fukche. ‘We watched the Kargil War unfold on our
television sets and the victories that started coming to us one by one with
great satisfaction,’ he says. After the war is declared over on 26 July,
Sonam goes back home on a longer leave.
One morning he is surprised by the celebratory sound of the Army band.
He and his wife look out of the window and are surprised to find the band
rhythmically making its way to their house through the thicket. Right in
front is his CO, grinning widely.
‘My MVC had been announced and they had come to congratulate me,’
Col. Wangchuk recounts. India’s second highest gallantry award was pinned
to his shirtfront by the President in an investiture ceremony held at
Rashtrapati Bhavan in February 2000. Before that, Sonam led the Ladakh
Scouts, who proudly marched past their countrymen and smartly saluted the
President in the Republic Day Parade on 26 January 2000. They had proved
their dedication to duty by getting the country its first victory in the Kargil
War.
Author’s Note

For displaying exceptional bravery and gallantry of the highest order in the
presence of enemy fire, (then) Maj. Sonam Wangchuk was awarded the
Maha Vir Chakra. Hav. Tsewang Rigzin was buried in Hanuthang village,
where a memorial now stands in his memory.
 Story 1
Ladakhi Boys Turn Porters in War

6 June 1999
Leh

Ladakhis tune in to AIR Leh to listen to news about the ongoing war are
surprised to hear an unusual announcement. ‘Bharatiya sena ko apna
samaan ladai mein le jaane ke liye volunteers chahiye. Aage aaiye, madad
kariye. Desh ko aapki zarurat hai [The Indian Army needs porters to carry
loads to the front. Please come forward to help; the country needs you].’ It
is the clear voice of Mrs T. Angmo Shuno, station director, All India Radio
(AIR), Leh and Kargil.
Through the following week, Mrs Angmo, a well-known figure in Leh,
repeatedly requests families to send their able-bodied sons to the Leh Polo
Ground, where selections are being made. The announcements have been
made on the request of Col. Vinay Dutta, who visited Mrs Angmo a day
before and explained to her that he was recruiting boys to raise a Pioneer
company for meeting the needs of assaulting battalions during war time.
‘Col. Dutta told me that there were no roads in the mountains and that the
Indian Army did not have enough porters or mules to carry food,
ammunition and other necessities to the battlefront. He asked me if I could
help by asking Ladakhi boys to volunteer for the task,’ Mrs Angmo
remembers, speaking to me nineteen years later. ‘I assured him I would do
everything I could to help.’
‘The Indian Army is fighting for us; it is our turn to help them,’ she tells
her listeners that morning, halting scheduled broadcasts to repeat her
message. To set an example, she asks her youngest son, Stanzin Jaydun
(Ricky), who is eighteen and still in school, to volunteer for the task. ‘Main
agar dusre logon ko bolun ki apne bacchon ko war mein bhej do toh wo
bolte tum apne bacche ko kyun nahi bhejti [How could I ask others to send
their children to the battlefront if I was not sending my own],’ she says. She
explains this to Ricky, who was initially a little scared but soon was
convinced about going.
‘Within four days, nearly 200 of us had volunteered to go with the Army.
Two platoons of 100 each were formed and Army trucks took us to Biama,
a small village between Dah and Hanu, which was about an eight-hour
drive from Leh,’ Ricky says. ‘We were in the age group of eighteen to
thirty-five—fit, able and, most importantly, accustomed to the weather and
the terrain.’
In Biama, farmers growing tomatoes in their fields were requested to
give space for tents to be erected and a camp was set up on the step farms
just below the road. By the end of the week, the number of volunteers had
grown to 600.
For two months, the Ladakhi boys stayed there, coming to the aide of any
infantry battalion that needed them. Requests came from Army units that
were moving up to fight in the Batalik-Yaldor-Chorbat La sector, and the
boys were dispatched in teams as per the requirements. While normal
porters can carry a 10-kg load, the young Ladakhi boys carry as much as 30
kg easily. They were given daily wages but Ricky says most did it to serve
the Army in whatever way they could.
‘Some of the boys also helped in evacuating dead and injured soldiers;
we all knew what a big price our soldiers were paying in the war. We
wanted to do out bit,’ he says.
Biama, where the boys had set up camp, was in the enemy’s shelling
zone. ‘There was a water tank nearby and we would run and hide inside it
whenever enemy shelling started,’ Ricky says.

Radio in War
During the war, AIR Kargil was under constant threat of closure since local
staff had to work under almost regular shelling, but thanks to Mrs Angmo’s
initiative, no one left. Mrs Angmo remembers how she would always have
a car and driver ready outside the AIR station.
‘The moment shelling started, we would jump in and speed away to a
small village called Mingi 15 km away, towards Zanskar, which was out of
the enemy’s shelling range. We had rented a room there and often all of us
(staff of AIR Kargil) would sleep on the floor and then go back after the
shelling stopped to continue with our radio transmissions,’ she recollects.
The radio station played a big role in controlling rumours and
propaganda perpetrated by Radio Pakistan. ‘They would broadcast
outrageous lies that had to be countered. Radio Pakistan would claim that so
many Indian soldiers had been killed that the stench from their bodies was
forcing civilians to leave their villages,’ Mrs Angmo remembers. ‘When
some of our choppers developed snags, Radio Pakistan started broadcasting
that they had shot down Indian Army choppers. Once a shell fell on the
Kargil Dak Bangla. Within half an hour Radio Pakistan claimed that the
Dak Bangla had been destroyed. They even propagated these lies in Shina
language, which is spoken in India by the people living in Dras and Gurez;
and in Pakistan in Gilgit and Baltistan.’
Mrs Angmo says it became necessary to counter these lies and AIR
Kargil did so very effectively by broadcasting regular programmes in both
Hindi as well as Shina. Besides quelling rumours, the radio station played
an important role in boosting the morale of the soldiers; it sent messages of
encouragement to soldiers on the front, read out notes from their families
telling them to fight bravely and not worry about home, and even asked
local people to spare mules to carry the Army’s loads to the heights where
the battles were going on.
‘Often as many as 300 shells would land in Kargil in a day but we
continued to work. The radio station was not closed even for a single day
through the war though often the Army would tell us to switch off all lights
at night to ensure we didn’t get bombed. We would close windows and
draw the curtains before switching on any light,’ Mrs Angmo remembers.
 She recollects one particular evening when there was so much shelling
that the engineers at AIR Kargil ran away. ‘Our broadcast was to begin at 5
p.m., but there was no one to start the generators. I had to call up the
Brigade Commander at Kargil for help. He immediately sent some soldiers
who started the generator and we could finally begin our broadcast at 8
p.m.,’ she says.
There were no awards for Mrs Angmo and her team after the war but she
remembers with pride how the then information and broadcasting minister
Pramod Mahajan, who kept touring border areas to visit Doordarshan and
AIR offices during the war, saw them working tirelessly and complimented
them by saying that while the soldiers were fighting on the border, the
media was fighting at its own level. The minister also visited a command
base hospital in Srinagar where injured soldiers were recovering. There he
noticed that they did not have access to any entertainment. According to an
India Today report (dated 26 July 1999), thirty colour television sets, 1000
transistors and a computer were organized for the patients through private
donors.

Author’s Note

Mrs T. Angmo Shuno is now retired. She and Ricky continue to live in Leh.
 Chapter 3
Haneef

In the freezing heights of Turtuk, much above where Shyok—the river of

death—flows, is a battlefield named after a young Muslim officer.

August 1998
Karu, Ladakh

It is a cold winter evening when Col. Anil Bhatia, CO, 11 Rajputana Rifles
(Raj. Rif.), sets out in his jonga to go to the Ladakh Scouts Training Centre
Mess in Leh. He is accompanied, along with other officers of the unit, by
twenty-five-year-old Capt. Haneef-ud-din, cheerful, handsome and politely
attentive.
The battalion has been busy training for its tenure at the Siachen Glacier
but this is a rare relaxed evening. They have been invited for dinner. While
drinks are being served, the Ladakh Scouts Jazz Band entertains its guests
by playing one foot-tapping number after another. Col. Bhatia walks up to
Capt. Haneef, who is standing quietly in a corner, and puts an affectionate
arm around the young officer.
‘Ja yaar, tu bhi inko kuch suna de [Go on, sing something for them],’ he
says.
‘Right, sir,’ Haneef smiles and, placing his soft drink on the bar counter,
walks up to the band.
From across the room, a glass of whiskey in hand, Col. Bhatia watches,
smiling indulgently as Haneef asks for a guitar, adjusts the mike and starts
singing, ‘Lakhon hain yahan dilwale, par pyaar nahin milta.’
 Haneef’s rich, sonorous voice fills up the room, making the ladies smile
and the officers sit up and take notice. Idle chatter comes to a stop and by
the time the evening is over almost everyone is under the spell of this young
officer with a beautiful voice. Col. Bhatia is still humming those songs
when he is driven back by Haneef later that night.
‘Tune toh aaj bade fans bana liye mere singer-soldier [You acquired
many fans this evening, my singer-soldier],’ he says looking fondly at his
officer.
Haneef just smiles his shy smile, hands on the steering, careful eyes on
the road curving ahead.
A few months later, Haneef is dead.

Turtuk
2018

Nineteen years have passed since the Kargil War. The Shyok, river of death
in Yarkandi Uyghur, meanders through these vast forgotten lands before
slipping into Pakistan and merging with the Indus at Skardu. Adjacent to
Subsector Haneef, named after the young officer who was martyred here at
the age of twenty-five, stands a small mosque. Above the green lands,
where apricot orchards grow and chubby children with alabaster skin and
apple-pink cheeks play, is an icy wilderness bordered by the formidable
Karakoram Range.
This is where Capt. Haneef-ud-din, pulling his sinewy body forward,
crawled, rifle in hand, in the snow on 6 June 1999. He died on this craggy
mountainside exactly two years after he had passed out of the IMA. It is
poignant that this young boy with a Hindu mother and a Muslim father, who
grew up celebrating both Eid and Diwali, died in a war between two
countries that had been split on the basis of communal ideologies. He had
gone to fight for 11 Raj. Rif. whose war cry is ‘Raja Ram Chandra ki Jai’.
Haneef’s body lay under the open sky and falling snow for forty-three
days, his handsome face frozen into a cold mask. When then Army Chief
Gen. Ved Prakash Malik visited Mrs Hema Aziz, Haneef’s mother, in her
small Mayur Vihar apartment in Delhi and told her the body could not be
retrieved because the enemy was firing constantly, she met his eyes bravely
and said she did not want another soldier to risk his life to get her son’s
body back.
‘After the war is over I would like to go and see where he died,’ she said.
Gen. Malik assured her that she would be able to.
Haneef’s body was eventually retrieved. He was buried with full military
honours in Delhi. Mrs Hema Aziz made the pilgrimage with her other two
sons to Turtuk, going all the way to see where her son, who used to
laughingly complain that she never had time for him, had given up his life
for his country. This time, he was not around to see her.

December 2018
Defence Services Officers Institute (DSOI)
Dhaula Kuan, Delhi

‘Haneef, or Haneefu as many of us affectionately called him, was the

youngest officer in my battalion. He was soft-spoken and energetic, and
always the first to volunteer for any task. He was excellent at computers
and a very good singer. In fact, he had set up a jazz band for our unit,
carting equipment all the way from Delhi. The band, called Haneef Band,
still exists,’ Col. Anil Bhatia, who has now retired, tells me over
sandwiches and coffee that Mrs Monika Bhatia has ordered for us at the
restaurant inside DSOI where we are sitting.
Leaning forward on his chair, his eyes clouded with memories of the war
that still wake him up on cold winter nights, Col. Bhatia goes on to tell me a
heartbreaking story of courage and sacrifice, of how Haneef was lost and
the men of 11 Raj. Rif. conquered one of the greatest heights of Turtuk to
avenge his death.
The story begins soon after Capt. Haneef and his company come down
from Siachen Glacier after completing their four-month tenure at the glacier
often referred to as the highest battlefield in the world; the LoC ends there
and is still disputed between India and Pakistan.
Haneef is at the base camp functioning as load manifest officer,
monitoring the maintenance and air supply of rations, medicines, letters etc.
to various posts on the glacier. Ideally, soldiers who come down from the
gruelling Siachen tenure are given a rest period in Panamic Hot Sulphur
Springs, near Partapur village, or sent home on leave. However, the Kargil
War has changed this. The Army unit deployed in Turtuk sector—12 Jat—
has reported an enemy intrusion and since no fresh troops are readily
available because of the war currently raging in Batalik sector, men are
being sourced from the Army units that are around. This is the time when
orders are passed that an officer-led platoon from 11 Raj. Rif. should be
sent to Turtuk to help assess the extent of enemy intrusion. Maj. Ranjit
Singh takes the first ad hoc company (of about sixty men). Later, the unit is
asked to provide another ad hoc company, which moves to Turtuk under
Maj. Sanjay Vishwas Rao.

Early May 1999

Turtuk

The soldiers of 11 Raj. Rif. are loaded in trucks that speed along the fast-
flowing Shyok. Most of them have just come down from Siachen while
some have reported back from leave. The tarred road is flanked by
magnificent grey mountains on both sides. It would have been a fascinating
journey had the soldiers not been heading for action. The men are grim but
not complaining.
An unperturbed Haneef sits beside the driver, happily humming a song.
He does not know yet what task he is heading for but he knows that
additional troops will be used to send out fifteen patrols to Subsector West
to identify and clear enemy intrusion across the LoC.
Since the enemy has established posts on the LoC, 11 Raj. Rif. is asked
to acquire positions on the intermediate ridge and gather information since
their strength is not enough to launch an attack yet. The troops reach Turtuk
and then move self-contained for seven days along Turtuk Nullah.
As the soldiers climb higher, the landscape becomes increasingly
inhospitable. Signs of civilization, or even tracks to follow, are few and far
between. The entire area from Turtuk to Chorbat La is dotted with deadly
crevasses where one wrong step can send a man plunging to his death.
Winds cut like whetted knives and avalanches can kill in seconds. The
soldiers are not in communication with anyone after they cross Zangpal, a
small post with a makeshift helipad, about 6 km before the mouth of the
Karchen Glacier. They are adapted to living in the glacier and they use that
experience to negotiate the tough terrain.
Wading through thigh-high snow in subzero temperatures, they finally
reach the intermediate ridge where they acquire features and set up
temporary positions. All three officers are stationed there with their troops.
The men start building up stocks for the impending attack, ferrying
ammunition and rations on their backs, and also carry out patrols in the
area.
On 6 June, Haneef volunteers to take a daytime patrol to the Karchen
Glacier. He decides to get closer to the enemy, provoking them to fire so
that he can mark their location. This will help identify the position of
enemy bunkers and automatic weapons, which will be useful when an
attack is finally launched.
Accompanied by Naib Subedar Mangej Singh and around seven Other
Ranks, Haneef crosses a location called Ledge, skirts the Karchen Glacier
and gets within 300 metres of the enemy. The patrol identifies eight enemy
sanghars (roughly made bunkers) and deployment of automatic weapons on
Point 5590 and Area Saddle (the two posts occupied by Pakistan on the
LoC). This critical information, without which future attacks would not
have been possible, comes from the surviving members of Haneef’s team.
Haneef does not, unfortunately, realize that he has gone too far and is now
under direct enemy observation.
Targetting Haneef and his men, the enemy rains devastating fire on them.
A screaming Naib Subedar Mangej is lifted in the air and thrown into a
bottomless crevasse. Haneef and Rifleman Parvesh are also hit. Falling to
his knees, his body rocked by unbearable pain, Haneef watches in disbelief
as Parvesh drops his rifle and falls on the snow, blood spilling on to the
landscape. His own hand unclasps to let go of his rifle and he falls in a pool
of blood in the snow. Above him, white cumulous clouds waft across the
brilliant blue sky. He feels a suffocating tightness in his chest. He can sense
that life is ebbing away. His vital organs are shutting down. He closes his
eyes and waits for the pain to end. Cold winds lash his body, but Haneef
cannot feel anything any more. His breathing slows down and finally stops.
Haneef dies, twenty-five years old, hundreds of miles from home and loved
ones.
The rest of the men take cover behind boulders and try to return the fire
but their small arms are no match for the enemy’s arsenal. Frantic efforts
are made to retrieve the bodies but the constant barrage of enemy shelling
does not allow them to. Finally, they give up and return to Zangpal. All later
efforts to extricate the bodies also fail.

‘We Shall Retrieve the Bodies of Our Martyrs’

By 7 July, nearly a month after Haneef dies, 11 Raj. Rif. completes its
Siachen tenure and is de-inducted from the glacier. Col. Bhatia is furious
about the loss of his men and is raging like an injured lion. The unit reaches
Turtuk on 10 July. Col. Bhatia moves to Zangpal, takes a week to study the
position of the enemy posts, and then gives himself his first task.
‘We shall retrieve the bodies of our martyrs,’ he tells his men. Operation
Amar Shaheed is launched. On 18 July, forty-three days after Haneef dies,
Capt. S.K. Dhiman, Maj. Sanjay Vishwas Rao, Lt Ashish Bhalla, Hav.
Surinder and Rifleman Dharam Vir volunteer for the task and leave Zangpal
at last light, crossing over to the glacier nearly 6 km away.
Carefully negotiating the deadly precipices, the soldiers manage to locate
Haneef and Parvesh, and extricate the frozen bodies. Dragging them behind
boulders, and then carrying them on their backs, they walk quietly through
the night, reaching Zangpal by 7 a.m. A helicopter lands the next morning
and carries the bodies away as Col. Bhatia watches the body bags with
moist eyes. Subedar Mangesh’s body still lies in a crevasse.
‘We will get you soon, Mangesh,’ Col. Bhatia makes a silent promise to
the dead soldier. That promise is fulfilled when the battle is finally over.
The troops of 11 Raj. Rif. now plan to avenge the deaths of their
comrades by attacking and capturing Point 5590. Col. Bhatia starts planning
the assault on Point 5590 which is to be called Operation Haneef. By 24
July, the unit is ready to attack but since it is a full-moon period, a decision
is taken to delay the attack by a few more days so that troops have the
advantage of darkness. General Officer Commanding (GOC), 3 Div., Maj.
Gen. Padam Budhwar lands at Zangpal in a helicopter and okays the war
plan. Col. Bhatia makes a request for Bofors fire and mortars at Turtuk to
soften the enemy, which is approved by the GOC. Meanwhile, the soldiers
stock up rations and ammunition and carry out route reconnaissance for the
impending attack.

Operation Haneef
2 August 1999
6.45 p.m.
Base of Karchen Glacier

The mountains are dark and silent, but on the glacier, where the ice has
frozen to a slippery sheet, reflected light makes any movement visible to the
enemy sitting on the heights. That is why Col. Bhatia has decided that his
men will not climb over the glacier but take the more difficult route along
its base to climb up to Point 5590 from the rear. They will climb from the
side facing Pakistan. It will be tougher, he knows, but it will also give his
men the advantage of surprise since Pakistan would never expect an attack
from that side.
 He has waited nine days after full moon to ensure that the night is dark
enough. For the past three days, the enemy posts have been bombarded
from the firebases established for the attack. The Bofors guns at Kargil
target the heights and the Faggot missile launchers at the firebases attempt
to directly hit enemy bunkers. The most effective fire, however, comes from
11 Raj. Rif.’s own 81 mm mortar and the 120 mm mortar tube that the
soldiers have carried on their backs to a position established short of
Karchen Glacier. Not only is the gun heavy, every bomb weighs 15 kg.

The Attack

Nearly forty men, all volunteers, have been split up into two groups. Task
Force 1 is made of Bravo Company, which shall be the leading company
under Capt. Anirudh Chauhan, a trained mountaineer. The group also
includes five soldiers from Vikas (a Special Frontier Forces battalion) who
are experts at rock climbing and rope-fixing. Task Force 2 comprises men
from Charlie Company, led by Lt Ashish Bhalla. Task Forces 3 and 4 are to
follow.
Coming from Siachen, the soldiers have glacier clothing and shoes but
the fatigue of living in subzero temperatures for three months at a stretch is
evident. Almost all of them have lost considerable weight and muscle.
Lingering headaches and forgetfulness are common, as are blood pressure
fluctuations. But they make no excuses.
‘Upar Point 5590 dikhai de raha hai aapko [Can you see Point 5590]’?
Col. Bhatia asks, standing in the freezing cold that turns his face red and
makes his warm breath come out in bursts of steam.
‘Dushman ne wahin se fire kar ke hamare saathiyon ko mara tha. Jaiye
unhe dikhaiye, 11 Raj. Rif. apne bhaiyon ki maut ka badla kaise leti hai,’
[That’s where the enemy shot and killed our comrades from. Go and show
them how we avenge the deaths of our brothers],’ Col. Bhatia thunders.
With the battle cry of ‘Raja Ram Chandra ki Jai,’ the men start walking.
They circle the glacier and reach the foot of the towering moonlit
mountains that appear dark, eerie and suffused in strange shadows. At
nearly 18,340 feet, Post 5590 is the highest point.
Breathless from exertion, fingers frozen in the cold, the men struggle to
find footholds. Rocks crumble under their feet, sending debris down the
slope. Being crushed under a dislodged boulder is as much of a risk as
taking a wrong step and plummeting down to a gory death. The soldiers
encounter a steep rock face but the boys of Vikas Regiment use their
expertise to fix ropes which the soldiers climb to reach 40 metres short of
the top.
They have been climbing for about nine hours and are bone-tired. It is 4
a.m. and another 80-degree incline stands before them. They convey this to
Col. Bhatia, who is stationed at the base of the Karchen Glacier.
‘I asked them to turn back. As soon as the sun came up, they as well as
the teams following them would be spotted by the enemy located on the
surrounding posts. The risk was not worth taking,’ recounts Col. Bhatia.
‘Disheartened, the teams turn back. It takes them two hours to get down and
they are exhausted by then. They were so tired that they just dropped down
wherever they could find place, closed their eyes and went to sleep. We
could not offer them anything in the name of food or warmth. All we had
were stale shakkarparas (a fried snack made from flour and sugar that
doesn’t go bad for a long time), two small snow tents and the shelter of
boulders,’ he says sadly.
The soldiers try to rest till evening. And then it is time to make a second
attempt.

The final attack

3 August 1999
6 p.m.

Col. Bhatia calls for the soldiers to line-up in the freezing cold. The men are
tired and hungry but the attack has to take place. He asks for volunteers
once again.
 ‘I was a little apprehensive this time. The reason was not because my
men were not brave; they were. It was because they were so fatigued that I
knew they just did not have the required physical strength,’ Col. Bhatia tells
me, matter of fact, that winter afternoon in the DSOI.
Standing in the biting wind, Col. Bhatia reminds the soldiers that
Haneef’s death needs to be avenged. ‘Hum agar ye kaam pura kiye bina
wapis jaayenge toh log kya kahenge?’ [What will people say if we go back
without doing this task?] he says gravely. ‘Woh bolenge Gyarah Raj. Rif.
apne saathiyon ki maut ka badla liye bina wapis aa gayi. Yeh humari paltan
ki izzat ka sawaal hai. Hume apne saathiyon ki maut ka badla lena hai.
Mujhe volunteer chahiye. Kaun jayega? [They will say that 11 Raj. Rif. has
returned without avenging the death of its comrades. This is a matter of our
honour. We have to exact retribution for their death. I want volunteers. Who
will go?],’ Col. Bhatia says looking his men in the eye, his voice as cold as
the wind.
There is a long silence while the wind screams and the peaks stand silent.
Then a gruff voice comes through in the falling dusk, ‘Sahab, main jaoonga
[I will go, Sir],’ Naib Subedar Abhay Singh, a basketball player from Bravo
Company, steps forward.
Soon, other men start looking up to meet Col. Bhatia’s gaze. Amongst the
initial volunteers are boxer Dilbagh Singh, cross-country runners Ajit,
Rajesh and Chand Bir, bodybuilder Kishen Kumar, Rifleman Durga Ram
and Havildar Kaan Singh. All of them had been part of the earlier aborted
attack also.
Gradually, more men start stepping up. The really fatigued troops are
replaced by fresh ones and the brave ones start their arduous climb once
again. The same two officers—Anirudh Chauhan and Ashish Bhalla—lead
the teams.
Anirudh and Task Force 1, climbing in a single file, manage to reach the
base of Point 5590 just before midnight. But they are again face-to-face
with the 80-degree gradient. This time they fix ropes and by 5.30 a.m.
manage to climb on to a jutting overhang.
 The sky is getting lighter. Above them, they can see three enemy
sanghars, one of which has the barrel of a machine gun jutting out of the
loophole. Sitting on that ledge, they call their CO on the radio set. The
enemy is barely 25 metres away. Col. Bhatia advises the team to stay
hidden behind rocks through the day and attack after last light to avoid a
counter-attack from surrounding enemy posts.
Around 5.45 p.m., Col. Bhatia gets a desperate message from Anirudh.
‘Sir, shayad unko shak ho gaya hai [Sir, perhaps they suspect our presence].
They are firing in our direction,’ he says.
‘The sun will go down soon. There is no other way but to charge
physically,’ Col. Bhatia tells Anirudh. ‘Be brave, my boys,’ he adds, his
heart heavy with concern.

A Fierce Hand-to-Hand Battle

Many men stand out for their selfless bravery and sacrifice that night. Hav.
Kishen Kumar takes the initiative when the enemy starts firing at his team.
When others hesitate to go up and fix the machine gun, he volunteers,
stepping boldly into enemy fire and emerging, miraculously, unhurt.
Anirudh and Naib Subedar Abhay Singh lead. Kaan Singh volunteers to
go first in the daring attack, knowing fully well that he is putting his life at
risk. Shouting ‘Raja Ram Chandra ki Jai,’ he charges bravely at the enemy
soldiers, flinging a grenade.
A bullet catches him in the neck and he falls off the edge of the post.
Dilbagh leaps to get a hold on his comrade but can only catch his rifle.
Kaan Singh drops into the gaping mouth of a crevasse. His eyes brimming
over with tears of helplessness, Dilbagh rushes forward and lunges at the
enemy soldiers. A fierce hand-to-hand battle rages at Point 5590 through
the night.
Naib Subedar Abhay Singh displays exemplary valour as well. To
mislead the enemy into believing that he has many more than ten men with
him, he keeps shouting out instructions like ‘Aadhe mere piche aao, thode
aadmi daayen se jao, baaki baayen se jao. Aage badho [Half of you come
with me; some attack from the right, the other half from the left].’ Not only
does he inspire his own men to fight bravely, he also fools the enemy into
thinking that they have been attacked by a full company of as many as 100
men.
Meanwhile, to support his troops, Col. Bhatia orders all available
weapons from the firebases, including missiles and rocket launchers, to fire
upon the enemy’s surrounding posts, with the exception of Point 5590. The
fire continues till 8 p.m. providing cover to the climbing troops of Task
Forces 3 and 4, who are to join the attacking company.
Meanwhile Task Force 1 is at its job. After silencing the machine gun,
two more sanghars are captured and three enemy soldiers killed. Task Force
2 catches up with them and fixes ropes over the blade’s edge of Point 5590
to drop down on to Area Saddle where they can spot sanghars and ten more
enemy soldiers. Rifle shots, war cries and screams of the injured pierce the
silence of the dark night. Col. Bhatia and the rest can hear the guns and see
flashes on the mountain but they have no idea of how their comrades are
faring.
Col. Bhatia has switched off his own radio connection with 102 Brigade
Headquarter, Partapur, since he wants to avoid unnecessary interference. ‘It
was highly distracting since they were so far away and we could not have
waited for or followed their instructions. We had to handle the battle on our
own.’ He switches it on only around 5 a.m. after he is told that both Point
5590 and Area Saddle have been captured.
Seven enemy soldiers have been killed, the rest have fled to Pakistan.
The victorious soldiers return with seventeen captured enemy weapons,
including heavy machine guns, rocket launchers, RC guns, and anti-aircraft
missiles that they carry on their backs 18 kilometres to Turtuk. The
weapons are then taken to Partapur in vehicles to be displayed during a visit
by then defence minister George Fernandez.
Though a very high casualty rate had been expected, 11 Raj. Rif. loses
one man in this operation. This in spite of the fact that the unit had been at a
complete disadvantage—the soldiers were fatigued and were climbing up to
fight a well-established enemy, they had no intelligence on how many
soldiers waited for them on the heights and with what weapons.
Since the war has been declared over by the time this daring operation
takes place, the unit does not get many gallantry awards.
‘We avenged our comrades, that was our greatest reward,’ says Col.
Bhatia, sipping his coffee as we close the interview. He has retired but his
elder son, Nishchay, who was ten when his father fought the war, has joined
11 Raj. Rif. and is a Major now. When I interview Col. Bhatia, he has just
returned from the passing out parade of his younger son who was only three
during the war. Lt Manak has been commissioned into 9 Raj. Rif.
One Haneef might have gone, but the brave young soldier shall keep
inspiring many more.

December 2018
Kargil Apartments
Dwarka

It is a cold foggy morning when I park my car and call Mrs Hema Aziz for
directions to her flat.
‘I am on the upper floor,’ she says.
I look up to find a graceful, elderly lady in a black salwar kameez smiling
down at me from the first floor. She invites me into her modestly furnished
flat where a photograph of Capt. Haneef-ud-din, VrC, in uniform looks at us
from an otherwise bare wall. A portrait sits on a bookshelf, his handsome
face flanked by the Tricolour, a gift from artist Hutansh Verma who paints
portraits of martyrs and hand delivers them to their families.
The door to the balcony is open, allowing Delhi’s winter chill inside. My
fingers feel like wood as I take down notes but Mrs Aziz doesn’t seem to
notice the cold. More than once, during that conversation that stretched into
a few hours, I wanted to request her to close the door but each time I was
reminded that her son’s body lay in the snow for forty-three days, and keep
quiet instead.
‘Soldiers Don’t Go to the Battlefield to Die’

Haneef was born on 23 August 1974 and was brought up in Old Delhi by
his grandmother. Both his parents worked with the song and drama division
of the ministry of information and broadcasting—his father was a theatre
artiste and his mother a classical singer. They would often tour the country,
performing for soldiers posted in the border areas.
‘It was satisfying work but we could not be with the children in their
early years,’ explains Mrs Aziz. Haneef was brought up almost entirely by
his grandmother till he was eight. He would get up at 6 a.m. with her every
day, after which she would take him along for whatever morning chores she
had to do. ‘He remained an early riser. He never needed an alarm to get up
in the morning even when he started going to college,’ she says.
Haneef was twenty-two when he came to his mother with the indemnity
bond she would have to sign before he joined the IMA. ‘When I started
reading it, he said, “Padh kyun rahi ho, bas sign kar do na [Why are you
reading it. Just sign it]”,’ Mrs Hema Aziz recollects. ‘When I told him that I
wanted to know what document I was signing, he said, “It’s a bond that
says you will get nothing if something happens to me during the training.” I
told him, “It is your dream to join the Army. I will never stop you.”’
She says Haneef had been offered a job with the computer firm he was
training with when his call came for the Army. ‘He sat down with me and
asked me what I thought he should do now that he had two job offers in
hand.’ She says she reminded him of how happy he had been when he had
gone for the Allahabad Service Selection Board (SSB). Four of his friends
had also gone for the SSB but only he had got selected. ‘Anyone can work
with a computer firm but only you are getting a chance to serve your
nation,’ she had told him. Haneef decided to join the Army.
He was used to taking his own decisions. His father, Aziz-ud-din Effendi,
had succumbed to a massive heart attack when Haneef was just eight and
his elder brother, Nafees, ten. Mrs Aziz had brought up the boys as a single
mother, sending her youngest son, Sameer, to live with her sister in
Bangalore. Since she had started working with Kathak Kendra, Delhi, she
would often be singing for renowned artistes like Pandit Birju Maharaj,
Yamini Krishnamurthy and Swapna Sundari, and often had to travel with
them for their performances. Haneef was ten and Nafees twelve when she
had to go on a Europe tour, leaving them alone in the small house they had
shifted into after their father’s death. ‘They knew they did not have a father
and their mother had to work to support them so they never complained. I
gave them pocket money and left extra money with the neighbours in case
there was an emergency. It was a one-and-a-half-month tour that stretched
to three months. They managed on their own,’ she says smiling
nostalgically. ‘They both paid their school fees, went to school on time,
managed their food and ironed their clothes. Haneef could even make
paranthas at that age.’
She shares an incident when Haneef had come back from school and
happily told her that he was going to get a free uniform since he did not
have a father. She had told him to refuse it saying, ‘Tell your teacher that
my mother earns enough and can afford to buy my uniform.’ She had
explained to him that in most families only fathers brought home salaries
and that was why those children needed economic support if their father
died. ‘You are not entitled to that free uniform because your mother earns,’
she told her wide-eyed son who nodded and told his teacher what his
mother had said. Nearly a decade later, she refused the gas agency that was
offered to her by the central government as a Kargil martyr’s mother, saying
she was a musician and would not be able to run it. Since it was in Haneef’s
name, she did not think it would be right on her part to pass it on to
someone else to run.

‘It Was His Destiny’

‘Soldiers don’t go to the battlefield to die, they go to fight. Haneef had

opted to be a soldier. He had taken a pledge to always place his country
before his own self; he had to honour it,’ Mrs Aziz tells me, her face soft
yet firm. ‘I am proud of my son. There cannot be a greater statement on his
valour than his death which came while fighting the enemy. There are so
many soldiers who came back alive from the war. I am happy for them. It
was Haneef’s destiny to not return and I accept it. He has been an
inspiration to so many. Even though his life was short, it was meaningful,’
she says.
Mrs Hema Aziz lives alone in her apartment in Delhi. She does not take
music classes any more but every morning, strains of the tanpura waft out
of her open window as she sits doing her riyaaz. This is the time when she
closes her eyes and is lost in a world that is still beautiful for her; where her
son Haneef probably smiles again.

Author’s Note

The initial intrusion in Turtuk sector was detected by a patrol of 12 Jat. The
main battle was fought later by 11 Raj. Rif. during July–August 1999,
ending when the unit captured Point 5590. Due to lack of communication
and rugged terrain, these operations were not covered by the media in
detail and thus never came into the public eye. Taken from Kargil 1999 –
The Impregnable Conquered written by Lt Gen. Y.M. Bammi.
For his gallant action and bravery of an exceptionally high order in the
face of the enemy, Capt. Haneef-ud-din was awarded the Vir Chakra
posthumously and Subsector West was renamed Subsector Haneef in his
honour. Capt. Anirudh Chauhan and Rifleman Kishen Kumar were awarded
Sena Medals for their inspiring bravery.
 Chapter 4
The Last Letter

A twenty-two-year-old going on a dangerous mission, from where return is

uncertain, leaves behind a letter for his parents.

29 June 1999
2 a.m.
Knoll, Dras

Lieutenant Vijyant Thapar lies sprawled behind a rough cover of large

boulders. Spreadeagled, he peers through the sight of his rifle. Beside him,
Naik Tilak Singh has raised himself on his elbows and is pushing a
magazine into his LMG. The moon is behind them, a huge milky disc of
haunting beauty that is in sheer contrast to the bloodbath below. Its light
reflects off the bare rocks, bathing the soldiers in a soft grey glow.
The battle has been raging through the night. The first two enemy
positions have been captured. The third lies before them, so close yet
frustratingly out of reach. A constant stream of enemy machine gun fire is
ricocheting off the rock shielding them, preventing them from moving
forward on the narrow ridgeline that can take just two soldiers at a time.
Vijyant has had enough of the debilitating stalemate. Seething with tightly
controlled fury, he decides to silence the gun that is keeping his men from
advancing.
His sense of survival dictates that he stay behind cover but Vijyant has
always been a man ruled by the heart. Unmindful of the danger he is putting
himself in, he waits for a lull in the fire and then steps out. He takes careful
aim at the enemy machine gunner and lets fly a stream of bullets.
 Bathed in moonlight, he is spotted by a Pakistani sniper sitting on a cliff.
The sniper cocks his rifle, takes careful aim and shoots. A bullet whips
through the air and pierces Vijyant’s left temple. The metal burns its way
through his brain and comes out through his right eye.
A stunned Tilak Singh watches the young officer fall. Letting go of his
own LMG, he crawls out and pulls Thapar back. Warm blood spills on the
grey rocks. Vijyant’s jacket is soaked from the bleeding wound but there is
not a single scratch on his handsome face. His head falls to one side, his
helmet rolls over exposing his black patka (a piece of cloth covering the
head) and his eyes shut as he breathes his last in his comrade’s arms.
The valiant Lt Vijyant Thapar, or Robin as his parents called him, is dead
at just twenty-two. Six months ago, he had passed out of the IMA, proudly
shaking hands with his father and hugging his tearful mother. That moment
had marked the fulfilment of his childhood dream of wearing the uniform.
In the battle of Knoll, he proved just how worthy he was of that honour.

29 June 2018
12 noon
Knoll

The rocky grey hills where the late Lt Vijyant Thapar, VrC, fought a bloody
battle nineteen years ago are calm. The sky is an aquamarine blue, the air is
crystal clear and you can feel it going right into your lungs.
It is hard to believe that one full moon night, grenades, gunfire and young
human blood fell upon these very rocks. If you happen to visit, you will
find old rusted rifle shells scattered here at 16,000 feet, mute witnesses to
the fierce battle once fought. This is the spot where Thapar breathed his
last. And this is where his father, seventy-three-year-old retired Col. (retd)
Virender Thapar, now sits barefoot, his legs crossed and hands folded,
participating in a havan held in memory of his son. His mind throws a
flashback at him. A little boy with a grime-stained face and hair falling on
his sweaty forehead is racing across a lush green lawn, a stick held in his
hands like a rifle. His dog is following him at breakneck speed. The two are
trying to scare monkeys off the stone boundary wall of an old British-era
bungalow.
‘Robin,’ Col. Thapar whispers softly. His eyes are moist. The Army
panditji sitting across him is chanting mantras in Sanskrit. Long orange
flames leap out of the havan kund, bathing Col. Thapar’s finely lined face in
a warm red glow. Just five metres away is the stone sanghar where the
young lieutenant fought his last battle. It has been converted into a temple
where goddess Karni Mata generously shares space with Vijyant’s
photographs and a red dupatta that his mother sends from Delhi to be
replaced every year.
For Col. Thapar, who comes here each year to commemorate the death
anniversary of his son, this is the place where his heart finds peace. Some of
that peace comes from the fact that he is respecting a wish Robin had made
in the last letter he wrote home from the battlefield, knowing that he might
never come back. ‘If you can, please come and see where the Indian Army
fought for your tomorrow,’ he had written. And though it is becoming more
and more difficult for Col. Thapar to make the treacherous climb to Knoll
every passing year, he plans to honour that commitment for as long as he
can.

His Last Letter

‘Dearest Papa, Mama, Birdie and Granny,’ begins the last letter that Vijyant
wrote to his family from Kargil in June 1999. ‘By the time you get this
letter I’ll be observing you from the sky, enjoying the hospitality of apsaras.
I have no regrets. In fact, if I am reborn as a human I will join the army
again and fight for my nation,’ he writes on the purple Forces Inland letter,
his neat right-slanted handwriting filling up the page. ‘If you can, please
come and see where the Indian Army fought for your tomorrow.’ He adds
that whatever organ can, should be taken; he asks his parents to donate
money to an orphanage and asks them to give Rs 50 every month to
Ruksana, a three-year-old Kashmiri girl he had befriended in Kashmir
during his short stint there. He hopes that the sacrifice made by him and his
men will not be forgotten by his battalion and his country. He signs off with
a brave, ‘OK, then it’s time for me to join my clan of the Dirty Dozen. My
assault party has twelve chaps. Live life kingsize. Your, Robin.’
Vijyant had written this letter to his family just a few days before he went
to battle. It had been given to his parents with all his belongings packed in a
black tin trunk, after his death. In fact, all the soldiers who had volunteered
to go for this battle knew that the mission was risky and that they might not
return. Some of them had left behind letters for loved ones, to be handed
over if they did not come back. Vijyant was one of them. He had been told
he was going to lead the attack. He must have guessed that his chances of
survival were slim.
Here is the story of the late Lt Vijyant Thapar, VrC; pieced together from
interviews with Col. Praveen Tomar, his coursemate who was with him in
the war; Subedar Maj. Bhupinder Singh, who fought beside him in Knoll;
and his parents, Col. and Mrs Thapar, who so generously shared not just his
last letter, his diaries, his pictures, war reports and other documents, but
also their precious memories with me.

May 2018,
Vijyant Enclave,
Noida

It is a warm summer morning when I get off the metro at the Botanical
Garden station. Vijyant Enclave is easy to locate and I walk across to its
front gate where a signboard pays homage to the brave young soldier whose
parents I have come to interview.
When I ring the bell at the Thapar residence, a distinguished-looking,
formally dressed Col. Virender Thapar holds the door open for me with a
smile.
 ‘Do authors look like this?’ he asks, a twinkle in his eye. He is the
quintessential Army officer, well dressed, well mannered, pleasant,
charming and chivalrous. ‘I was expecting someone older,’ he says leading
me inside to their beautifully done-up sitting room where Mrs Tripta Thapar
gracefully steps forward and gives me a warm hug.
In so many ways life has moved on for the Thapars. They joke, they
smile, they entertain guests and they talk about their older son with deep
affection. So much so that if you didn’t know it already, you would think
that he had just stepped out for a chore and would be back soon. Yet, you
soon realize that in so many ways life came to a stop for them the day
Vijyant fell.
‘The battle was a resounding success but we lost our son,’ Col. Thapar
says. ‘We could have spent a life of gloom but that would have demeaned
his martyrdom. So we broke through it and decided to use Robin’s sacrifice
to inspire the youth of India. We have been doing that ever since and it is
satisfying to know that he has become a role model for future generations of
officers.’
Later, Col. Thapar shows me around the house, taking me to Vijyant’s
room, which the Thapars have left untouched. He shows me his bed, his
favourite books that line the study table, his posters that are still on the wall;
his uniform hangs in a corner, his watch, beret and diary are neatly arranged
in a glass cupboard. Through the afternoon, Mrs Thapar opens albums and
shares with me pictures of the son who will remain twenty-two for them;
they read out to me letters he wrote to them, they share with me their
memories of the boy who always dreamt of joining the armed forces.
Gradually, the late Lt Vijyant Thapar, VrC, is no longer just a name or
story for me. He becomes Robin, the young boy who would doodle soldiers
and airplanes in his rough notebook when he was supposed to be doing
math; who had once come home from the institute soaking wet after a rain
dance and had pacified his annoyed father by telling him that he had danced
with none less than the then Miss India Manpreet Brar, who had insisted
that his mother continue to make for him the cakes and chocolates he loved
so much even after he had joined the IMA.
 ‘He was really close to his mother and he just loved chocolates,’ Col.
Thapar says, narrating an incident linked to a picture that has even gone
into 2 Raj. Rif.’s regimental history. The picture has a smiling Vijyant and
Maj. Padmapani Acharya sitting on Barbaad Bunker after their first victory
in Tololing. He tells me that when the CO, Lt Col. M.B. Ravindranath,
climbed up to meet his victorious soldiers, a grinning Robin offered him a
chocolate he had fished out from his pocket. ‘His pockets were always
filled with chocolates,’ he says smiling fondly.
Mrs Thapar tells me how she and Col. Thapar had rushed to the
Tughlakabad railway station with a big cake to meet the military special
train that was taking Robin and his battalion from Gwalior to Kashmir a
few months before the war started, but had got late. She remembers how
they missed Robin at the station since he had gone home to Noida looking
for them. When they did eventually meet, Col. Thapar handed over to his
son a camera that Robin had always had his eyes on.
‘He forgot to load a film though. Robin kept taking pictures with it and
realized much later that it had no film. He was so annoyed with his dad,’
Mrs Thapar says laughing. ‘You should have loaded the film,’ she says,
looking at her husband.
‘There was no time to buy it. He should have checked before using it,’
Col. Thapar replies.
Mrs Thapar tells me how Robin’s picture appeared in an article published
in India Today while the war was on. They had bought copies that they kept
for him to read when he came back from the war. She says that she had
received a call from the magazine’s chief photographer, Dilip Banerjee,
who said that he had met Robin in the war zone and that her son was a very
brave man. Two days later she had received news of Robin’s death. She had
called Dilip and told him, her voice suffused with sadness, ‘My son was a
brave man but he is no more.’
A few years later when film director J.P. Dutta was researching for his
film L.O.C. Kargil, he spoke to Mrs Thapar. ‘If it wasn’t for you my son
would still be alive,’ she had told him softly. ‘He had seen your film Border
seventeen times. He was so inspired by the character of Lt Dharam Vir,
played by Akshaye Khanna, that he modelled himself after him during the
Battle of Tololing and would keep playing the song ‘Sandese Aate Hain’ in
his bunker all the time.’ Dutta had included the Battle of Tololing in the
film, with Amar Upadhyay playing Vijyant Thapar.
She recounts the phone call that broke her heart forever. ‘I was at school
when my younger son, Birdie, called me to say that Robin had been
martyred in the war. He was at home that day and had received a phone call
from the Army headquarters.’ Her eyes fill with tears. Col. Thapar quietly
looks away. Since there is nothing one can say to console parents who have
lost their child, I look away too.
My attention is drawn to a beautiful oil painting of a cheerful-looking
red-breasted bird that watches us with its head tilted slightly to a side from
their sitting-room wall. ‘Our younger daughter-in-law gifted this painting to
us on Robin’s forty-first birthday. It’s a robin,’ Mrs Thapar says, smiling
bravely despite her moist eyes. Col. Thapar puts an arm around her. If he
were around, Robin would probably have been as proud of his parents as
they are of him.

The battle of Knoll

26 June 1999
Dusk
Dras

A 2 Raj. Rif. convoy is winding its way towards the small hill town of Dras,
the second-coldest inhabited place in the world at 10,990 feet.
Dras, however, is not its destination. Just before the Army Mess, there is
a left fork in the road. The trucks take that turn and the road gives way to a
rough dirt track. Dusk has fallen but no headlights have been switched on.
All brake lights have also been disconnected earlier in the morning. The
soldiers know that they are in direct line of enemy observation and don’t
want to alert them about their arrival. The trucks make their way forward
slowly in the purple darkness, gravel crunching under their tyres; the
silence disturbed only by the rustle of the wind and the soft growl of the
engines. The soldiers sitting inside are not in the mood for any kind of
conversation either.
The trucks have come all the way from Kupwara, nearly 200 km away,
but today they have travelled 20 km from Matiyan, where the unit has been
camping. Tololing has been captured at great human loss and the men are
now on their way to the next battle. Their task is to evict enemy soldiers
lodged in Knoll, a post occupied surreptitiously by Pakistani soldiers in the
freezing winter. The soldiers are seated in groups of ten; the officers sit in
front, next to the drivers.
Lt Vijyant Thapar and Lt Praveen Tomar, both course mates from the
IMA, both twenty-two years old, and barely seven months in the battalion,
are seated in different trucks. Both are lost in their own thoughts. One of
them will not return alive from the battle. Vijyant, who has been tasked with
leading the attack, seems to have pre-empted the possibility that he might
be the one. Just a few days ago, he had handed over to Praveen a letter
addressed to his family, gruffly saying, ‘If I don’t come back, please give it
to my dad.’ A sombre Praveen had nodded and slipped it inside his pocket.

The attack
28 June 1999
8 p.m.
Firebase

It is the night Knoll has to be attacked. Temperatures have fallen to below

freezing point and the down jackets are coming handy. No one is hungry.
No one wants to talk. Every soldier knows that all of them will not return
alive but each one wants to believe that death will not come to him.
Wishful thinking and Karni Mata’s blessings give the men of 2 Raj. Rif.
the courage to move on. The regiment’s silver idol of Karni Mata, which
dates back to before World War II, has been carried to the battlefield. A
quick puja is performed and, with shouts of ‘Raja Ram Chandra Ki Jai’, the
soldiers start lining up for the attack.
Vijyant, 2IC, Alpha Company, is to lead the attack with a platoon of
around thirty men. Maj. Padmapani Acharya, Company Commander, Alpha
Company, and Subedar Sunayak are ready to follow with their own
sections. Unfortunately, it is a full moon night that makes it easy for the
enemy soldiers, sitting in their sanghars on the heights, to observe
movement below. Vijyant doesn’t know this but his troops have already
been spotted and the coordinates conveyed to the enemy artillery guns lined
up on the other side. Just as the soldiers gear up for the attack, the first
salvo hits them hard.
The silence of the night is punctuated by the noise of artillery fire and the
heart-rending cries of men in pain. Screeching shells shatter all around,
deafening the soldiers and cutting through them with jagged pieces of
shrapnel. Illuminating flares light up the area like daylight and air bursts
rain down metal on the hapless soldiers. There is complete mayhem. The
men scatter, hiding behind whatever cover they can find, hands covering
their ears, the ground shaking beneath their feet.
Vijyant’s buddy, Naik Jagmal Singh, is one of the first to be hit. He is
devastated by the loss but does not lose his cool. Eyes flashing with
determination, he gathers all the able-bodied men he can find in the
darkness, regroups his platoon and goes down into the depression to dodge
the barrage of artillery fire. His platoon is given up as lost by CO Col.
Ravindranath, who orders Acharya and Sunayak to move ahead. Vijyant
and his men lose their way in the ensuing chaos but he has no intention of
quitting. For the next four hours he and his men go around trying to locate
Knoll in the freezing cold with temperatures having dropped to –15
degrees. Breathing is a struggle but the soldiers, carrying 20 kg backpacks,
climb the mountains, single-mindedly pursuing their objective. They are
destined to join the others in the midst of raging battle.

Losing Maj. Acharya

Maj. Acharya and his men are the first to reach Knoll and make contact
with the enemy. Sunayak and Section 1 soon join them. Under Acharya’s
firm and fearless command, they fight bravely and manage to capture the
first of the three sanghars without any casualty.
There is, however, no time to rejoice as deadly fire is coming their way
from the other two sanghars, the first of which is just 20 metres ahead and
separated by a depression. The two teams retreat behind rocks and start
returning fire. The Pakistani soldiers, scathing under their defeat, are
directing abuse at them that is making Acharya simmer with anger. He
furiously aims his gun at the sanghar ahead, his finger on the trigger.
‘Sahab, cover lo [Sir, take cover]!’ yells Subedar Man Singh, who has
seen the swing of a khaki-clad arm on the next sanghar. Acharya turns his
head, but it is too late. The grenade explodes right in front of the young
officer sending razor-edged shrapnel flying into his chest. The metal pieces
cut like knives and Acharya falls. His fingers go limp and he drops the AK-
47 by his side. Man Singh screams as pieces of shrapnel cut into his thigh
as well and he rolls over towards the gorge, his body disappearing behind a
boulder. The unit does not see him and presumes he is dead. He, however,
manages to survive.
The message reaches a shocked Lt Col. Ravindranath, who is in constant
touch with his men. He orders Subedar Bhupinder Singh to immediately
start from the firebase with the fourth section. Using each other for support,
the men climb up as quickly as they can. Since the first sanghar has been
taken by then, they do not face any opposition and reach quickly. They take
position beside their comrades and start firing at the next target.

Robin’s Story

29 June 1999
1 a.m.
Knoll
It has been nearly five hours since Robin and his men lost their way. They
have been wandering on the ridge, confused by its numerous false crests,
and are tired, frozen to the bone and itching for a fight. The silver moon that
hung silently over their heads when they were climbing has moved behind
the ridgeline now. When they hear the sound of gunfire, their faces light up
despite their fatigue. Robin points towards the ridge where the action seems
to be taking place.
‘That has to be Knoll. Let’s go,’ he says, pushing his rifle behind his
back, and starts climbing the steep rocky incline, pulling himself up with
his hands.
The men reach the top to find themselves in the midst of a deadly
firefight. Subedar Bhupinder Singh is directing the fire.
‘Acharya Sahab kahan hai [Where is Maj. Acharya]?’ Robin asks.
For a while, the older soldier tries to evade an answer, not wanting the
young Vijyant, who is very attached to Acharya, to get a shock in the
middle of the battle. After about ten minutes, Vijyant starts getting
impatient.
‘Acharya Sahab kahan hain?’ he asks Bhupinder, his voice as cold as the
lashing wind.
‘Sahab shaheed ho gaye [He is no more],’ Bhupinder replies quietly.
Tears slip down Vijyant’s cheeks. He is inconsolable. Just then Naik
Anand, from Vijyant’s section, who has been handling the LMG, also gets
shot down by an enemy bullet.
Thapar is livid. ‘Main aage jaunga [I will go ahead],’ he tells Bhupinder,
who is imploring him to stay behind cover.
Holding his AK-47 firmly in his hand, Vijyant moves amidst flying
bullets and takes position next to Lance Hav. Tilak Singh. Pushing a
magazine into his rifle, he joins the firefight. Under his inspiring leadership,
the men are able to dominate the enemy and the second post is also taken.
Vijyant now concentrates on the third position. The enemy sitting there is
shooting down at the men of 2 Raj. Rif. who are not being able to step out
from behind the cover of boulders. The frustrating status quo remains till
around 2 a.m., when the moon climbs higher up in the sky.
 Then comes the moment that shall stay frozen in military history forever.
Seething with fury from the loss of his beloved company commander and
his men, Vijyant changes the course of the battle by stepping out and
shooting the enemy soldier handling the LMG. He is shot by the enemy and
breathes his last on those freezing heights but his men go on to avenge his
death by fighting bravely and taking over Knoll. It happens perfectly in
synch with a quote he often used to scrawl in his diary:
‘If I lead, follow me
Should I retreat, shoot me
If I die, avenge me.’

Amidst the chaos of the battle and gunfire, Lance Hav. Tilak leans back
against the boulder with Robin in his arms and weeps loudly for the young
life lost.
He does not realize then that the bullet hasn’t killed Robin. It has made
him immortal. For times to come, he shall continue to inspire a thousand
others. His story will shake up young people lost in the world of video
games and YouTube streamings, and inspire them to the join the Army. The
songs he has sung will surface as attachments on emails. Girls will find in
him their soulmate. Young parents will name their sons after him. The last
letter he wrote will be circulated on Instagram and Facebook. His house
will become a pilgrimage for those aspiring to join the Army. Young
people, dreaming of wearing the uniform, shall walk the roads of Noida,
looking for his address. They will locate Vijyant Enclave and ask people for
directions to the house where his parents still live. They will stand on their
toes and peep over the brick wall to look at the house with the small green
lawn where he once laughed and smiled, where Col. Thapar has proudly
replaced his own nameplate by his son’s—Lt Vijyant Thapar, VrC, of Dras
Raj. Rif.
Nineteen years have passed but even now sometimes, when Col. and Mrs
Thapar are having tea in their sitting room, and the curtain happens to be
drawn, they find curious college kids peeping over the wall. Col. Thapar
says his heart fills with pride and Mrs Thapar says that she remembers
another summer afternoon, when Robin had come back from college and,
after a quick lunch, had dragged Birdie away, saying ‘Today, I shall show
you an awesome place.’ The boys had returned late in the evening. A sullen
Birdie had walked into the kitchen to complain to his mother. ‘He dragged
me all the way to Param Vir Chakra Lt Arun Khetarpal’s house,’ he said.
‘We didn’t even go in. Robin just stood outside the wall and gaped with his
mouth open.’ Robin, who had just walked into the kitchen, declared loftily,
‘I want to be like him one day. People will come to see my house too.’ Mrs
Thapar had then smiled and got back to rolling out paranthas for dinner.

His Story

Robin was born on 26 December 1976 in Naya Nangal, a small town on the
banks of the Sutlej on the border of Himachal Pradesh and Punjab. He was
one month old and yet to be named when his parents took him to Pathankot
where his father was posted. One evening, Maj. Virender Thapar was
walking in the cantonment looking absent-mindedly at the Vijayanta tanks
parked there when it suddenly struck him that Vijyant, which meant
victorious till the end, was a nice name for his son. Mrs Thapar liked the
name too and Robin was officially named Vijyant after the main battle tank
of the Indian Armoured Corps.
‘He was born to join the forces. It was in his heart, his psyche and his
blood. And look at the coincidence. He even joined 2 Raj. Rif. that has the
motto, “Ever victorious”,’ Col. Thapar tells me.
Robin grew up in the cantonments of the Indian Army. He was a happy-
go-lucky child who would chase butterflies in the garden, pick mock battles
with monkeys sitting on the boundary wall, his shimmering black-coated
Doberman, Kartoos, running behind him. When he was four, his father
commanded 14 J&K Rifles in Barrackpore. There Robin had the best
adventures of his life. They lived in an old sprawling bungalow that had ten
rooms and massive lawns. Robin made the most of the place, spending his
entire day exploring the gardens around the house. ‘In the evening, when I
would check his pockets before putting his clothes in the laundry, I would
come across all kinds of stuff, right from twigs and flowers to crawling
ladybirds,’ remembers Mrs Thapar. Often, he would go to his dad’s
battalion, mingle with wrestlers in the akhada, who would give him oil
massages and share with him walnuts and almonds. At the age of six, he
fired his first pistol, holding the shiny Webley & Scott in his pudgy hands
while sitting in his father’s lap at the firing range.
After completing his tenth standard from St Joseph’s, Pathankot, Robin
went on to complete grade twelve from DAV College, Chandigarh. When
Col. Thapar got posted to Rangia, Assam, Mrs Thapar stayed back in their
Noida house to be with the two boys. Robin joined Khalsa College in Delhi
to pursue BCom. (Honors). He cleared the CDS exam and, along with his
two close friends, went for the SSB to Bhopal.
Col. and Mrs Thapar waited for Robin to call and tell them the result,
which they knew would be out by 1 p.m. They knew that out of sixty boys
only three were to be selected and were a little nervous.
‘When it was nearly 5 p.m. and no call came from Robin, Col. Thapar
left the house saying, ‘I don’t think he has made it.’
Soon after, the phone rang. Mrs Thapar answered it to find Robin on the
line. ‘I’ve been selected, Mamma,’ he said.
When a delighted Mrs Thapar asked him why he had not called earlier,
the eighteen-year-old replied, ‘Mamma, both my friends didn’t make it.
Woh bahut ro rahe the, main unhe station chorne chala gaya tha [My
friends, who couldn’t make it, were crying. I had gone to drop them at the
railway station],’ Both those friends, Rajesh Makkar and Rahul Joshi, made
it in the next attempt and are now serving colonels in the Army.
Mrs Thapar remembers affectionately how Robin was a soft-hearted boy.
‘He once gave all his pocket money, a precious sum of Rs 50, to a beggar
sitting outside the house. When his father asked him why he had done that
he replied, ‘Aap ne mujhe pocket money de diya na [You gave me the
pocket money]. Now it is mine. Please let me do what I want with it. I
won’t ask you for more.’
Always an above-average student, Robin bloomed in the IMA. ‘He won
prizes for swimming, water polo and debating, and also the silver medal for
best runner-up cadet in the first semester,’ recollects Mrs Thapar. During his
second term at IMA, Robin dislocated his shoulder and ended up with his
arm in a sling. He was in great agony but, egged on by Col. Thapar, decided
to take part in the final exercise where he had to walk 18 km with a
backpack. He managed to complete it and finally, on 12 December 1998, Lt
Vijyant Thapar passed out of IMA at the age of twenty-one. Six months
later he died fighting in Kargil.
‘He joined the IMA at nineteen, became an officer at twenty-one and a
martyr at twenty-two,’ says Col. Thapar wistfully, looking at Robin’s larger-
than-life portrait in uniform that covers a wall in the room where he once
lived.

Back to the Battle

Tilak lays Vijyant down gently and sets his LMG back into position. He
wipes his tear-stained face with the back of his hand and goes back to firing
at the enemy. The battle rages till nearly 6 a.m.
Dawn is breaking over Knoll when the firing finally ceases from the
enemy side and the Indian soldiers start coming out of cover, their rifles still
in their hands, faces tired, sleep-deprived and grief-stricken. Victory has
come but at a great cost.
Around 6.30 a.m., a fierce round of screaming enemy artillery shelling
rocks Knoll. The enemy is desperate to take back what it has just lost. The
rounds, however, cause no damage. Around 9.30 a.m., Subedar Bhupinder
breathes a sigh of relief when Maj. Sandip Bajaj, 2IC, arrives with Subedar
Ram Chander Lamba and the men of Bravo Company as reinforcements.
Bajaj and his men take charge of the captured sanghars and the battle-weary
Alpha Company is asked to go back to the firebase.
The jawans use their line bedding to tie up two rifles parallel to each
other and cover them with waterproof sheets to form stretchers. The bodies
of Maj. Acharya, Lt. Thapar, Naik Anand and Rifleman Jagmal are wrapped
in rain capes and placed on these. The weary soldiers carry the makeshift
stretchers down over the steep mountainside, taking turns, four at a time.
The battle objective has been met but there is no joy in the hearts of the
men or their CO. Memories of the comrades they have lost cloud their eyes.
The guns have finally fallen silent at Area Knoll, the Tricolour is flying
from the bare grey rocks. Thirteen soldiers lost their lives that night.
Twenty-two-year-old Vijyant Thapar is one of them.

Ruksana
One of the most fascinating stories about Lt Vijyant Thapar is of the beautiful bond he had
formed with a three-year-old Kashmiri girl while he was posted in the Valley. Robin had first
noticed the large-eyed, unusually quiet Muslim girl standing outside a tiny hut in Kandi,
Kupwara, when he was there with his battalion, 2 Raj. Rif., fighting insurgency.
While going back and forth on his missions, Vijyant would see her standing outside her
small hut, watching the soldiers fearfully. When he inquired about her he was told that she
had lost her voice after undergoing the trauma of watching her father, a woodcutter, brutally
murdered in front of her eyes by militants a year back. They had suspected him of passing
on information to the Indian Army. Deeply moved by her story, the soft-hearted Vijyant
would wave and smile at her while going about his duties. When he had time, he would go
to her and offer her the chocolates he always carried in his pockets. Slowly he managed to
win the child’s trust. She started smiling and, much to her mother’s surprise, even speaking
to the young Army officer. Vijyant started giving Ruksana’s mother money for her upkeep
and even wrote to his own mother about her.
‘He asked me to get some salwar kameez stitched for her, telling me they should fit a
three-year-old,’ Mrs Thapar remembers. ‘I assured him that I would and he said he would
take them back the next time he came home on leave. ‘She will be so happy, Mamma,’ he
had said.’
In the last letter he wrote to his parents from the battlefield, Vijyant had requested Col.
Thapar to keep supporting the girl if anything happened to him. Col. Thapar managed to
locate Ruksana with a lot of difficulty after Robin was martyred because she had moved
with her family. He has not just been visiting her, but also sponsoring her ever since, thus
keeping his son’s word.
 ‘Ruksana is twenty-two years old now and studying in class twelve,’ Col. Thapar tells me.
‘I make it a point to meet her every year when I go on my pilgrimage to Dras. I always carry
a gift for her and she hands me a box of apples that I bring back to Delhi. Last year, we gave
her a computer she had wanted.’ Mrs Thapar tells me that they have planned a nice wedding
gift for Ruksana whenever she decides to tie the knot. ‘That will be for her from Robin,’ she
says.

Author’s Note

For his raw courage, exemplary valour and making the supreme sacrifice
while facing the enemy, Lt Vijyant Thapar was posthumously awarded a Vir
Chakra. 2 Raj. Rif. lost four officers, two JCOs and seventeen Other Ranks
in the war; 70 were wounded, of whom six lost their limbs. It was the first of
seven Indian Army units to get a unit citation from the Army chief,
recognizing their extraordinary bravery in the Kargil War.
This story is based on conversations with Col. Virender Thapar (retd)
and Mrs Tripta Thapar. War scenes have been recreated from the accounts
given by Col. Praveen Tomar and Subedar Bhupinder Singh (retd) who was
in the final battle with Vijyant and is now a basketball coach with a school
in Delhi.
 Story 2
Burying the Dead

15 July 1999

It is a biting cold morning when the Army Aviation Corps’ small Cheetah
helicopters, adept at high-altitude flying, start taking off one at a time from
Dras. They are ferrying journalists up to almost 18,000 feet to a location
near Point 4875, later renamed Batra Top after young Capt. Vikram Batra,
martyred here in a bloody battle barely a week ago. 13 J&K Rifles is
organizing a ceremonial burial of seven enemy soldiers, who were killed in
the same battle, but whose bodies are not being accepted by the Pakistan
Army.
A small ten-by-ten-foot patch of land has been flattened and cleared by
the soldiers of Charlie and Delta Companies to create a makeshift helipad.
Less than 200 metres away is Point 4875. The operation ended on the
morning of 7 July. It was a glorious victory but achieved at a very high
price. The battalion has lost five of its brave men, including Capt. Batra
who had been promoted on the battlefield at Tololing after an earlier
victory. It has also suffered seventeen non-fatal casualties. The injured have
been evacuated, the bodies of martyred soldiers have been carried down to
Dras, but the bodies of the slain enemy still lay scattered on the battlefield,
most dressed in khaki trousers and jerseys with parkas on top.
From the letters and identity cards found, it has become obvious that the
slain soldiers are regulars of the Pakistani Army but Pakistan is refusing to
accept this and maintains that its Army had no role to play in the
infiltration. It has been decided that the dead soldiers shall be buried with
due respect. More than thirty soldiers have been killed in battle; some have
fallen deep into the ravines but seven bodies have been located, laid out on
ground sheets and carried to the burial ground created between Point 4875
and Area Flat Top.
‘While we were fighting them, they were our enemies. After death, they
were soldiers, just like us, who had died while doing their duty,’ says
Rifleman Sunil Kumar, SM, of Delta Company, 13 J&K Rifles,
remembering the day when he was one of the soldiers carrying bodies and
digging graves for them. He says there was no ill feeling towards the dead
in the hearts of the soldiers.
He remembers a humorous interaction with enemy soldiers even in the
midst of the deadly battle. At one point, when the two armies were fighting
each other from barely 15 metres away, a Pakistani soldier taunted, ‘Yaar,
itni goliyan kyun chala rahe ho. Hume Madhuri Dixit de do, hum wapis
chale jaayenge [Don’t waste your ammunition. Just give us Madhuri Dixit
and we will go back].’
An Indian soldier retorted, ‘Tum Madhuri Dixit ke sapne dekh rahe the,
yahan tumhe Dharmendra mil gaye [While you were dreaming of Madhuri
Dixit, you have run into Dharmendra].’
A maulvi has been requisitioned for the burial. Naik Ikraj Nabi, of 16
Grenadiers, had been located in Dras. He trekked nine hours to get to the
point, using a stick to navigate the tough climb with four soldiers by his
side. Belonging to a village in Rajasthan, Nabi had taken bullets in Doda in
1995 and is happy to be of some help again. He now stands on the flat land
in his Army fatigues, trousers flapping in the cold wind, head bound in a
thick woollen olive green balaclava, hands in the air, reciting verses from
the Quran.
He had earlier instructed the soldiers on how to dig the graves—they had
to be in a direction at a right angle to the direction of the Qibla (Mecca) so
that the body, placed in the grave lying on its right side, faced the Qibla.
Every instruction was followed with complete sincerity. Shovels and
pickaxes in hand, black bandanas tied around their heads, the battle-weary
soldiers had used all their remaining strength to cut through the rocky
mountain. However, the ground was so hard that three and a half feet was
the deepest they could go. National flags of Pakistan had been specially
stitched in Dras and brought up. Each dead soldier was wrapped in the flag
and gently lowered into the shallow grave. The maulvi recited the Salat al-
Janazah and the graves were covered.
Besides media representatives, the ceremony is also watched over by Lt
Col. (now Lt Gen.) Yogesh Joshi, CO, 13 J&K Rifles, Maj. (now Col.)
Vikas Vohra, Company Commander, Delta Company, and soldiers of
Charlie and Delta companies who have been part of the battle. ‘Today we’re
carrying out the burial of seven Pakistani soldiers who laid down their lives
in combat here as a mark of respect to the soldiers who have died,’ Lt Col.
Joshi informs the gathered journalists. A rock with the words ‘Pak 12 NLI’
painted on it is put up at the site. The burial starts around 12 noon and is
over by 2 p.m. Thereafter the journalists are again helicopter-lifted and
dropped back to Dras, with the choppers doing nearly fifteen sorties late
afternoon.
As the sun disappears behind the tall peaks, the sunshine is replaced by
freezing cold. The soldiers stand on the barren peak watching the Cheetahs
getting smaller and finally disappearing. They then painstakingly mark each
grave with a stone and demarcate the entire area by encircling it with stones
painted white with the chuna (lime) that was carted up earlier.
It is 3 p.m. by the time they complete their task. The wind has turned
chilly and dusk is starting to descend on the valley. The weary soldiers
trudge back to cold and desolate Batra Top, cook themselves some rice and
dal from the stocks left behind by the enemy soldiers and take shelter
behind boulders. As the temperature dips further, they spread out their
sleeping bags and climb into them. The neighbouring features of Whale
Back and Twin Bumps have also been captured by 17 Jat and 2 Naga
respectively so they aren’t tense any more. They watch as the stars come
out one by one and night falls silently on Batra Top. Thinking of their
families who await their return, hot food and the warm smiles of the ones
they love the most, they fall asleep one by one. The vanquished enemy is
just 200 metres away, laid to rest forever.

Author’s Note
This piece is based on a conversation with Col. Gurpreet Singh, who was
Company Commander, Charlie Coy, 13 J&K Rifles, in the war. In the fifty-
four days of deployment in the war, the battalion recaptured five heights
and won thirty-seven gallantry awards, including two PVCs.
 Chapter 5
Premonition

A young officer takes off his engagement ring and leaves it behind before
heading out for a battle.

5 July 1999
7 a.m.
Mushkoh Valley

It is a cold, wind-lashed morning. On the barren brown mountain, where

temperatures dip to two degree Celsius even in peak summer, Col. Umesh
Singh Bawa, CO, 17 Jat, stands facing twenty-three-year-old Capt. Anuj
Nayyar of Charlie Company, the icy wind whipping their unwashed hair
and sunburnt faces. Anuj has been tasked with leading a platoon to
reinforce Delta Company that has wrested the feature Whale Back from the
enemy after a fierce battle but is facing ferocious counter-attacks. Maj.
Deepak Rampal, Company Commander, D Coy, has sent a desperate
message to his CO on the radio set that ammunition has almost run out.
Anuj is being sent to his aide.
‘An opportunity to go for war comes to the most fortunate soldiers,
Anuj,’ Col. Bawa tells his young officer, who stands before him, his arms
ramrod straight by his side. ‘You are lucky it has come to you so early in
your life.’ Looking into Anuj’s eyes, Col. Bawa rests an arm on his
shoulder. ‘You have a chance to be remembered forever, don’t miss it. You
can either be brave and have a shot at everlasting glory or fail in your duty
and be called a coward for life. This is your chance to create history. Go and
make a name for the battalion.’
 Anuj’s handsome face radiates courage. His young eyes sparkle. They
show no fear. But he slips off his engagement ring and takes his wallet out
of his pocket. He opens it and looks briefly and tenderly at the picture of his
fiancée, a pretty schoolmate he fell in love with at Army Public School,
Dhaula Kuan, between bunking classes and playing basketball. She is
smiling up at him. He hands both his ring and wallet to his CO. ‘Will you
please keep these for me, sir?’ he asks.
‘Wear the ring, Anuj. It will inspire you to fight with even more courage,’
Col. Bawa tells him.
However, Anuj is adamant. ‘I don’t want these to fall into the dirty hands
of the enemy. Please keep them,’ he says.
Col. Bawa, who too is from Delhi like Anuj and had met the young
bride-to-be when Anuj brought her over to his house one evening, gets
sentimental. ‘Nothing will happen to you, my boy,’ he tells Anuj. ‘You will
come back to us. Go and do your duty. I shall keep your belongings safe.’

Sixth Sense

Talking to me nearly twenty years later, Brig. U.S. Bawa VrC, SM, who has
retired and is now settled in Gurugram, says Anuj probably had some kind
of premonition about what was to come, but none of them realized it then.
That morning, Anuj led thirty-five men of Charlie Company to Whale
Back. He covered the distance from the base camp to the post in just two
hours, ensuring that he wasted no time in reaching the soldiers helpless
without ammunition. By 10 a.m. he is with his comrades. They find that D
Coy has managed to beat back an enemy counter-attack at 8 a.m. but more
than thirty enemy soldiers can be seen regrouping for another attack. It
comes around 1 p.m. By then ammunition has been distributed LMGs have
been loaded and 17 Jat is ready for the enemy. Deepak and Anuj, the two
officers, and their men put up a strong fight and the enemy is pushed back.
Around 5 p.m. the Pakistanis make one more attempt to take back the post
but are defeated again. Finally, night falls and the enemy soldiers retreat.
Whale Back has been captured. It is a big win for the Indian Army but
Anuj’s moment of glory is yet to come.

The last battle

6 July 1999
8 p.m.
Feature Whale Back

Charlie Company has been tasked with attacking the feature Pimple 2.
Company Commander Maj. Ritesh Kumar is leading a platoon of around
thirty-five men. Anuj is right behind him. The soldiers have been surviving
on man-packs for two days. They only have shakkarparas, mathis and stale
puris in their backpacks. Anuj is hungry and asks for something to eat. The
soldier with him hands him some cold puris. ‘Yeh mujhse nahi khayi
jaayengi, yaar (I can’t eat these, my friend),’ Anuj tells him with a wry
smile. He gropes in his own backpack and pulls out a packet of biscuits,
sharing it with those around. ‘Chalein? (Shall we go?)’ he asks and,
slinging his rifle behind his back, starts climbing. Just 800 metres short of
the objective the soldiers are spotted by the enemy who starts shelling them.
Maj. Ritesh gets splinter injuries on his legs. Four other soldiers are also
injured.
When this is communicated to Col. Bawa on the radio set, he asks the
injured men to return and get treatment at the Regimental Aide Post. Col.
Bawa speaks to Anuj and asks him to take charge. As the men move up
further they meet stiff resistance. Four machine gun positions on the ridge
right in front of them are impeding progress. They go on to neutralize three
of these but the fourth continues to stay out of their reach, despite multiple
efforts. An exasperated Anuj crawls forward on his arms and knees and
manages to throw a grenade inside the loophole of the bunker from where
the deadly machine gun is blazing but it continues to spew fire.
Around 5 a.m. on 7 July, Col. Bawa, who has been following the battle
on his radio set, loses contact with Anuj’s team. Every time he tries to
contact the young officer, he is met with a deafening silence. Worried, he
orders Maj. Punia, who is stationed at Whale Back as reserve for C Coy, to
take thirty men and contact Anuj. Punia leaves immediately. Around 7.30
a.m., he calls Col. Bawa. His voice is heavy with grief. ‘Sir, I have very bad
news. Anuj is no more,’ he says. ‘I can see him and four soldiers on the
ground.’
A devastated Col. Bawa asks him to retrieve the men. ‘Drag them behind
cover. Maybe they are alive,’ he says desperately.
‘No, sir, I can see them clearly. They are dead. The enemy is firing
continuously. They are not letting us reach the bodies,’ Maj. Punia tells
him.
With a heavy heart, Col. Bawa asks him to pull back. ‘I don’t want to
lose more men. The enemy is sitting at a height and has spotted you,’ he
says.
Col. Bawa decides against launching another attack that night because he
realizes that the enemy will be waiting for it. Instead, he keeps bombarding
the enemy position through the night, ensuring that the Pakistani soldiers do
not get any chance to sleep. The next morning (8 July) he orders an attack
in broad daylight, soon after breakfast time, assuming that the enemy
soldiers who have been awake all night would have their guard down since
they would be expecting the Indians to attack only in the night. Exhibiting
extreme courage, two platoons of 17 Jat—led by Maj. Deepak Rampal and
Maj. R.K. Singh—climb up from two different directions and manage to
reach Pimple 2 undetected around the same time. They launch simultaneous
attacks at 1 p.m., surprising the enemy completely. A fierce battle ensues
till 4 p.m. and the enemy post is finally captured on the evening of 8 July.

The Price of Victory

17 Jat avenged the deaths of its heroes but there is sadness all around at the
big losses they have suffered. The battalion’s first task is to retrieve the
bodies of its martyred soldiers, including Capt. Anuj Nayyar. Soldiers in
Anuj’s attack team tell Col. Bawa how bravely he fought. There has been a
surprise hero in the battle as well. It is Hav. Kumar Singh, a laid-back,
unknown soldier of the unit who had never done anything remarkable in his
career. He was one of the soldiers who had to give promotional cadre exams
from havaldar to naib subedar. Just before the unit left for the battle, on 1
July, Col. Bawa had called all the havaldars and told them, ‘I am promoting
all of you without taking any exams. Now, it is your turn to prove that you
are worthy of it. You have to show the battalion that you deserved your
promotion. The war is your opportunity to do so.’
Hav. Kumar Singh had fought fearlessly and with extreme courage. He
was martyred while clearing the third bunker on Pimple 2.
Anuj had also honoured his CO’s wishes. Col. Bawa later learnt that he
had led his men with complete disregard for his own life. He had been
standing near a boulder, taking respite in a moment of peace in the midst of
the battle. He had probably been planning his next move, aware of the fact
that the dark sky was slowly turning orange with dawn breaking over the
tall barren peaks, and that very little time was left. That was when a rocket-
propelled grenade had hit him in the neck. Shocked that death had come to
him before he could complete his next task, Anuj had looked up for a
second to try and see where the treacherous fire had come from but for the
first time he could not get his body to obey his mind. He had fallen to the
ground and his eyes had shut forever, leaving unfulfilled his dreams of
capturing Pimple 2, of owning a new car he had asked his parents for on his
birthday on 28 August, and marriage to his school sweetheart in September.
Four other soldiers were also martyred at the same position that morning.
For its outstanding performance in the war, 17 Jat was awarded the Chief
of Army Staff commendation on the spot, the Battle Honour Mushkoh and
the Theatre Honour Kargil. The battalion received forty-one awards that
included a Maha Vir Chakra for Capt. Anuj Nayyar; four Vir Chakras for
Col. U.S. Bawa, Maj. Deepak Rampal, Capt. S.B. Ghildiyal and Hav.
Kumar Singh; six Sena Medals, twenty Mention in Despatches and ten
Commendation Cards. The battalion suffered the highest casualty for a unit
in the Kargil war. They lost Capt. Anuj Nayyar, JCO Harphul Singh and
thirty-four Other Ranks.
Looking back at the war, twenty years later, this is what Col. Bawa had to
say: ‘It is the ultimate dream of every soldier to go to war. When we were
sent to battle I was excited at the opportunity. I thought I would have stories
to tell my grandchildren. But after the war, when I saw the coffins of my
boys, when I saw my soldiers maimed and disabled in hospitals, when I met
grief-stricken parents who had lost their sons and young girls widowed so
early in life, my heart was full of sadness. I never want to see another war
in my life. Wars only bring misery. They cannot solve any problems.’

A Grieving Mother

Nearly twenty years after the Kargil War, I met Mrs Meena Nayyar, Anuj’s
mother, over coffee in Delhi’s South Extension. We spent more than an hour
together and with great affection and moist eyes she told me about the
young son she had lost. When I asked her if she had ever gone to see the
war memorial at Kargil, her son’s last battlefield, she said she hadn’t. ‘I
never wanted to. There is nothing for me there. My son is gone,’ she told
me, her voice grief-stricken, and I felt guilty about having asked the
question. She smiled, talking about the day Anuj (then a student of Army
Public School, Dhaula Kuan) missed his school bus and decided to walk
home all the way to Janakpuri, where the Nayyars lived in a joint family.
‘He was in grade seven. He didn’t know the way but he followed the same
route that the bus used to take and reached home,’ she said, talking about
the son who will always stay twenty-three for her. ‘His father and I had
gone out for lunch so we didn’t even know he had missed the bus. Aisa hi
tha Anuj. Bas apne mann ki karta tha [That’s what Anuj was like. He just
followed his heart.]’
She remembered how he had fractured his foot in school and was advised
by the doctor to not strain the leg. ‘Par woh kahan kisi ki sunta tha [When
did he ever listen to anyone]? He started playing football in school. When I
noticed his dirty shirt and scolded him for not listening to the doctor, he just
started removing his shirt before playing so that it wouldn’t get dirty and I
wouldn’t find out what he had been up to. When I noticed that his vest
stayed dirty, he started playing bare chested; putting on his clothes before
returning home.’
One memorable morning, Anuj told his parents that someone special was
going to come to see them. Soon after, the doorbell rang and a pretty young
girl walked in. It was his schoolmate, the daughter of an Army officer.
‘Chhoti si ladki thi par woh toh apna rishta khud hi lekar aa gayi [She was
just a child when she came to see us],’ Mrs Nayyar remembered with a
gentle smile. ‘After she left, we asked Anuj if he was serious about her. He
coolly said, “Tabhi toh aap se milwaya hai [that’s why I have introduced
her to you].” His father and I were happy about that too. We had never said
no for anything to Anuj. Though sometimes I wish I had said no to him
more forcefully when he decided to join the Army.’
Mrs Nayyar remembered how she and Anuj’s fiancée ran around getting
goodies to send to him with an officer who was flying down to his location
at the time of war. ‘We bought packs of juices and chips and hastily bound
them in a parcel. I added an envelope with some money as shagun for Anuj
and another for the young officer who was going to war. Anuj never got to
see that parcel because he never came back from that operation,’ she said.
‘The parcel was returned to us with his coffin, his engagement ring, his
watch and wallet.’ Mrs Nayyar gave all the jewellery they had collected for
Anuj’s fiancée to her and helped her parents to convince her to marry
someone else. ‘She was such a vivacious young girl. I would have never
wanted her to suffer all her life.’ Some people believe that was the reason
why Anuj had left his engagement ring behind though Mrs Nayyar says she
doesn’t know. ‘Some people told me he had some kind of premonition,
some told me it is uncomfortable to wear a ring while firing which might be
why he left it behind. I really would not know. I just know that he would
have wanted her to be happy.’
 Young Anuj Nayyar, the boy who was the first in his family to join the
Army, ended up becoming one of his school’s most famous alumni. He
might not have returned from the war but the truth is that soldiers never die
on battlefields. They continue to live in the memories of their comrades and
their countrymen. And if we look at it that way, Anuj shall also live forever
in the hearts of those who love him.

Author’s Note

This account has been recreated from conversations with Mrs Meena
Nayyar, mother of late Capt. Anuj Nayyar, MVC; and Brig. Umesh Singh
Bawa (retd), VrC, SM, who was CO of 17 Jat during the Kargil War. The
action led by Capt. Anuj Nayyar resulted in the death of nine enemy
soldiers and destruction of three MMGs positions of the enemy. For
displaying indomitable grit and determination, motivating his men by
personal example and making the supreme sacrifice in the true traditions of
the Indian Army, Capt. Anuj Nayyar was awarded the Maha Vir Chakra
posthumously.
 Story 3
Endorsing the Enemy’s Bravery

One of the most heart-warming observations I have made while writing

war stories is that soldiers recognize and respect bravery, even if it is the
enemy.
A perfect example of this is the case of the late Capt. Karnal Sher Khan
of the Pakistan Army, who was martyred at Tiger Hill during the Kargil
War. Very few people know that the Indian Army was instrumental in the
officer being awarded the Nishan-e-Haider, Pakistan’s highest gallantry
award, which is equivalent to India’s Param Vir Chakra.
In July 1999, Capt. Sher Khan was holding five strategically located
posts in the Tiger Hill area, touching a height of 16,700 feet. Looming
majestically above all other mountains around, Tiger Hill lies 10 km north
of the Srinagar–Kargil–Leh highway and dominates a part of it. Its sharp
triangular top is visible from the highway, and one of the major attractions
for tourists passing through the area.
In 1999, Capt. Sher Khan’s company held all the posts on the feature. It
was so well-defended that Gen. V.P. Malik stated in his book, Kargil—From
Surprise to Victory, that it appeared almost impossible to capture. In May, 8
Sikh had tried an assault that had been repulsed. An attack plan was
redrawn in July. The mission was handed over to 18 Grenadiers who had
had a rest period after their glorious achievements in Tololing, and to 8 Sikh
which was already at the base of Tiger Hill. Both battalions were assisted
by a crack team from the High Altitude Warfare School to manoeuvre the
seemingly impossible climb up a sheer rock face that was picked as the axis
of attack to surprise the enemy.
 On the night of 3 July 1999, supported by the concentrated fire of
twenty-two artillery batteries, the Ghatak platoon of 18 Grenadiers led by
Lt Balwan Singh launched an attack on Tiger Hill. Despite the freezing rain,
the men, using ropes, climbed up a nearly vertical rock-face. They managed
to surprise the enemy but met with strong resistance at the top. On the night
of 5 July, Maj. Ravindra Singh, Lt R.K. Shehrawat and fifty-three soldiers
of 8 Sikh launched a daring attack, climbing up from the adjoining Western
Ridge. Enemy defences were split up because of their attack. 8 Sikh fought
bravely even though most of the Sikh soldiers did not have proper cold-
weather clothing and many of the wounded died from the extreme cold and
chilling winds. Between 5 and 7 July, intensive fighting went on for control
over Tiger Hill. 8 Sikh did not withdraw an inch despite repeated Pakistani
counter-attacks. 18 Grenadiers finally captured Tiger Hill top on 8 July.
Lt Balwan Singh, who led the Ghatak Platoon, was later awarded the
Maha Vir Chakra, while Grenadier Yogendra Yadav, a scout in the Ghatak
Platoon, received the Param Vir Chakra. 8 Sikh lost one officer, four JCOs
and thirty jawans in the Battle of Tiger Hill.
In an interview with the Indian Express, Brig. (retd) M.P.S. Bawja,
Commander, 192 Mountain Brigade, said, ‘When the Pakistani counter-
attacks were taking place, I was told by one of the 8 Sikh JCOs that a tall,
well-built Pakistani in a track suit was motivating his men for repeated
assaults and this was causing a problem for them. I immediately said that he
was an officer and that he should be neutralized in order to crush the
attacks. Let me tell you that our troops were on the verge of being pushed
off the top when with one big effort they gave a war cry, charged and killed
this Pakistani officer and his companions. Thirty Pakistanis were killed in
this fight and the rest retreated, giving us a famous victory. Capt. Karnal
Sher Khan fought very well, rallying his men. We must appreciate this. I
also told my GOC that the boy fought very bravely.’
Though Capt. Sher Khan was killed, he won the respect of the Indian
officers and troops defending Tiger Hill and the adjoining hills. The officers
of both 8 Sikh and 18 Grenadiers watched the brave Pakistani officer
fighting till the end.
 According to an officer of 8 Sikh, ‘After a fierce battle, we recovered
Tiger Hill on 4 July. For the next four days we were gradually advancing to
recover other features—the Helmet, India Gate and Rhino Horn. Soon after
the soldiers of 8 Sikh recovered the feature on 7 July around 8 a.m., Capt.
Karnal Sher launched a swift counter-attack with just a handful of Pakistani
soldiers. It was suicidal for him to do so in broad daylight because we could
see his movements. Yet in the highest of military traditions, he launched an
attack. It is a disgrace for any army to be evicted from a post and he wanted
to save the Pakistani army from that disgrace.’
Such was the ferocity of his attack that 8 Sikh had to be reinforced by a
platoon of 18 Grenadiers. The Pakistani counter-attack was beaten back and
fifteen of their soldiers were killed. While other Pakistani soldiers tried to
run away, Capt. Sher got his men together and inspired them to fight back
by leading from the front. The Sikh regiment beat back his assault, killing
ten more Pakistani soldiers. Karnal Sher Khan fought till the end and finally
fell when a hail of bullets hit him. Even in his last moments his hands were
holding his rifle.
The Indian Army wrote to the Pakistani government citing the bravery of
the young officer. On the basis of this recommendation, Capt. Karnal Sher
Khan was posthumously awarded the Nishan-e-Haider. Captain Sher
Khan’s brother, Sikandar Sheikh, has been quoted as saying, ‘Allah ka
shukar hai ki humara dushman bhi koi busdil dushman nahi hai. Agar log
kahen ki India busdil hai to main kahunga nahi kyunki usne aelania keh
diya ki Karnal Sher hero hai [Our enemy is not a coward. I won’t call India
cowardly because it openly proclaimed Sher Khan as a hero].’
Initially the Pakistan Army did not want to accept that Capt. Karnal Sher
Khan had died fighting on the Indian side of the LoC. It was awkward for
them to explain how his body was with the Indian Army when they had
maintained all along that the Pakistan Army was not involved in the Kargil
intrusions. The young captain’s body was taken to Delhi and Pakistan was
asked to send his relatives to identify him; they refused, asking India to
send the body to Pakistan for identification.
 Two weeks later, the brave young officer’s body was handed over to the
International Committee of the Red Cross. Finally, his coffin, draped in the
Pakistani national flag, was flown to Islamabad. It was only after three
months that Pakistan Army Chief Gen. Pervez Musharraf conceded that
Capt. Karnal Sher Khan had indeed died in Kargil. At a ceremony to pay
homage to soldiers who died in Kargil, Musharraf said that Sher Khan had
‘killed fifteen soldiers’ and was in an ‘offensive defensive’.

An Officer since Birth

Captain Karnal Sher Khan (1970–99) was born in Naway Kiley (New
Village) in Swabi district of Pakistan. It is said that his family was so keen
that he join the Army and achieve the rank of colonel that they named him
Karnal (a localized version of colonel).
Karnal was the youngest of four siblings and only eight years old when
he lost his mother. He grew up to join the Pakistan Military Academy,
Kakul, in November 1992 and graduated in 1994. He was a captain in 27
Sindh Regiment of the Pakistan Army and was posted to 12 Northern Light
Infantry (NLI) Regiment during the Kargil conflict. He had the reputation
of being a proud Pakistani and a very brave officer. In the Battle of Tiger
Hill, he proved it even to the enemy.
For his bravery in battle, Pakistan conferred on him the Nishan-e-Haider,
its highest gallantry award. Sher Khan’s village was renamed Karnal Sher
Kally (the village of Karnal Sher). An Army parade ground and a school
have also been named after him in Pakistan.

Author’s Note

The first week of July 1999 saw three brave young officers, who had the
best years of their life in front of them, dying for their nations. On 5 July,
Pakistan lost twenty-nine-year-old Capt. Karnal Sher Khan of 12 NLI at
Tiger Hill. On 7 July, the Indian Army lost twenty-four-year-old Capt.
Vikram Batra of 13 J&K Rifles and twenty-three-year-old Capt. Anuj
Nayyar of 17 Jat in the Mushkoh Valley. All three were recommended for
the highest gallantry awards of their country. While Capt. Sher Khan and
Capt. Vikram Batra were awarded the Nishan-e-Haider and the Param Vir
Chakra respectively, Capt. Anuj Nayyar was decorated with the Maha Vir
Chakra.
 Chapter 6
Endgame

On the barren heights of Batalik, fourteen paratroopers are surrounded

by the enemy and are left with no choice but to ask for Bofors’ fire upon
their own coordinates.

21 July 1999
Muntho Dhalo

The sun is setting on the hills of Batalik. Lean and sinewy, Carie sits
crouched behind a boulder, his weight on his haunches, gun firmly clasped
in his hands, his face a scowling mask. Up ahead, in the fading orange glow
of dusk, he can see the blurred outline of Area Conical. Carie fixes his
unblinking gaze on the rocky spur of the mountain. If he stays alive, that is
where he should be the next morning, he tells himself.
He has been lucky so far. Not only did he survive enemy bullets in
Siachen, but he also returned victorious from an earlier attack on Point
5203. In fact, many of the soldiers with him tonight have volunteered to
come along on the near-suicidal mission because they believe they will
return alive if he leads them.
Shivering involuntarily as a blast of icy wind hits his exposed face, Carie
wishes he could share their confidence. The sun sinks behind the
mountains, dropping a sheet of impenetrable darkness over everything.
Carie’s eyes take a few minutes to adjust. He checks his phosphorescent
watch. It blinks a green 1900 hours at him.
‘Time to go,’ he announces curtly, ‘Area Conical waits for us.’ His voice
permeates the eerie stillness of the night. Each of his men hears it clearly.
 Stepping under the open sky, Capt. B.M. Cariappa (Carie) jams a
magazine into his INSAS rifle and, slinging it behind his back, starts to
walk. He is followed by the ghostly figures of the faithful men of Alpha
Company, 5 Para, all ninety-four of them emerging out of the shadows one
by one.

Two Hours Later

Carie and his team reach the base from where the tricky climb begins. The
night is colder now. When Carie holds his face up, he feels the soft caress of
snowflakes on his wind-lashed cheeks. He knows that up on the
mountaintops the snow has hardened into razor-edged cornices of ice, grey
with cordite from the constant shelling. If these dislodge and fall on a man,
they can slice him into pieces.
Running a weary hand across his face to wipe away the beads of sweat
that have appeared in spite of the chill, Carie lets it linger on the unruly
stubble on his face. His hair is growing back after the tonsure he got after
his mother’s death a month ago. It pricks his fingers when he feels his head.
Like his comrades, Carie has been wearing the same clothes for nearly a
month. They have dumped their bulletproof jackets and helmets that would
have added to body weight while climbing. His combat uniform is soiled
with mud, ripped in places by the sharp rocks he has been crawling over
and stained with blood that has spilled and dried many times over.
The war has given him a gift though. It has blurred the pain of his
mother’s death. Carie had thought he would never get over the haunting
memories of her last days in Bangalore where he had sat by her bedside,
watching her die a slow, agonizing death from oral cancer. His beautiful
mother, with tender loving eyes, had been reduced to a heap of bones and
skin, shrivelled between the bed sheets. For many days after he lost her,
Carie had recurring nightmares of holding his emotionally shattered naval-
officer father in his arms. He had thought the pain would never pass. Carie
is surprised to note that in the past two days, he has not thought about her
even once. Self-preservation is such a dominating animal instinct, he tells
himself, grimacing in the darkness. All that he can think about these days is
how to stay alive.
The climb begins. Carie stands still, like a wild animal, trying to sense
the men he cannot see. He knows they are around him. He knows, just as
they all do, that for some, this will be the last journey of their lives. Like a
cat, his eyes adjust to the darkness and he catches a shadowy figure
standing a little way off, snow falling around him. Carie tightens his hold
on his gun but then his face breaks into a slow smile. The tall, lanky Khalsa
standing a little ahead is Maj. Harinder Singh Jaggi, also from 5 Para, who
is leading Delta Company on a simultaneous operation that night. While
Carie and his company have been tasked to attack Area Conical, Jaggi and
his men have been ordered to go through the valley and attack Area Ring
Contour, a feature further to its east.
Jaggi has let his column move on and is waiting for Carie’s team to catch
up. ‘Ik vaar jappi te paa le [Give me a last hug],’ he whispers, spreading
out his arms. The two friends—dirty, dishevelled, weak from a frugal diet,
on a mission where the odds are against them—hold each other close and,
wishing each other luck, go in their respective directions.
Carie has split up his men into two columns. While 2nd Lt Vaibhav Dixit,
the young officer with him, separates to lead the larger column of seventy
up on the raised spur, Carie is taking twenty-four men through the bowl of
the mountain. All teams are expected to reach the top before dawn and
attack the enemy before sunrise. They have no idea how many enemy
soldiers man those posts and what kind of arms and ammunition they have
at their disposal. If they start rolling rocks at the climbing columns, the
repercussions could be deadly. Only stealth can save their lives.
The climbing soldiers make no noise, they don’t use any lights, and they
have been told not to step on bare soil. In the past few days, while they
camped at Muntho Dhalo waiting for attack orders, they had watched the
Pakistanis come down and mine the area.
 ‘We should have bombed the fuckin’ bastards right then,’ Carie thinks
aloud. ‘Pathar se pathar per kudo; zameen par paon nahi rakhna hai [Jump
from boulder to boulder, don’t step on the ground],’ he calls out to his men
tersely, slipping his calloused hand into his trouser pocket. His fingers
tighten around a small bundle—two bullets tied up in a handkerchief. Every
man in his team is carrying two bullets separately, their passport to an easier
death. They have heard about the brutally mutilated bodies of Indian
soldiers who have been taken prisoners of war (POW) and tortured and
have decided that they will not let that happen again. If they run out of
ammunition and capture is unavoidable, they plan to use the bullets on
themselves.
For a fleeting moment Carie’s mind takes him back to the Army trucks he
had crossed on his way to Batalik when the war started. He had made his
jeep driver stop and asked why the trucks headed for the Leh airfield bore
black flags.
‘Sahab, shaheed sipahiyon ke bodies le ke jaa rahe hain [Sir, we are
taking the bodies of our martyrs],’ the young driver had told him grimly.
Carie had removed his combat cap as a mark of respect and asked his
driver to move on.

Day 2
22 July 1999
2.30 a.m.

The soldiers have been climbing for hours. It is freezing cold, but if he
lowers his head Carie can breathe in the sickly sweet smell of his own
sweat. The stench of his dirty body used to be nauseating till a few days
back but he realizes he has become used to it. Just like he has become
accustomed to hunger, the searing pain in his left heel where his boot rubs
against the scraped heel every time he walks, and the constant threat of
death. The INSAS rifle he grips tight in his weather-beaten hands is almost
a part of his body now, kept aside only when he has to relieve himself. He
passes blood and mucous since there is hardly anything left in his stomach.
He knows that most of the men with him are suffering from the same blood
dysentery brought on by the stale puris they carry in their backpacks, the
cordite-laced ice they suck on to quench their thirst and the suffocating fear
of dying so far away from loved ones.
Walking on boulders has been tough. Often the men climb up and then
come across a patch of naked land. They then have to retrace their steps and
find another rocky route to move over. Unless it is completely unavoidable,
they don’t risk stepping on land that can have mines that can explode under
their feet.
Carie is wondering just how long their luck will last when a loud
explosion and the heart-wrenching cries of men in extreme pain pierce the
silence of the night. Someone from Jaggi’s team has stepped on a mine. The
enemy soldiers sitting on top of the feature hear the screams as well. All
hell breaks loose as the enemy’s air defence guns, mortars and small arms’
fire rain down on the ill-fated soldiers.
The Pakistanis haven’t realized that Carie and his column are also
climbing up from another axis. But, just then, a large boulder dislodged by
the shelling comes tumbling down, misses Carie by a whisker and falls on
the artillery surveyor below him. The surveyor’s screams ring out in the
dark. The soldiers freeze, expecting enemy fire. When there is no response
from the top, they realize that the screams were not heard in the ongoing
firing. The men run down and find the surveyor buried under a seven-foot-
high boulder. Fearing the worst they push the boulder down the slope and
are relieved to find that he has fallen into a cavity between two rocks and is
safe. Other than a deep gash across his nose that has left a fold of skin
hanging from his face, he is fine. He is given first aid and the soldiers start
climbing again.

4 a.m.
Area Conical
Gripping sharp-edged rocks and continuing to pull himself up, Carie
suddenly hears the radio set buzzing. It is Dixit, who has taken the other
column of soldiers.
‘Bravo to Alpha, Bravo to Alpha,’ Dixit’s raspy voice comes through.
‘Sona. Repeat Sona,’ he says.
The men stop in their tracks. Smiles of disbelief run across their faces.
‘Sona’, which means gold, is their agreed code for victory over Area
Conical.
‘How many enemy soldiers there?’ Carie asks.
‘None,’ Dixit replies and the radio set goes dead.
Carie finds it strange that the Pakistanis have vacated their post. He tells
his men that they might have moved to reinforce the area where Jaggi’s
column is headed. Some of the tension eases off and the soldiers started
climbing up the last stretch, relaxed for the first time in many days.

Finally, Area Conical

It starts snowing again when the men reach the top. Something does not
seem right to Carie. He cannot spot any of the seventy men from Dixit’s
team. He is still observing the area clinically, his eyes moving from left to
right, when paratrooper Vikram draws his attention to a man in a sleeping
bag lying behind a rough man-made stone wall about 40 feet away.
Assuming it is one of Dixit’s men, Carie yells at him, ‘The battle is not
over yet, you ass, you are supposed to take defences, not sleep.’
The man wakes up lazily and fixes a puzzled gaze on him. Just then
another man runs across. He is in khaki trousers, jersey and a balaclava.
‘Sahab, ye toh Pakistani hain [Sir, they are Pakistanis],’ Vikram whispers
hoarsely.
Carie cocks his gun almost immediately. ‘You take the one in the
sleeping bag, I’ll take the other one,’ he shouts, spraying the standing man
with a round of bullets. Vikram directs a spray of fire at the other soldier,
leaving him dead as well.
 All hell breaks loose as the Pakistanis find that they have been ambushed.
The area rings out with the noise of rocket-propelled grenades and mortar
fire that comes from behind the mountain and leaves the Indian soldiers
leaping for cover. Carie realizes that Dixit’s party has mistaken a false crest
in the mountain for the peak and is lost somewhere below. He radios his
CO, Col. A.K. Shrivastava, asking him not to move Dixit’s team up since
they will get caught in the crossfire. He asks his men to take cover, watch
out for gunfire and return it whenever possible.
‘Lance Naik Hemcharan ko goli lag gayi hai,’ a scream rings out. Tall
and broad-shouldered with rippling muscles, Hemcharan is one of the
toughest guys in the team who single-handedly carried the 30 kg medium
machine gun over his shoulder. Sweating under its killing weight but
insisting that no one else is as strong as him, he has been the backbone of
the team.
Carie is shaken to find Hemcharan’s body quivering on the ground, his
skull caved in from being hit by mortar fire. A shocked Naik Sunil rushes to
the fallen soldier with his first-aid kit. Carie screams at him to stop but his
warning comes too late. Sunil hasn’t even reached his dying comrade when
he gets shot multiple times in the chest and falls into a gaping 700-foot
gorge. He is swallowed by the darkness even as his comrades watch
helplessly. They are both dead but there is no time to grieve.
Carie wipes his moist eyes with the back of his calloused hand and,
pushing another magazine into his rifle, gets down to returning enemy fire.

9 a.m.

The soldiers have figured out that there is a big enemy camp behind the
slope. Someone from there is directing deadly rocket-propelled grenade fire
at them very accurately. Since small arms are no match for it, a frustrated
Carie picks up a rocket launcher. He knows only too well that the Carl
Gustav Rocket Launcher (RL) has a back blast of up to 15 metres, which
means that if there is any obstruction within 15 metres of the rear of the
rocket launcher, the back blast could kill or injure the firer. It hasn’t been
used so far because of the huge rocks behind which the soldiers are taking
cover. Carie decides to move out into the open to fire it.
Paratrooper Namdev Pawar tries to convince Carie not to expose himself
to the enemy, but he does not listen. Suddenly bombs explode around him
and Pawar yells, ‘Sahab, aapke sar se khoon beh raha hai [Sir, you are
bleeding from a head wound].’
Carie has been hit in the head by metal shrapnel. He is lucky to be alive.
The men quickly pull him back, remove the pieces and bandage him as best
as they can. Col. Shrivastava is shocked to learn of Carie’s injuries and asks
him to de-induct while it is still daytime. A bleeding Carie refuses outright,
tell him that vacating the position would make the sacrifices of the two men
they have already lost worthless since the enemy would move back in.
A furious Col. Shrivastava shouts at Carie, telling him he has already lost
Maj. K.A. Somaiah (another Coorgi officer) and does not want to lose one
more.
Carie switches off his radio set.

10.30 a.m.

‘Sahab, counter-attack aa raha hai. Dushman ke sipahi humari taraf badh

rahe hain,’ [Sir, there is a counter-attack. Enemy soldiers are heading
towards us!’ yells paratrooper Naresh, who sits overlooking the ridge,
operating the LMG.
Carie’s heart goes cold. ‘How many are there?’ he asks.
‘Bahut saare hain, Sahab. Ginti nahi ho rahi . . . [I can’t count how many
. . .],’ Naresh hasn’t even finished speaking when a bullet goes through his
mouth, smashes his jaw and makes him keel over and drop down.
With Hemcharan and Sunil gone, Naresh grievously injured and the
enemy firing from just 40 metres away, someone is desperately required to
handle the LMG. Even as Carie watches spellbound, the broad-shouldered,
towering Naik Yudhbir Singh emerges like a colossus from amidst the
smoke and rubble. With his rifle behind his back, he is climbing on to the
rock where the LMG is positioned. He just manages to reach the gun when
a burst of machine gun fire hits him in the arm, reducing it to a bloody mass
of flesh.
Carie can see his bare bone jutting out of the wound. But like a
superhuman who feels no pain, Yudhbir opens the buttons of his shirt and,
using it like a sling, pushes his useless arm inside. He then cocks the
machine gun with his good hand and starts firing at the enemy.
Carie leans back, sweating profusely. He realizes he has finished two out
of his five magazines and wonders how much longer his team’s ammunition
will last. ‘Goli kam hain, waste mat karo [We don’t have spare bullets,
don’t waste them],’ he calls out, his voice thick with worry.
Bright daylight has flooded the area. Carie can see the approaching
Pakistani soldiers clearly now. They are close enough for him to make out
that they are in white snowsuits and holding rifles and rocket launchers. Out
of his twenty-three men, six have had splinter injuries, one has been shot
through the mouth, one has fallen into the ravine and one has been killed by
mortar fire. There are just fourteen left and their ammunition is finishing
fast.
Just then Naik Kaman Singh comes up to Carie and whispers, ‘Sahab,
main 500 rounds extra le ke aaya hun [Sir, I am carrying 500 extra rounds].
Carie wants to hug him in relief but he just nods and asks him to
distribute these amongst the able-bodied men. He knows, however, that
even these rounds will not last long. The time has come to take a cold,
calculated decision for the greater common good.
His mind made up, Carie moves towards to the young artillery officer
accompanying his team, who is leaning back on a rock, rifle in hand. ‘The
enemy is almost upon us, buddy. We are completely outnumbered. There is
no choice but to ask for artillery fire upon our own position,’ Carie tells
him, placing a hand on his shoulder.
 The young officer, barely in his twenties, sits down, shivering in the cold,
the freezing wind lashing his body. He drops his rifle.
‘We are going to die, sir,’ he whispers, ‘We are all going to die.’
‘Let’s make sure they die with us then. Call for fire,’ Carie says, clearly
and calmly. The artillery officer, who has been running high fever, breaks
down completely.
Carie shakes him roughly and slaps him hard. ‘Snap out of it, man,’ he
shouts, but the young officer just sits there staring into the distance, tears
streaming down his cheeks.
Carie lowers himself next to him, puts his weapon down and, taking the
radio set, switches it on. The set crackles and Maj. Gurpreet Madhok, the
BC-OP (Battery Commander-Observation Post) comes on the line. He is
sitting in Muntho Dhalo from where he can see Area Conical. His job is to
direct artillery fire when required.
‘The enemy is just 40 metres away from us, we are outnumbered and
running out of ammunition; we need fire upon our own coordinates,’ Carie
tells him.
‘Think again, bugger!’ Gurpreet answers, his voice hoarse. ‘You are
asking for fire upon yourself. Bofors is a medium artillery gun with a
killing range of 300 metres. The splinters will go flying in all directions.
Chances are that you guys will not survive either.’
‘We will not survive in any case, sir. We have run out of ammunition. I
need the bloody fire here, right now. They will be upon us in minutes,’
Carie shouts in desperation, making his voice heard above the gun battle
going on around him. ‘These are our coordinates, sir. Refer the centre of the
saddle, as you see it, left 100 metres, get whatever you can.’
‘Roger! Fire shall be upon you in minutes. Take cover if you can,’
Gurpreet answers. ‘God bless you,’ he adds softly, his voice sad.

Code Red upon Red

Carie tells his men to stop firing. The soldiers retreat behind boulders.
Covering their ears with cupped hands, they sit down and wait. Some close
their eyes and say their prayers. Others remember parents and children,
wives and lovers, and wonder if they will ever see them again.
Except for the sound of the cold wind whipping against hard rock, there
is eerie silence on the mountains. The Pakistanis are puzzled why the fire
has stopped but they keep advancing; probably presuming that the Indians
have run out of ammunition. The seconds tick by so slowly that to the men
of 5 Para it seems like years passing.
And then the Bofors guns—lined up on the road near village Dah, 18 km
away—come alive. The sky blazes with flashing streaks of fire as they start
booming. Screaming shells start falling all around as they rain vengeance
on the mountain. Rounds fall just 15 metres away from where Carie and his
men have taken cover. The noise is so deafening that most of them lose
hearing temporarily.
The enemy soldiers in the open are taken completely unawares. They
start falling like wax statues, melting in the heat of the devastating fire, their
cries of pain drowned in the noise of the screaming shells falling on them.
Meanwhile, 2 km away in Muntho Dhalo, Gurpreet sits with his
binoculars trained on Area Conical. He is meticulously keeping track of
where the rounds are falling, making minor adjustments to correct the range
and trying his best to keep them away from his own men. The fire continues
from 11 a.m. to 12 noon.
Carie and his men, who sit crouched on the mountain, have experienced
enemy rounds falling around them earlier in Siachen. The deafening noise,
the ground shaking under their feet, the whistling in their ears as if someone
had hit them hard on both sides of the head is familiar. Mentally prepared to
die, they know that nothing worse can happen to them now. They lose their
fear of small-arms fire completely.
In the gap between salvos, they load their rifles and using single shots to
target the enemy soldiers who survive the Bofors shelling. They step out
from behind cover and without a care stand exposed in the sunlight; taking
aim at the Pakistanis just 15 yards away, they shoot to kill. When the next
salvo comes, they leap behind rocks and cover their ears again.
 Lanky cross-country runner Basti Ram Bishnoi is spewing filthy
expletives as if his swear-word vocabulary is being tested; Subedar Darwan
Singh, a fit and ferocious JCO with a bushy black upturned moustache, is
laughing loudly as if someone has just told him a joke and Carie stands with
a crazy leering half-smile on his face. When the artillery fire finally stops,
there is sinister calm on the mountain. And then, the soldiers of 5 Para start
stepping out of cover one by one.
Carie cannot believe that all fourteen of them have survived. Fraught
with emotion, he goes up to each man and hugs him saying, ‘Saale, tu bhi
bach gaya [You are alive too, buddy]!’
The paratroopers stand on the ridge looking in sheer disbelief at the
devastating casualties on the Pakistani side. More than twenty-three bodies
lie scattered on the slope in front of them. The enemy soldiers are dead,
their khaki pants and pathani suits covered in blood and grime. These are
men of the 33 Frontier Force.

Return to Dah

The men flop down in sheer exhaustion. They have not slept for two nights.
No one has the energy to talk. The soldiers spend the rest of the day and
that night firing at Pakistani soldiers who have a camp behind the ridgeline
from where they are seen climbing down to their own side. The ferocious
artillery fire has broken the enemy’s spirit. By 8.30 p.m. Dixit’s column
comes up. Ammunition is immediately redistributed and positions are
taken.
Around 10.30 p.m. the enemy launches a counter-attack. But this time,
with more men and adequate ammunition, the counter-attack is thwarted.
In between, the radio set buzzes. Col. Shrivastava comes on line. He is
relieved to find that his men are safe. ‘Shabash [Well done]! We are sending
another team to replace you. Start de-induction. I am proud of you,’ he says,
his voice soaked in emotion.
Day 3

Daylight is breaking when Carie asks Yudhbir, whose arm is hanging in a

tangled mess of skin and stained bandages, to leave for Muntho Dhalo.
Yudhbir refuses point black. ‘Chot toh aapko bhi lagi hai, sahab, dard
toh aapko bhi ho raha hoga [You are also hurt, sir, you are also suffering].
If you can tolerate the pain, so can I,’ he says.
The bandages around Carie’s head are seeped in blood.
‘Theek hai, sath jaayenge [All right, we shall go together],’ Carie tells
him.
The de-induction starts with the able-bodied carrying the bodies of their
dead comrades. They are followed by the injured, who go down slowly in
buddy pairs, helping each other over the steep mountainside. Carie and
Yudhbir give each other their shoulders and slowly make their way down.
Extreme exhaustion makes the soldiers falter in their steps. The cordite-
laced ice that they have sucked on to quench their thirst is now causing
severe stomach cramps. Often, they topple or miss a footstep, but they look
out for rocks to place their tired feet on, taking care not to step on the
ground. They reach a pool of murky brown water that has collected from
melting snow and fall upon it like dogs, lapping it up with their tongues.
Finally they tumble down to Muntho Dhalo, falling clumsily into the arms
of their comrades who have run across to carry them back.
Carie sees Jaggi lying on the ground with six other injured soldiers. He is
relieved to know that they are alive. His energy sapped completely, Carie
then collapses.

Nineteen years later

May 2018
Beverly Park Apartments
Dwarka, Delhi

The doorbell rings. Huzoor, our beautiful golden retriever scampers across
and takes deep breaths in an effort to smell the visitor, one of his favourite
pastimes. He is wagging his tail even before I open the door.
I find a distinguished-looking Col. B.M. Cariappa, VrC, SM, standing at
the door in a crisp shirt and jeans, grinning widely, holding a big box of
cookies. Since he and my brother have been in the war together, he calls
himself my brother from another mother. A round of hugs and backslapping
later, and after having shaken paws with Huzoor, he sits down at the dining
table with the entire family around him. With his legs stretched out
comfortably under the table, a mug of chilled beer resting in front of him,
Carie sketches clear maps on sheets of paper. He then tells us the story of
the war that he was fortunate enough to return from. He has since
commanded 5 Para, and is now on his way to serve in the Brigade at
Batalik. He has asked to be posted back to the same place where he and his
brave soldiers fought for their country nineteen years ago.
Story over, Carie raises his beer mug to his lips. We reminisce about a
similar incident from World War II when on 26 December 1944, twenty-
nine-year-old Lt John Robert Fox (an American) had realized his position
was being overrun by enemy troops and had called for artillery fire on
himself. During a counter-attack later, US troops found the lieutenant’s
body along with those of about a 100 German soldiers. He had not survived.
When I marvel at the narrow escape he and his men had, Carie has a half
smile on his lips. ‘The bombs fell just 10 metres away from us. When I tell
artillery officers my story, they don’t believe it. “That was Code Red on
Red, bugger. No one survives an attack like that,’’ they tell me. But we did,’
he says softly.
There is a faraway look in his eyes. I know he has gone back to that
chilly wind-lashed day on Area Conical when the bombs fell around him
and his men. I leave him alone with his memories and get busy laying the
table for lunch.
 A Case of Mistaken Identity

With a wide grin on his face and a twinkle in his eye, Carie likes to recount an amusing
incident that happened in the midst of the war. On 24 June 1999, the day after he stumbled
back to Muntho Dhalo after the fierce battle, Carie says he woke up to find his head
bandaged. He was told that Jaggi and the injured soldiers had been evacuated to a field
hospital while Maj. Sameer Anukul and his men had taken over Area Conical. When Carie
stepped out of his tent, the first thing he saw was a Pakistani soldier who had been taken
prisoner of war.
‘He was standing there sipping on a drink from a tetrapak with a straw. In complete
contrast to how the Pakistanis had treated our men, he was being taken very good care of. It
made my blood boil.’
Soon after, an Army helicopter landed at Muntho Dhalo. It had brought Brig. Devinder
Singh, Commander, 70 Brigade, who was also a paratrooper. He had come to meet the
victorious troops and then take the POW back with him in the chopper. When he saw the
injured Carie, he congratulated him on a job well done and asked him to come along in the
helicopter, saying the POW could come later.
Carie, still in his torn combats; his head covered in bandages, went and sat inside the
helicopter. The pilot turned around and mistaking Carie for the Pakistani POW shook his fist
at him. ‘He started hurling the choicest of abuses at me,’ Carie smiles. ‘I was too tired to
correct him.’
Soon after, Brig. Devinder walked in and the chopper took off, landing at Dah in 15
minutes. 5 Para troops had already collected at the helipad, having heard that a chopper was
bringing Carie.
‘On landing, Brig. Devinder signalled a thumbs at me and left. As soon as I got out of the
chopper, I was mobbed by the soldiers who fell upon me affectionately,’ he recounts. The
Army Aviation Corps pilots could not hear anything over the noise of the rotors and, still
under the impression that they had fetched a POW, assumed that the soldiers were beating
him up. They leaned out of the helicopter and shouted, ‘Chorna nahi isko. Saale ka band
bajana [Don’t let him get away. Hit him hard],’ and took off.
Once the soldiers had poured their affection on him, Carie was taken to the medical
inspection room. Nursing assistants painstakingly pulled out the pieces of shrapnel
embedded deep in his head.
The next day, then defence minister George Fernandes landed there. Carie went to meet
him in the same tattered battle fatigues. ‘Sir, I am Capt. Cariappa from 5 Para,’ he said
introducing himself.
GOC Gen. V.S. Budhwar was quick to add, ‘Sir, he is the tiger of Batalik.’
‘Tu theek toh hai, bete [Are you all right, son]?’ Fernandes asked him, putting an arm
around his shoulders.
That evening Carie finally got to speak to his worried father, who had received a message
that Carie had received multiple gunshot wounds. He said, ‘Dad, I’m perfectly all right.’
Carie’s relieved sixty-three-year-old dad could only mumble softly, ‘Thank God.’
Author’s Note

For displaying bold leadership, unparalleled courage and devotion beyond

the call duty in the face of enemy, (then) Capt. B.M. Cariappa was awarded
the Vir Chakra. Hav. Yudhbir was awarded a Sena Medal for his gallant
action.
Then Maj. Gurpreet Madhok is now a serving brigadier. N.K. Namdev
Dagdu Pawar was martyred in another operation soon after the Kargil War.
 Story 4
The Blade Runner

Maj. Devender Pal Singh (retd), of 7 Dogra, proves that battles and
bravery don’t end with a war. And legs aren’t always made of muscles and
bone.
Usually dressed in T-shirts and jeans, a bright smile on his face, Maj. DP
is the quintessential Army officer—physically fit, dignified and well
mannered. He is a model for the high-impact Adidas advertisement for
‘Odds’, or footwear with both shoes of the pair for the same foot. The ad
has Maj. DP running alone under a steel bridge, with Kabir Bedi’s baritone
asking: ‘Odd isn’t it, for a man to be running when he shouldn’t even be
walking? To complete a marathon on one leg, when he really should be
sitting at home and watching it.’
Fact is that when Maj. DP goes shopping for trainers, he looks for only
one shoe. That’s because his other leg is fitted with a steel blade.

The Blast That Changed His Life

15 July 1999
Kargil

It is approximately 5.30 a.m. Maj. Devender Pal Singh of 7 Dogra is asleep

in his tent when an ear-shattering blast rips through the air. The ground
shakes violently under his bed and a spray of metal pieces cuts into his
body. He doesn’t know then that a mortar shell had landed right next to his
tent and burst. In seconds, Singh falls unconscious. Blood is flowing out of
him like a fountain but he has no idea about what is happening.
 When the soldiers come running to his tent, they find that his stomach
has been ripped open, exposing his intestines, and all the flesh has been
blown off his right leg, knee downwards. They quickly drape a blanket
around him and carry him across to where an ambulance is waiting. He is
driven two and a half hours on a mud track to the closest hospital in
Akhnoor. It is a 60-km ride that he endures in excruciating pain.
The shocked young doctor on duty takes one look at DP’s blood-soaked
body and pronounces him dead, asking the soldiers to take him to the
mortuary. Luckily, an anaesthetist, who happens to be around, realizes that
he is alive. DP battles for his life in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), where on
the third day, the same doctor notices gangrene setting in in his mangled
foot. If the infected part is not cut off quickly, it will poison his whole body.
A helicopter takes him to the Udhampur Command Hospital where the
surgeon decides on immediate amputation.
When he emerges after surgery, DP finds his leg amputated at the knee.
For many days, the young Sikh hovers between life and death. He asks for
his tape recorder in the ICU and entertains himself by listening to the
soundtrack of his favourite film, Sholay, and gurbani. His other problem is
that the shrapnel has cut through his intestines and they have fused post the
injury, not allowing his body digest food.
He is moved to the Army Research and Referral Hospital, Delhi, where
surgeons remove many metres of his small intestine. After he recovers, he is
moved to the Prosthetic Limb Centre in Pune. When he is weighed there, he
is just twenty-eight kilograms. But from there, he gets on to the road to
recovery. He finds some interesting comrades in the other veterans, other
Kargil amputees, who are also being fitted with artificial limbs. ‘We would
crack jokes, sing songs, exchange war gossip and even visit clubs where I
would dance on one leg,’ remembers DP. ‘Since so many of us went
through the process of losing a limb together, we used to crack jokes about
it. We wore our injuries like medals.’
Boarded out of the infantry because of his 100 per cent disability, DP
shifts to the Army Ordnance Corps in a desk job. He serves for ten years
but soon starts getting frustrated. ‘I had joined the Army for adventure, not
to sit in an office and do paperwork. So I decided to leave and pursue
adventure on my own,’ he says.
In 2007, he sought retirement with a medical pension. Two years later,
much to the shock of fellow participants, he runs the 2009 Airtel Delhi Half
Marathon on his prosthetic leg.
The first half-marathon leaves him with a bleeding lacerated stump since
he hop-runs the entire distance, but it becomes a turning point in DP’s life.
‘The elation I felt was incomparable to anything else in my life. This was
what I wanted to do,’ he says.

The Blade Runner

A few weeks later DP met Lt Gen. Mukesh Sabharwal, Adjutant General,

Indian Army.
Proud of DP’s achievement, Lt Gen Sabharwal asks, ‘What can I do for
you, son?’
DP requests him for a blade that can help him run better.
The general fulfils his promise. The Artificial Limb Centre is asked to
import the three-and-a-half kilo blade that will change his life. The blade
was pure metal; it did not have any muscle or cartilage to cushion the
impact of running.
‘The first time I ran with it, my knee was soaked in blood. Each time I
jumped and landed on the blade, a force equivalent to two-and-a-half times
my body weight would be generated. The shock would travel all the way to
my head,’ he says.
But he didn’t let that stop him. In 2011, he completed his first blade half-
marathon, clocking a time of two hours and forty minutes. By the time he
finished, his leg had swollen up so much that it was difficult to even remove
the blade. For many days, he couldn’t even get up from his bed. ‘Only a
fool would do it again after such a painful experience,’ says the blade
runner, adding with a grin, ‘I did!’

Against All Odds

Marathon running has now become Maj. DP’s passion. He ran his first three
marathons on his walking prosthetic. Thereafter, he became India’s blade
runner. Not content with that, he formed a group of amputees called ‘The
Challenging Ones’. It now has 1800 members from across the country out
of whom more than 1100 have participated in various sports and adventure
activities.
‘The idea is to show differently abled people that they are not the
physically challenged ones—they are the challengers,’ he explains. As
many as 150 members of the group run in various events happening across
the country. Singh himself has run more than twenty-one half-marathons,
including two at 12,000 feet. From his first run in three hours and forty-nine
minutes, he has brought down his best half-marathon time to two hours and
ten minutes. He was also an ambassador for the ‘Year of Disabled’
celebration of the Indian Army in 2018. And now, when the book is ready
to go to print, I receive a Whats App video of him jumping out of a plane
with just one leg, a parachute on his back and a big grin on his face. He is
now also a skydiver.
I am reminded of what he had told me during the interview. ‘I live with
fifty pieces of shrapnel embedded in my body, broken ribs, hearing loss, a
damaged liver and a damaged urinary bladder. Everything in my body is
broken except my smile!’ That’s apparently all one needs in life.

Author’s Note

Abridged from a chapter in the book Shoot. Dive. Fly.

 Chapter 7
The Doctor with a Maroon Beret

‘No man who comes to me alive will be allowed to die’, a young doctor
promises his comrades on the battlefield.

22 June 1999
7 a.m.
Area Boulders, Muntho Dhalo
Batalik Sector

‘Whopwhopwhopwhop . . .’
A new but familiar sound breaks the monotony of gunfire for the battle-
weary paratroopers taking cover from enemy shelling behind the massive
rocks. As always, they hear the choppers before they see them.
Twenty-six-year-old paratrooper Dr Capt. Vikram Grewal (Gary), his
eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep, a dark stubble covering his wind-scarred
face, sits leaning against a boulder, one hand clasped tightly around a bottle
of saline water. Before him lies his heavily sedated Sikh comrade Maj. H.S.
Jaggi, eyes shut, breath coming out in uneven gasps.
Gary is watching the fluid enter Jaggi’s vein at the wrist, drop by drop,
through the intracath venflo he had pushed in last night. For a moment his
gaze lingers gently on Jaggi’s lean face and he remembers the countless
evenings they have spent on the basketball court in Agra, playing matches
with the men. Then, involuntarily, it goes down to the stump where Jaggi’s
foot used to be. It is wrapped in a blood-soaked bandage. Jaggi’s loud cries
at midnight, when he had been brought down from the mountain on a
soldier’s back, after stepping on a landmine, still echo in his ears.
 ‘Kill me, doc. End this suffering!’ Jaggi had screamed, ‘I want to die.’
Quick injections of the potent analgesic Fortwin and a heavy dose of
antibiotics had quietened Jaggi but his contorted face and restless slumber
told the doctor that he was still in great pain.
‘Jaggi Sir, please, please stay alive,’ Gary whispers desperately, his eyes
moist with tears. The staccato blade-slapping of the helicopters is louder
now. He looks down into the barren valley where two tiny black specks are
getting larger by the moment. ‘Waheguru,’ he mumbles under his breath.

‘Doctor Sahab, helicopter aa gaye hain [The helicopters are here],’

whispers twenty-five-year-old paratrooper Parimal Singh, Gary’s nursing
assistant, a smile of relief spreading across his fatigued face. Parimal is
monitoring saline for a soldier from 2 Vikas, who has both his arms, now
stumps, tightly wound up in bandages. Half of the soldier’s face is gone too,
making it look like a macabre mask. He had been a handsome man till he
absent-mindedly picked up a Bofors minelet round that had fallen in
Muntho Dhalo. Not realizing what it was, he had started twirling it around
like a yo-yo. Before the horrified men watching him could scream out a
warning, it had blown up in his face.
The disfigured soldier, who had been screaming in unbearable agony till
a few hours ago, is silent now. His irregular breathing is the only sign that
he is alive. Gary knows only too well that both his critical patients have a
chance to live only if the helicopters are able to take them to the Forward
Surgical Centre at Batalik in time. He mumbles a silent prayer for the
daredevil Army Aviation pilots who are braving enemy fire for casualty
evacuation.
The enemy soldiers have heard the choppers as well. The battle still rages
on the heights of Area Conical and Ring Contour. A slew of airbursts erupt
above Gary’s head; their eerie whistle interrupting the staccato gunfire that
his ears have become used to. Gary realizes they are trying to bring the
choppers down. The two Cheetahs hover uncertainly. The pilots know that
one freak hit can send the machines crashing into the bottomless gorge.
Gary fears that they will turn and go back. But after a moment of hesitation,
the choppers start to move forward determinedly.
‘God bless you,’ he mumbles in relief. ‘Chal phataphat stretcher la,
bande bula [Go, quickly get the stretcher, call the boys],’ he tells Parimal,
‘Pehle Vikasi ko evacuate karenge [We shall evacuate the Vikas soldier
first]’.
The noise of the rotor blades is deafening now. The first Cheetah appears
before them, large and aggressive, hovering above the makeshift helipad
that the men have hastily prepared by clearing rocks. The young doctor and
four soldiers run towards it with the injured man on a stretcher, their clothes
lashed by the draft of the chopper blades. Parimal opens the door of the
hovering chopper and they quickly get the wounded inside. Gary steps in
holding the saline bottle, thankful that it is connected to a Teflon intracath
and not a stainless steel needle that could have torn open his patient’s vein
during the aggressive running. Tying it to the back of the pilot’s seat, he
hears his patient moaning and hastily calls out, ‘Hospital ja raha hai, chinta
na kar. Ab tu theek ho jayega [You are going to the hospital. Don’t worry,
you will be fine now].’
Even as the enemy directs another burst of mortar fire at the chopper, he
leaps out and slams the door shut, sprinting towards the cover of rocks. He
and the other soldiers run with their heads down to dodge not just the
Cheetah’s deadly rotating blades but also shrapnel from the enemy shells
bursting overhead. The anonymous pilot, watching them from his cockpit,
raises a thumb in silent admiration. If he could, Gary would have returned
the compliment but he is too busy running to save his own life. Lifting off a
few feet, the helicopter quickly drops down into the gorge to avoid getting
hit and slowly disappears.
The second chopper is rising up from the valley now, as if in slow
motion, its big nose emerging at Gary’s eye level, followed by its massive
rotating blades. The men place Jaggi on a stretcher, with Gary again holding
the bottle of saline.
 As the chopper swoops down over the helipad, Gary yells, ‘Daudo
[Run]!’
The soldiers run with the stretcher, ignoring the air bursts, risking their
own lives to give their grievously wounded comrade another chance at his.
‘If a bullet does not have your name written on it, it cannot touch you.’ This
is what soldiers often tell themselves during a war to keep up their courage.
And maybe it is actually true because, on that cold morning in Muntho
Dhalo, not one man is touched by the shelling in all six evacuation runs that
they do.

Muntho Dhalo

Muntho Dhalo is a flat tabletop feature with a sheer drop into the valley on
one side and towering grey mountains on the other. The soldiers of 5 Para
wrested it from the enemy only recently and an attack base has been set up.
Further attacks are being launched from here. Area Boulders, where the
men now live, is so named after the massive boulders scattered around.
For two days, the soldiers survived on the shakkarparas in their
backpacks but then an Army Aviation helicopter dropped sacks full of
khasta puris. The dirty, starving paratroopers dragged these behind the
rocks, slit them open with their bayonets and chewed on them like hungry
animals.
That morning, six Cheetah helicopters, flying in pairs to ensure their own
safety, swoop down on Area Boulders to pick up the two immobile
casualties and the six mobile ones. They also bring life-saving medical
supplies that are fast running out in Muntho Dhalo—IV fluids, injectable
painkillers and antibiotics—required for the gruesome battle ahead.
Once all the wounded have been evacuated, and the precious new
supplies carefully stocked, Gary breathes a sigh of temporary relief. He and
his men squeeze into the clefts between the rocks and try to rest.

Amazing Courage
Gary closes his tired eyes but his mind goes back to the terrible casualties
they have had so far. He remembers the soldier who was brought to him
with his leg blown off. Seeing Gary he had smiled through his pain and
said, ‘Daktar Sahab, aapke paas pahuch gaya hun, ab sab theek ho jayega
[Doctor Sahab, now that I am with you everything will be fine].’ He
remembers the paratrooper whose arm had been sliced off by deadly
shrapnel, the severed limb carried in by another man. When someone asked
about the time, the wounded soldier had replied, ‘Meri bazu pe ghadi
bandhi hai, usmein dekh lo [My severed arm has a watch on the wrist,
check on that].’
He salutes the courage of the men he is taking care of. He is
overwhelmed by the faith they show in his abilities. Though he and his
nursing assistants have set up a Regimental Aide Post under a plastic sheet
stretched between two boulders, they only have very basic life-saving
medicines. Because they are in the enemy’s small-arms fire range, the
wounded are examined in concealed torchlight. Planks of wood snapped off
ammunition crates left behind by enemy soldiers are used as support for
fractured limbs, rifles are tied up with line beddings as splints, blood
pressure is regulated through IV fluids and compression bandages are
applied to stop bleeding from wounds that can cause loss of consciousness
and death. The cold freezes him to the bones but Gary is thankful for the
fact that it also constricts veins and arteries, reducing blood loss in his
patients.
Attending to the grievously wounded without proper medical supplies is
not easy. It is akin to working with his hands tied behind his back. But Gary
reminds himself, ‘I could have been working in a sophisticated air-
conditioned hospital outside, but I chose to join the Army. This is what I
went to the Armed Forces Medical College (AFMC), Pune, for. This is why
I volunteered to be a soldier and a paratrooper, jumping with my men from
aircrafts at 1800 feet. This is the job I chose.’
And though there is no one listening to him on those icy, windy heights,
he leans back on that barren boulder and makes a fierce promise to himself.
‘We are blood brothers, bound to each other by the uniform and the hard-
earned maroon beret. I will never let these soldiers down. No man who
comes to me alive will be allowed to die.’
It is a promise he does not break. When the war finally ends, 5 Para
acknowledges that apart from the soldiers who lost their lives fighting,
every injured man brought to the doctor lived to tell the story of that brutal
battle.

Siachen to Batalik

Gary’s mind goes back to the day when he and the other soldiers had been
at the end of their tenure at Siachen Glacier. It had been a hard year but it
was finally over and everyone was looking forward to going back to Agra
(where the unit was now posted) and spending two years of peacetime with
their families.
That was when the Kargil incursions took place and the paratroopers
were asked to report to Batalik. The seasoned, battle-hardy men took it in
their stride. They were moved from 102 Brigade to 70 Brigade under
Brigade Commander Brig. Devinder Singh, a gunner, paratrooper and
aviator, and asked to report at Sanjak, a small village. They travelled there
from Siachen base in jeeps and hired trucks, waving to the pink-cheeked,
smiling schoolchildren they passed by.
When the soldiers were dropped off at Sanjak, they found that it was a
tiny hamlet on the banks of the gushing Indus. There were just about 20
small mud houses scattered around the spot where the Yaldor nullah met the
massive river. With all the units of 70 Brigade being launched upward
through that axis, Sanjak had been turned into a military camp. While 5
Para’s advance party—that included most officers and their CO, Col. A.K.
Shrivastava—moved ahead to a place called Ganasok the same night, the
main body of 350 soldiers, including JCOs, was left behind. Two young
officers—Gary and Capt. Sameer Singh Bisht, another gutsy paratrooper
itching for a fight—were given orders to lead the main body to Ganasok the
next night.
A Tricky Climb

June 24 1999
7.30 p.m.
Sanjak

The night is dark and cold but the Siachen down-feather jackets are keeping
the paratroopers warm. Led by Bisht and Gary, all 350 of them are walking
on a precarious track along the deep depression in the mountain, the
Ganasok nullah. Their backpacks are heavy with emergency rations,
sleeping bags, the Hanuman Chalisa, and the most precious of them all—
family pictures wrapped up in woollen vests and dog-eared letters from
home that they have read and reread dozens of times. Some of them carry
INSAS rifles, others Self-Loading Rifles (SLRs) and AK-47s. Gary and his
six nursing assistants carry an additional weight of around 7 kg in IV fluids,
injections, a few folded stretchers, bandages, medicines, etc.
The soldiers have savoured the last hot meal they will get for a long time
—puris and dal. They carry a few puris and achar in their backpacks and
water bottles filled with chlorinated water from the Indus, collected and
cleaned at the base camp. They know that after the puris finish they will
have to survive on shakkarparas. They are not worried about water because
they plan to drink from the fresh water springs scattered all over the area.
They later realize how hazardous this becomes. Because of the excessive
shelling, all waterbodies are contaminated with gunpowder and the chlorine
they carry for water purification does not work on chemical contamination.
Nearly all of them are later afflicted with blood dysentery that even the
doctor can do nothing about.
Around them, there is pitch darkness, but the peaks above are alive with
gunfire. ‘We were walking on this narrow, treacherous route along the deep
gorge, swallowed by an eerie darkness where one could not see one’s own
foot, but up on the mountains it seemed as if the sky was on fire. It
reminded us of Diwali. There were artillery rounds falling and flashes of
light all over. We knew our comrades were battling the enemy and we
wanted to be with them as soon as we could,’ remembers Gary, talking to
me one breezy winter morning, nineteen years later, when the war has
almost been forgotten by all except those who fought it.
Unfortunately, the route is so tricky that men frequently stumble and,
since they risk falling into the deep gorge on the side, it brings progress
down to a slow crawl. Around 8.30 p.m., the two young officers decide that
walking in zero visibility is a risk not worth taking. Orders are passed down
the narrow file of men. They are told to spread out their sleeping bags and
lie down wherever they are in the pitch darkness and get some rest.
One after another the weary paratroopers stretch out on the rocks,
groping with their hands to find a place to rest their heads. Some of them
drift into disturbed sleep, others just lie back watching the fireworks going
on in the heights. They know these are the enemy soldiers raining mortar
fire on the attack teams headed for the heights of Khalubar, Jubar,
Kukarthang, etc. They also know that it will be their turn soon.
Around 3.30 a.m., when dawn is about to break, the men get up and start
walking again. They reach Ganasok at 9.30 a.m. where their furious CO has
spent the morning hours pacing around in restless anxiety, wondering where
his men have disappeared. Bisht and Gary explain to him the risk of
trekking up on the moonless night and are forgiven. The unit 1/11 Gorkha
Rifles (GR) is also in Ganasok and preparing to attack the ridge of Khalubar
that stands before them at a steep 70-degree incline.
5 Para is told to wait for Khalubar to be cleared and then walk across it to
attack Muntho Dhalo. In the next few days, while the soldiers wait at
Ganasok, 1/11 GR attacks the 5000-metre-high ridge. After a bloody battle
with khukris (curved knives used by Gorkha soldiers), they secure the
position even though many, including the young and fearless Capt. Manoj
Pandey, lose their lives. Manoj is later awarded the Param Vir Chakra.
Now it is the paratroopers’ turn to show their mettle. As night falls, the
entire unit, led by Col. Shrivastava, and a team of 10 Para commandos,
crosses the ridge to attack Muntho Dhalo.
Gary and his team of fourteen paratroopers will not be part of the frontal
battle but they will be the crucial difference between life and death for
many injured soldiers. It is decided that the medical component will take a
different route to Muntho Dhalo so that they reach an easily accessible area
called Area Spring and are ready to receive casualties in the direct line of
evacuation to Batalik. While the attack companies move forward, Gary and
his men walk back for two and a half hours in the dark to reach Yaldor
nullah, from where they turn right and keep walking till they reach the last
post of 1/11 GR. The Gorkha soldiers advise Gary not to go further because
chances are they could be walking into an enemy ambush. Gary ignores
their warning and trudges on.
‘I knew that the wounded soldiers would start coming any moment and
we should reach there as quickly as we could. When a patient is losing
blood every second counts,’ he explains.
Around midnight, Gary’s team faces sudden gunfire. They are being shot
at. They jump behind boulders and send desperate messages on their
wireless sets to discover that a 1 Bihar patrol has mistaken them for the
enemy. Once the patrol is told who they are, the fire is called off and the
soldiers start climbing again.
Around daybreak, they see a flat area of land in the distance where
Pakistani soldiers are abandoning a post. They are collecting their things,
dousing fires, picking up stoves and running with their weapons. Gary is
confused for a moment but then he realizes that the Pakistanis are running
away from the attacking team of 5 Para descending from the other side.
Since they are completely outnumbered by the enemy, Gary and his team
look for cover and hide. They watch the attack and, after 5 Para has taken
over the post, they reveal themselves. A delighted Gary calls out to Jaggi,
who has led the attack.
Jaggi does not recognize him from the distance. ‘Hilna mat, saalon! Goli
maar denge. Haath upar karo [Don’t move—we will shoot! Put your hands
up],’ he shouts.
‘Jaggi Sir, it’s me, the doctor,’ Gary calls out.
‘CO Sahab ka naam bata [Tell me your CO’s name],’ Jaggi yells.
‘Lt Col. A.K. Shrivastava,’ a jittery Gary answers.
‘Unki beti na naam bata [Tell me his daughter’s name],’ Jaggi says.
 ‘Chinki aur Boski [Chinky and Boski],’ an exasperated Gary answers.
Convinced that it is Gary, but wondering if he has been taken prisoner,
Jaggi asks the men to walk with their hands up.
When the team is finally recognized, both Jaggi and Col. Shrivastava,
who is standing right behind him, are amazed that Gary managed to reach
the place even before the attacking body. The young doctor is backslapped
for a job well done.
Gary sets up his medical emergency post and gets to work treating the
injured. There have been no major casualties since the enemy soldiers lost
their nerve and ran away.
‘We later found out that the Pakistanis were mortally afraid of both
Gorkhas and paratroopers, which—they had found out—were the two units
attacking them. Someone had told them that the Gorkhas beheaded people
with their khukris and ate them. Paratroopers, of course, have a formidable
reputation the world over. The terrified Pakistani soldiers decided it was
better to run than fight,’ Gary tells me with a wide smile. ‘It helps to have a
bad reputation sometimes.’
Thereafter, 5 Para sets up camp in Muntho Dhalo and all further attacks
are launched from there. The soldiers also manage to clear some area for a
makeshift helipad in the pauses between enemy shelling so that choppers
can evacuate casualties and bodies of martyrs as well as drop supplies.

Meeting the Daredevil Doctor

When I start writing my book and manage to catch the extremely busy and
elusive Col. Vikram Singh Grewal, about whom I have heard so much, it
has been nineteen years since the war was fought. He is now posted to his
alma mater, AFMC, as faculty. The one-time hands-on war doctor is taking
lectures these days; he has his students spellbound with his slide shows on
Siachen Glacier and the Kargil War, which I get to see as well.
 When we finally sit down to talk, Gary admits that while time has blurred
many memories for him, he will never forget the night of 21 June 1999.
‘I can see everything happening in front of my eyes as if it were
yesterday. The night was dark and moonless. I stood beside my CO, looking
at the mountains, trying to assess where our attack companies had reached,’
he remembers. ‘All we could see were flashes of light up on the barren
heights, hear small-arms fire and men screaming in pain. The mood was
sombre, the air was riddled with tension and it was frustrating to just watch
and do nothing while waiting for the injured to be brought down to us.
Around midnight, news came in on the radio set about Jaggi stepping on a
landmine. It took the soldiers an hour to get him down to Muntho Dhalo,
taking turns at carrying him on their backs.’
Gary says he was relieved to find that Jaggi’s entire leg had not been
blown up as it was reported but the foot was gone. ‘His blood pressure was
falling drastically since he had lost so much blood. I knew that our biggest
challenge would be to keep him alive through the night and I was desperate
that Army Aviation choppers should come and take him to a hospital at first
light. The same was true for the Vikasi,’ Gary recounts. It all happened
according to plan. The helicopters came, the patients were evacuated and
their lives saved.
Though he has tended to hundreds of patients and been part of many
complicated medical emergencies in the years gone by, Gary says nothing
ever gave him more satisfaction than seeing the brave soldiers he treated
that night recovering in their hospital beds, when he finally came back after
the Kargil War was over.
‘They are the reason I can look myself in the mirror and wear my
uniform with pride each morning,’ he says.
With that, the good-looking doctor picks up his well-deserved maroon
beret and, fixing it on his head at a rakish angle, leaves for his next lecture.

A Doctor First, Soldier Later

 During his stay in Muntho Dhalo, Capt. Grewal also treated two Pakistani prisoners of war
who had been captured alive and brought down by the attacking regiments.
‘That day in Muntho Dhalo, there was a lot of antagonism towards the two POWs. Capt.
Saurabh Kalia’s terrible torture, which we had heard of on the radio, was on our minds and
all of us were seething with rage at how he had been treated by the enemy. However, I told
the angry soldiers that we could not seek revenge by doing the same to unarmed, injured
enemy soldiers who had surrendered. Armies at war have an honourable code of conduct.’
That saved the lives of the two wounded and starving POWs who had not eaten for many
days.
‘The two Pakistani soldiers we were treating at Muntho Dhalo had been abandoned by
their own army. Sepoy Hunar Shah of 5 NLI had a festering wound in his leg and could not
run with the other soldiers when they were abandoning the post, which is why they left him
behind. Sepoy Ahmed Khan of 33 Frontier Force said that he had been sent to Skardu, where
he was asked to deposit his uniform and ID card and was sent inside India,’ Gary
remembers.
‘Both the soldiers were tired and petrified of what we would do to them. They were
completely broken. Both came from very poor families; they showed me pictures of their
children. They also told me that in sheer contrast with how young Indian Army officers led
from the front, in the Pakistan Army, orders were always passed from behind. Most of their
patrols were led by JCOs and jawans while the officers stayed behind.’
The two POWs were tied up with ropes but they were given proper medical attention,
food and water, and then evacuated by helicopter to the base. After the war was over, they
were handed over to Pakistan at the Attari border.
‘They were our enemies but it was nothing personal. I hope they are back with their
families now, living happily. I am a doctor as well as a soldier. But whenever there is a clash
between the two roles, I am a doctor first. My job is to save lives,’ Gary says.

Author’s Note

This true story reflects the work that Army Medical Corps doctors and
nursing staff did during Operation Vijay. They remain amongst the unsung
heroes of the war. Dr Capt. Vikram Singh Grewal and his team attended to
seventy-five casualties during the operations conducted around Muntho
Dhalo in the Batalik sector. These came from the attacking units in that area
—5 Para, 10 Para, 1/11 GR, 2 Vikas and the Engineers. They also treated
two Pakistani POWs. All the men who reached Grewal alive lived to tell the
stories of their spine-chilling escapades during the Kargil War. He truly
honoured the promise he made to himself that cold and bloody night in
Muntho Dhalo.
 Story 5
Kargil’s Only Woman Warrior

In May 1999, twenty-five-year-old tall, slim and soft-spoken Flying Officer

Gunjan Saxena, posted at Udhampur with 132 Forward Area Control (FAC)
Flight, gets orders to move to Srinagar.
The daughter of an Army officer, Gunjan is looking for action and happy
to go to Srinagar. Before leaving she calls up her parents, Lt Col. (retd)
A.K. Saxena and Mrs Saxena, who are settled at Lucknow, and tells them
that she is being sent out of Udhampur on deployment and might not be
able to call them for some time. Being an Army officer himself, Lt Col.
Saxena is not unnecessarily perturbed by his daughter’s adventures. He
wishes her well and puts the phone down.
At that time, the intrusions in Kargil have just started coming to light and
no one has any inkling about the magnitude of the operation. When Gunjan
moves to Srinagar she too believes India is facing a small incursion by the
mujahedeen.
Four helicopters are positioned at Srinagar Air Field during May. Gunjan,
who has been flying Cheetahs for a while, is one of the ten pilots based
there. Initially, she causes quite a few raised eyebrows at the pilot briefings
since she is the only female in a largely male bastion, but the officers soon
get used to seeing her around and start treating her with casual bonhomie.
Later, when the conflict escalates and the assignments are considered
dangerous, she is asked by her detachment commander if she has any
problems operating in the area. She says she doesn’t and continues to fly,
refusing the option to move out of Srinagar and the danger zone.
 Around that time, her parents realize that she is flying over the
battleground and her life could be at risk, but being a hard-core Army
family, they do not interfere with her course of duty. In the initial phase, the
small but sturdy Cheetah helicopters that have an established record in
high-altitude flying are sent on surveillance sorties. Gunjan is amongst the
pilots who fly into the valley covering the Kargil–Tololing–Batalik area,
surveying it from the air and reporting any activity they spot. Often they fly
over mountainous terrain where Indian and Pakistani soldiers are firing at
each other. Around this time, casualties start being reported. The helicopters
now start ferrying wounded soldiers from the heights where a gruesome war
is raging. Gunjan too does her share of medical evacuations, often landing
close to 13,000 feet on makeshift helipads, hastily cleared by soldiers at
war.
Landing on the helipads, she waits for the injured soldiers to be carried
into her chopper. Then, signalling a thumbs up to the battle-weary soldiers
watching her machine—only a few of whom notice her gender—she
quickly pulls the throttle and lifts off, manoeuvring the Cheetah towards
Srinagar and safety. The pilots have to be very careful since they cannot risk
their helicopters being shot down.
The Cheetah is adept at high altitude flying but it has no defences against
the enemy. Pilots routinely carry assault rifles and pistols to face the
eventuality of enemy encounter in case of a crash or capture. Since Kargil is
under intermittent enemy shelling through the war months, once, when
Gunjan is preparing to take off from the Kargil airfield, an enemy missile
misses her helicopter and crashes behind it. Undeterred, she takes off and
continues with her duties.
The Cheetahs carry out reconnaissance of enemy territory, bringing
information about suspected enemy location for the artillery gunners and
fighter pilots, besides dropping food, medicines and other supplies for
troops battling the enemy in high-altitude terrain, and landing at great
personal risk to pick up injured and dead comrades. They are a lifeline for
the infantry soldiers who are risking their lives for their country.
 Gunjan operates in the area spanning Kargil–Tololing–Batalik. She
conducts around ten sorties over a period of twenty days after which the
IAF withdraws its small helicopters, launching full-scale offensive support
for the fighting troops, and she comes back to Udhampur. She has attained
the glory of being the only woman involved in the Kargil War.

An Army Background

Gunjan came from an Army family and always wanted to join the forces.
After completing her graduation from Hansraj College, Delhi, she cleared
the SSB entrance exam and joined the IAF in 1994.
She has been quoted as saying, ‘One of our main roles (in the war) was
casualty evacuation. I think it is the ultimate feeling that you can experience
as a helicopter pilot. It is a very satisfying feeling when you save a life
because that’s what you are there for.’

Army Aviation Corp’s Role

Besides IAF helicopters, two squadrons of the Army Aviation Corps

participated in the Kargil War, clocking a mind-boggling 2500 missions and
2700 flying hours.
The shrill whine of the single-engine Cheetah and the characteristic deep
whirring of its rotors brought a sigh of relief to hundreds of soldiers
deployed in the war. The Cheetah mostly operated at heights touching
18,000 feet, which forms its upper flying limit. Not only did the daredevil
pilots of the Army Aviation Corps initially lift troops and carry material to
points close to where the bloodiest battles were fought, they dropped
essential supplies to the fighting troops and evacuated over 900 casualties
during the war, carrying injured soldiers to field hospitals and martyrs
closer to their grieving families. They did this with fearless disregard to
enemy small-arms and artillery fire, landing and taking off from makeshift
helipads.
 There are innumerable instances of pilots risking their own lives to save
those of fellow soldiers. The Army Aviation Corps was awarded two Vir
Chakras, one Yudha Seva Medal, three Sena Medals (Gallantry) and one
Sena Medal (Distinguished) for its exception role in the Kargil War.

Author’s Note

Flight Lt Gunjan’s tenure with the IAF ended a few years after the Kargil
War because the concept of permanent commission was not valid then. She
is now married to a helicopter pilot in the air force.
 Chapter 8
The Legacy

A four-year-old grows up to fulfil his war widow mother’s olive-green

dream.

Pachenda Kalan,
Close to Muzaffarnagar,
Uttar Pradesh
2018

In the small village of Pachenda Kalan lives an eighty-five-year-old farmer.

Ever since Mahaveer Singh lost his wife two years ago, he has been
slipping in and out of dementia. Most of the time, he lies on his stringed cot
and stares vacantly out of the window at the wheat fields in the distance.
Nobody knows where his mind travels since he slips into a space where the
past and the present blur. In those rare moments when he is alert, Mahaveer
talks. Voice cracking with grief, he sometimes mentions the young son he
lost in the Kargil War. Sometimes he talks about his grandson who has
joined the IMA and will be the first officer in their family of soldiers. When
he says this, Mahaveer Singh’s old eyes light up and a half-smile flickers on
his dry lips.
‘Baap ka naam roshan kar diya usne [He has made his father proud],’ he
whispers hoarsely. ‘Saare gaon ko mithai khilani hai [I will distribute
sweets in the village].’

9 June 2018
IMA
Dehradun

The summer sun is up in the sky, its rays reflecting off spit-shined badges
and boots. The passing out parade has just ended. Peak caps and laughing
gentlemen cadets are being flung in the air, and caught. Whoops of joy, that
can possibly be heard all the way to the hills of Mussoorie (just like the
training commands of the drill ustad), are breaking the sobriety of the
occasion. Perfectly executed push-ups, on sinewy olive green-shirted arms,
are setting a rhythm for the celebrations. The beautifully manicured lawns
of Somnath Stadium are basking not just in the warmth of June but also the
radiant smiles of happy families. Delighted older siblings, awestruck
younger ones, ageing grandparents, grey-haired parents—their hearts
swollen with pride—constitute the well-dressed crowd. Handsome young
officers—slim and ramrod straight, newly commissioned, resplendent in
their uniforms, are being hugged and backslapped, hands are being shaken
and foreheads kissed with affection.
Of the 457 gentlemen cadets passing out that Saturday morning, there are
a few whose fathers are not around to be a part of this special day. Twenty-
three-year-old Lt Hitesh Kumar, granted 2 Raj. Rif. as parental claim, is one
of them.
The man who would have been the proudest of Hitesh that morning,
Lance Naik Bachan Singh, will never see him in uniform. Nineteen years
ago, when Hitesh and his twin, Hemant, were just four, this young soldier
of Charlie Company, 2 Raj. Rif., was hit by an enemy bullet on the icy cold
peak of Tololing.
Neither Hitesh nor Hemant or their mother saw it happen but the scene is
vividly etched in their memories from what Subedar Digendra Singh, MVC,
who was also in the battle, has narrated to them that it seems as if it
happened in front of them. Towards the end of the battle, a bullet ripped
through twenty-nine-year-old Bachan’s head, making him sink to his knees,
his fingers unclasping from around the LMG he had been answering enemy
fire with. He gave it to Digendra and his eyes closed slowly as if overcome
by deep sleep. He dropped down, his warm blood staining the snow, his
thoughts on his young wife and sons he loved so much, who, during his last
moments, were hundreds of kilometres away from him. 2 Raj. Rif. suffered
very high casualties in the Kargil War. Four officers, two JCOs and
seventeen Other Ranks of the battalion made the supreme sacrifice in the
highest traditions of the Indian Army in the conflict. Lance Naik Bachan
Singh was one of them.

That morning in IMA, there is a hint of sadness in Hitesh’s smile for the
father who is not there, but in his eyes there is quiet satisfaction. It has
taken him nineteen years, but he has fulfilled his widowed mother’s dream.
‘My husband was a soldier but he always told me that he wanted our sons
to become class-one officers. The day he died, I decided that I would make
sure both of them became Army officers and joined his battalion,’ Mrs
Kamesh Bala tells me when I meet her in her Veer Awas flat in Delhi a few
months later. Dressed in a pastel green salwar kameez, with a dupatta
thrown over her shoulders, she is comfortable in her house, smiling and
offering me water and a cup of tea.
But that morning in the IMA, she seems a little awkward at being in such
a huge gathering of sophisticated strangers. Dressed in a soft-blue sari, the
middle-aged Kamesh, her hair greying at the temples, crow’s feet etched
softly around her bright eyes, stands still in her son’s embrace. With her
other son too by her side, his brother’s ceremonial cap placed proudly on
his head, she lets the tears flow over her cheeks. For the family, it is a
moment for commemorating Bachan Singh’s sacrifice.

Seven Years

Many Hindu wives believe that each time you take your husband’s name it
decreases one day from his life. Though he is not around any more, Kamesh
still doesn’t take her late husband’s name. ‘He and my brother were in the
same unit and he would sometimes come over to my brother’s house in
Delhi,’ she tells me, her face lit up by a shy smile. ‘I was eighteen then, had
completed grade eight and was living with my parents in the village. Once
my brother called me to Delhi and I met him there. He was tall and slim,
wheatish in complexion. When I saw him for the first time, in a blue shirt
and beige-coloured pants, I thought he had such a gentle smile even though
he was a soldier. Mujhe acche lage [I liked him].’
There was no conversation between the young couple at that meeting, but
they both said yes to the proposal. Six months later, they were married.
Seven years later, he was dead. Kamesh was just twenty-six when she lost
her husband. Since he was an infantry soldier, mostly posted in field areas,
she lived in the village with her parents-in-laws nearly all her married life.
Kamesh and Bachan lived together for just five months. She says those
were the most beautiful months of her life.
A picture, with Kamesh and Bachan sitting on a stone parapet and
smiling into the camera, hangs on her sitting-room wall. She picks it up
affectionately and shows it to me. ‘He was posted in Udaipur. He would
take me out every evening. We talked and laughed so much.’
Bachan was posted in Kashmir when the boys were born. He came to
Delhi on twenty days’ leave, when his wife was admitted to the Army Base
Hospital owing to a complicated pregnancy. The twins were positioned
upside down and doctors were very apprehensive about whether they would
be able to save both the mother and the babies. The babies were finally born
via a caesarean section. When her husband came to see her after the
delivery, he was so relieved that they both broke down. Hum dono hi ro
pade, [We both burst into tears],’ says Kamesh.
He soon had to go back. After that, Kamesh says, she just saw him when
he came home on leave and he would be amazed at how fast the boys were
growing up. ‘He wanted them to do very well in life and achieve all that he
couldn’t as a soldier. He had promised to take us along on his next peace
tenure, but then the war started and he told me he had to go for that
instead.’
 During the Kargil War, Kamesh would be glued to the television all the
time. She would keep watching the war reports and worry about her
husband. ‘Mujhe bahut chinta rehti thi [I used to be worried]. The children
were too young to understand anything; their lives went on as usual.’

His Father’s Memories

Hitesh says he has very few memories of his father. ‘I was four when he
died. I know him more from the pictures we have of him and from what my
mother has told us,’ he says. ‘However, there are a few scenes imprinted on
my mind.’ He says he remembers a birthday when his father was around.
‘We used to live with our grandparents in Pachenda village. It must have
been our third or fourth birthday. There were no cakes at that time but I
remember him sitting in the courtyard of our two-room house on a stringed
cot, while my mother was frying gulab jamuns in a big kadai. Later, my
brother and I cut a gulab jamun like a cake,’ he laughs.
He also remembers holding Hemant’s hand and running away from
school frequently, soon after his grandmother left them there, arriving home
even before her. ‘Both my twin and I were quite notorious. We hated school
and would frequently run away. I have a very vivid recollection of my
father getting really angry about it. I remember him pulling me by one arm,
while my grandmother is holding the other one. He is telling my
grandmother that he will take us to the city because we were getting
completely spoilt in the village,’ Hitesh tells me with a smile. ‘Eventually,
he did shift us to a one-room flat in Muzaffarnagar and got us admitted in
lower kindergarten in a Hindi-medium school called Lakshmi Public
School.’
Hitesh remembers that when his father came home on leave, he would
take the boys to school and sit outside to ensure that the two did not run
away. Since they both loved milk, he would also carry bottles of milk for
them. After school was over at noon, the three of them would walk back
home holding hands, the twins sipping their milk noisily. In the evenings,
he would play with them and, after dinner, he would take both of them to
the Adarsh Colony crossing to buy them gajak and peanuts.
‘We stayed on rent in a single room. Since we did not have a television
set, my brother and I would run off to the landlord’s house to watch TV,
embarrassing our mother. I remember when my father came home on leave,
even though he did not have much money, he managed to buy a BPL colour
television set for us, so that we would stay home. That TV is still there in
our house in Muzaffarnagar; it still runs,’ says Hitesh. ‘Every time I see it I
remember how all of us would sit in the same room—my brother and I
would be studying, my mother would be chopping vegetables for the next
meal and my father would be watching TV. If we looked up, he would hit us
on the back of the head and say “padhai karo [study]!”’
This is probably the most endearing memory Hitesh has in which his
whole family is together. The other memories are from his father’s haunting
funeral that he and his brother watched standing in the sugar cane field, not
really understanding what was happening.
Kamesh remembers receiving a reassuring letter from her husband from
the battlefield. ‘I am fine. Don’t worry about me,’ it said. ‘Take care of
yourself and the children. The boys have their summer holidays. I think you
should go to your parents’ house and spend some time with them. Tumhara
man laga rahega [You’ll be happier],’ it read.
Soon after, when her husband’s uncle came to take her to her in-laws’
home, she showed him the letter and said she would prefer to go to her own
parents’ home. Her in-laws agreed and so she and the boys went to Kutbi,
where her parents lived.
Four days later, their small world collapsed.

13 June 1999
Kutbi village,
25 km from Muzaffarnagar
Not yet five, Hitesh and Hemant are playing outside the small mud-and-
brick house that belongs to their grandfather. The phone has been ringing
for a while.
Throwing his plastic bat aside, Hitesh hurries in to answer the phone,
almost tripping over the doorstep. Standing on his toes, he picks it up and
says, ‘Hello?’
His maternal uncle, Rifleman Rishi Pal, is at the other end. ‘Beta, apni
maa ko bula de [Son, call your mother],’ he says.
Carefully placing the receiver down, Hitesh runs upstairs to find his
mother. Kamesh takes the call while he runs out to play. He has just picked
up the bat and is telling Hemant to bowl when he hears her sobbing loudly.
The boys stop their game and walk over to the glass window from where
they can see their mother. She has tears streaming down her cheeks. Their
grandmother too has come downstairs by now. The brothers, who will turn
five on 23 October, stand there in the sunlight with their noses pressed
against the window, watching their grandparents’ house slowly fill up with
villagers. The wailing of women rings out around them, making them break
into tears as well. They have no idea though why they are crying.
‘We were too young then to understand the enormity of the event. Our
father had been shot in the head and my uncle, who was also posted in 2
Raj. Rif., had called up to inform my mother,’ says Hitesh, talking clinically
about the life-shattering event that left him fatherless at four years of age.
Soon Kamesh’s in-laws came and took her and the children to Pachenda
Kalan. Hitesh says he clearly remembers the day his father’s body arrived.
‘A huge crowd had collected outside our house. Both my brother and I
were also curious to see why. We tried to push in through the sea of people
but we were too small to be able to. We even climbed up to the roof of our
house but couldn’t see anything even from there. Finally, my paternal uncle
came and took us down to where the body was kept. It was covered in a
white solution and didn’t look like the father we knew at all. I don’t think
we even understood what had happened, but my mother tells me that we
cried for a month without having any idea about why we were crying. I
remember the cremation. Both my brother and I held hands and went across
to the sugar cane and wheat fields where it was being done. Dressed in
identical shorts and shirts, we stood at a distance watching his body burn
and the red flames licking the sky. Of the few memories I have of my father,
that image is the clearest,’ he says.
Kamesh says that when she lost her husband, her world was shattered.
People who came to console her would always tell her that time would heal
all wounds.
‘Kehte the, samay ke saath dukh kam ho jaata hai. Par aisa nahi hota.
Dukh kabhi kam nahi hota [They said time heals all wounds but they were
wrong, the sadness never goes away],’ she tells me, her eyes moist again.
When Hitesh became an officer that day at IMA, she says she missed her
husband the most. She cried for what he had gone without seeing. ‘Unhone
usse char saal ka dekha tha. Bas ek baar usse afsar ki vardi mein dekh
paate toh kitne khush hote [He had seen his son when he was four. If only
he could have seen him wearing an officer’s uniform].’

My Mother’s Dream

Hitesh says the first time he publicly voiced his desire to join the Army was
when he was in grade five in Sanatan Dharm Public School, where he and
Hemant were admitted after their father passed away.
‘One day, our class teacher, Manju Mittal, who was our favourite, asked
the children what they wanted to be when they grew up. When it was my
turn, I got up and said, ‘Mujhe Army mein jana hai [I would like to join the
Army].’ Hitesh says he hadn’t thought about becoming an officer till then.
‘Both my brother and I were happy to become soldiers, but our mother had
bigger dreams.’
Hitesh acknowledges that in spite of her limited exposure and education,
his mother was insistent that the brothers should join Rashtriya Military
School, Chail, on the advice of Birender Singh, an elder who was also in the
Army and whom the boys addressed as Dada (grandfather).
She got them to Delhi to write the entrance test for the school but was
disappointed when the boys could not clear it. Birender Singh advised her
to send them both to Dehradun to attend coaching classes.
Since they had nowhere to stay, she found a boarding in Garhi
Cantonment, where the brothers stayed for six months and attended classes.
In their next attempt both of them managed to clear the entrance test.
‘It was a tough decision for my mother to let us both go away for our
schooling, but she did it for our good,’ says Hitesh.
For seven years, while the boys studied from grades six to twelve,
Kamesh stayed alone in Muzaffarnagar, hoping her sacrifice would give
them a better future.

Lonely Years

Kamesh calls those seven years the most difficult period in her life. ‘I just
lived for the next time I would see them. I lived so far that I could visit
them only once in two months. I also had to run the petrol station back
home. They would both start crying every time I was leaving. It was
heartbreaking for me. I would tell them to be strong, to study hard.
‘“Beta, Papa ka naam roshan karna hai [Son, honour your father’s
name],” I would tell them.’ She would then cry all the way back to
Muzaffarnagar and, once there, the lonely wait to see them again after two
months would begin. ‘Bahut mushkil tha per mujhe bahut lagan thi ki ye
dono fauj mein jaayein [It was really tough but I was categorical that they
should join the Army].’
Back home, there was very little for Kamesh to do. She would cook and
clean and open old albums and look at the pictures facing agonizing
loneliness.
‘I became depressed. After my husband’s death, I lost all confidence. I
needed someone to accompany me every time I stepped out of the house.
Sometimes my mother-in-law would come and stay with me, but mostly I
was on my own,’ Kamesh says.
Hitesh says the exposure that he and his brother got in Chail gave them a
big boost. ‘By the time I was in grade eight, I had come to know about
parental claim (where a cadet’s wish to join the unit his father served in is
given weightage while a regiment is being allocated) and the dream of
joining my father’s battalion now seemed more within reach. However,
since I had only seen soldiers in the family till then, I thought I would
become a soldier as well. In Chail, we realized that everyone else wanted to
become officers while we were the only two thinking of joining the Army
through the ranks,’ he laughs.
The twins then considered the option of becoming officers. Though they
could not clear the National Defence Academy (NDA) interview, they came
to Delhi where they took admission in Shri Ram College of Commerce.
‘By that time my mother’s dream had become my own,’ Hitesh
confesses. ‘I was crystal clear that I wanted to join my father’s regiment as
an officer. That was my only ambition. I didn’t even consider a second
option. If someone asked me what my backup plan was, I had no answer.
The truth was that I had none.’
Hitesh appeared for the CDS exam in his third year of college. Not only
did he clear that, he also managed to get through the Air Force Common
Admission Test and the National Cadet Corps entry scheme.
‘I joined the OTA since the CDS merit had not come by then, but after I
made it to that merit list as well I took a transfer from OTA to IMA,’ he
says.

The Country Didn’t Forget

Hitesh says that the reason his mother could concentrate on her sons was
because she had no financial worries. That, he feels, is also why he could
focus on his dreams.
‘If the country and the organization [Indian Army] had not taken care of
us, my mother would have spent her whole life trying to make ends meet,’
he says.
 The void a soldier’s death leaves behind can never be filled up for his
family, but what makes his sacrifice worthwhile is the fact that people do
not forget him, Hitesh explains. ‘It has been nineteen years but people still
remember my father. When they see me in the village they still ask, “Kargil
shaheed Bachan Singh ka beta hai na tu [You are Kargil martyr Bachan
Singh’s son, right]?” It fills my heart with pride. My father made the
ultimate sacrifice for his country. No one can do more than that. The reason
my mother and I had no second thoughts about my joining a profession
where I might have to go to war too is that my father has been immortalized
in public memory. We have no fears. There is a school in our village in his
name, Bachan Singh Primary School. The wrestling and volleyball
tournaments in the college are named after him. There is a petrol pump, a
colony and a memorial dedicated to his memory in Muzaffarnagar.’
Hitesh says the country and the Army took very good care of the families
of Kargil martyrs; the country never forgot them. ‘They must continue to do
that for the families of all martyrs. That will inspire sons to follow in the
footsteps of their brave fathers.’
When I get up to leave, Kamesh is sitting beside her other son, Hemant.
Hitesh has already joined his father’s battalion in a peace station in
Rajasthan.
‘I feel so proud that Hitesh has also joined 2 Raj. Rif.,’ she says, her head
held high. When I congratulate her on his success, and hers, she looks me in
the eye. There is a steely resolve on her face. ‘Abhi toh ye bhi jayega [He
will also do it],’ she says, looking with determination at her other son.
Broad-shouldered and handsome, Hemant puts an affectionate arm
around his mother. I leave them to their dreams and hope that they all come
true.

Author’s Note

This story is based on conversations with Lt Hitesh Kumar’s his twin,

Hemant, and their mother, Mrs Kamesh Bala.
 Story 6
Desh

Two school girls from Calcutta, now Kolkata, and a young Dogri man
from Jammu got together after the Kargil War to start an initiative to
convey the country’s gratitude to its martyrs’ families, showing the rest of
us what we could do too.
One misty summer morning in Bhadarwa, near Jammu, over twenty-four
years ago, a young Dogri boy stood at a cremation site next to a river. He
heard an Army truck stopping at the roadhead and ran up the slope, closely
followed by five other villagers, all freshly bathed.
A body wrapped in a blood-stained white bed sheet was lifted out of the
truck and placed on the villagers’ shoulders. They started walking, carrying
it towards the riverbank. As he walked, with the weight of the body on his
bony shoulders, Vikas Manhas could feel something wet against his skin.
‘I knew what that was and could feel goose pimples erupt all over my
skin,’ he tells me many years later, his eyes sad, his cup of tea lying
untouched.
The villagers of Bhadarwah cremated seven soldiers of the Indian Army,
who had been martyred in a militant strike the night before, on a common
pyre that morning. Vikas has hazy memories of weeping loudly for the men
who were strangers to him but who, he understood, had died protecting
civilians like him.
‘I felt a sense of responsibility towards their families, and I wanted to go
and meet them and assure them that the cremations had been done with all
due rituals but I was too young to be able to do that,’ he says.
 The Kargil War took place in 1999. Vikas, who was running a coaching
centre for the CDS examination in Jammu, watched the war unfold on
television and the bodies of martyrs being brought home wrapped in the
Tricolour.
‘Earlier, soldiers would be cremated close to the battlefield, but the prime
minister had decided that they would be taken home for the last rites. That
was the greatest service done to our martyred soldiers. No longer were they
dying unrecognized so far away from home. People like me could read the
newspaper and watch television and know who our martyrs were. We could
be part of their funeral processions,’ Vikas says.
Amongst the many braves who lost their lives in Kargil were seven
soldiers of 18 Grenadiers. One of them, Grenadier Uday Bhan Singh,
belonged to a place very close to Jammu. A few months after Uday’s death,
Vikas took a bus, found the martyr’s house and knocked on the door. He sat
with Uday’s mother in a room where pictures of the young solider hung on
the wall.
After a long silence, the lady drew Vikas’ attention towards a framed
photograph where Uday lay with his head on her lap and was laughing into
the camera. ‘That was the last time he had come home,’ she said. ‘After that
he went for the war. He was only nineteen when he died.’ She then opened
a drawer and took out a blood-stained wallet. From inside it, she pulled out
a Vaishno Devi coin. ‘He would go to Vaishno Devi temple every time he
came home. ‘Ye uski jeb mein tha jab use goli lagi. Ab tumhi batao main
Mata pe kaise vishwas karun [This was in his pocket when he died. How
can I believe in the goddess now]?’ she asked, her eyes dry.
Vikas says she took him from one memory to another, speaking more to
herself than to him. He stayed in Uday’s house till evening.
When Vikas was leaving, Uday’s mother, mistaking him for a soldier
from Uday’s unit, asked, ‘Kitni chutti aaye ho [How many days of leave do
you have]?
Vikas told her that he was not a soldier but a civilian who had come from
Talab Tillo in Jammu.
 ‘Phir kaili aaye [Why did you come then]? she asked him, a bit confused,
switching to Dogri.
‘I had read about your son’s sacrifice in the newspaper. Main aap se
milna chahta tha [I wanted to meet you],’ Vikas replied.
Placing a hand on his shoulder, Uday’s mother smiled sadly and said,
‘Dubara aana [Come again].’
Since then, Vikas tells me, he has visited Uday’s house at least a hundred
times. ‘I am like family now. Both his [Uday’s] sisters are now married and
I often joke with their husbands that I came to their house much before they
did.’
That was the start of the initiative called Desh, put together in 2013 when
Anasuya Mitra, a Calcutta-based scientist, and Adrija Singh, a Bangalore-
based engineer decided to give it shape. The duo had been passionate about
the cause of martyrs ever since they were schoolgirls in Calcutta during the
Kargil War. Vikas found them on Facebook and after following their work
for a year decided to join them too. The three have now made it their life’s
goal to meet up with as many martyrs’ families as they can.
Anasuya has her own stories to tell. Initially hesitant about visiting the
families of martyrs because she did not want to rake up their pain, the ice
broke for her when she visited late Capt. Manoj Pandey’s, PVC, mother in
Lucknow after seeing his bust at a city chowk. ‘Adrija sent me Mrs Mohini
Pandey’s landline number. When I went to see her she was so happy. She
said, “When people like you visit, it gives me a chance to talk about the son
I have lost.”’
Mrs Pandey is now Amma to the volunteers. Anasuya then met Capt.
Haneef-ud-din’s mother, Mrs Hema Aziz, in Delhi. Mrs Aziz had also been
very happy to spend an evening with Anasuya even though she is quiet and
reserved by temperament.
Desh works very simply. Between the three volunteers, they scan
newspapers on a daily basis to find the names and addresses of martyrs
from all the forces. They then make it a point to visit bereaved families and
stay in touch with them, calling them up, visiting them and taking bouquets
along on martyrdom days and birthdays. Often they cut cakes with children
and introduce the family of one martyr to another thus creating a
community.
‘We give the families of our martyrs nothing except our gratitude,’ says
Vikas. ‘The idea behind Desh is to assure the families who have lost a loved
one in the call of duty that the country remembers them and is grateful to
them for their sacrifice. We never take anything for the families. On the
contrary, we accept everything from them. I have lived in their houses, I
have demanded food, I have happily accepted gifts from them, I walk in and
out of their homes as if they are my own. And they accept me as family,
which adds so much meaning to my own life.’
He tells me about the only times when he repeatedly said no to a gift that
Mrs Meghana Girish, mother of late Maj. Akshay Girish, wanted to give
him. Maj. Girish had died while protecting his camp from a terrorist strike
in Nagrota, J&K, on 29 November 2016.
‘Adrija and I had gone to their house for lunch,’ Vikas says. ‘When we
were leaving, Meghana Aunty gave Adrija a beautiful sari, and she held out
a lovely kurta-pyjama for me, saying, “Akshay had bought this for a family
wedding. He never lived to wear it but I would like you to wear it.”
Vikas says that he was so overwhelmed with emotion that he repeatedly
refused, saying he was not worthy of Akshay’s clothes, but Mrs Girish
insisted he take it. Akshay’s wife, Sangeeta, and his father, Wing
Commander Girish, who were there too, also insisted that he take the
clothes. Finally, Vikas took the clothes home to Jammu and the following
year on 28 July—his birthday—he bathed and wore them. He then went to
the roof of his house dressed in the beautiful bright-blue kurta and white
pyjama and asked his wife to take a few pictures that he put up on social
media. When Naina, Akshay’s five-year-old daughter, saw his picture, she
told her grandmother it was ‘Papa’. When corrected, she changed it to
Vikas Mamu.
Vikas also recounts a visit he paid Vikram Batra’s parents in Himachal.
He asked Mrs Batra for a picture of the handsome martyr since he wanted
to write an article about him.
 ‘She gave me a picture only after I reassured her that I would return it in
a few months,’ he says.
He placed that picture in his overnight bag and took the bus to Jammu. At
Nahan, Vikas got down to have a cup of tea, leaving his bag on his seat.
Sipping on his tea, he was horrified to see the bus zip past him.
‘I ran after it shouting, but it did not stop. You can imagine my panic
because I knew that if I lost Vikram’s picture I would never be able to face
aunty.’ He ran down to get a taxi and managed to catch the bus. He was
relieved to find his bag safe on his seat.
A few months later, when he went back to return Vikram’s picture to his
parents, he was surprised to find that they had caught up with technology
and now had fifty prints of the same picture. ‘I was so annoyed that I told
uncle I wanted a big picture of Vikram just like the one he had made for
himself,’ Vikas laughs. Mr Batra got him a life-sized photograph of Vikram.
Vikas proudly took that back home and put it up in his academy where, he
says, people often came to look at it.
‘Desh is just an idea,’ Vikas say, ‘People are welcome to join. If someone
is really committed, we ask them to get lists of martyrs’ families living in
their own towns or cities. We encourage them to start visiting these families
and sending them bouquets on birthdays and martyrdom anniversaries.’ It is
a very small thing to do but for the families of the martyrs these gestures are
a reassurance that the country their loved ones died for has not forgotten
them.

Author’s Note

This story is based on conversations with Vikas Manhas and Anasuya

Mitra.
Proud parents Dr Narinder K. Kalia and Vijaya Kalia pipping Lt Saurabh Kalia, completely
unaware of how short-lived their happiness was going to be.
The author with Lt Saurabh’s parents at their Palampur (Himachal Pradesh) residence, flanked by
the Dhauladhar range.
Dr Kalia continues to fight a case demanding an internal probe into Lt Saurabh’s death after he
was tortured and killed in Pakistan’s custody.
Mrs Vijaya Kalia with the cheque that Saurabh signed and left behind for her. He died before he
could withdraw a single salary.
Maj. Sonam Wangchuk, MVC, with troops of Ladakh Scouts atop Rock Fall after victory.
Sonam in a lighter moment during the intense two-hour interview for this book.
The handsome Capt. Haneef-ud-din smiles from a photograph in his mother Mrs Hema Aziz’s
personal album.
Mrs Aziz assured the then army chief, Gen. V.P. Malik, that she did not want another soldier to risk
his life to get Haneef’s body back. She also refused the petrol pump that was offered to her.
Lt Vijyant Thapar in his combat greens.
 (Left to right) Lt Vijyant Thapar, VrC, Maj. Vivek Gupta, MVC, and Maj. Padmapani Acharya,
MVC, smile from their last picture taken in Vijyant’s tent. All three lost their lives in the Kargil War.
The heart-wrenching last letter Vijyant wrote to his family from the battlefield.
Col. Virender Thapar with Ruksana, the Kashmiri girl whom Vijyant had asked him to take care of
in his last letter.

Young cadet Anuj Nayyar at the National Defence Academy.

A proud moment for the Nayyars at Anuj’s passing-out parade.
Anuj being promoted to captain on the battlefield.
Anuj after an operation in Kargil.
Capt. B.M. Cariappa flanked by Lance Naik Sher Singh and Naib Subedar Ram Niwas.
Capt. Cariappa and his boys of 5 Para on a peak after a successful operation.
(Left to right) Maj. H.S. Jaggi, Dr Capt. Vikram Grewal (Gary) and Commanding Officer Col.
A.K. Shrivastava of 5 Para taking a breather.
Gary with his patient Hunar Shah, the Pakistani prisoner of war (POW).
Lance Naik Bachan Singh, Lt Hitesh’s father, who died during the Kargil War.
Lt Hitesh Kumar with his brother, Hemant, and mother, Mrs Kamesh Bala, after his passing-out
parade.
(Left to right) Vikas Manhas, Adrija Singh, Aratrika Sen and Anasuya Mitra (standing) of Desh
got together to ensure that the country doesn’t forget its martyrs.
Mrs T. Angmo Shuno and her son Ricky who did their bit to support the Indian Army in Leh.

The blade runner Maj. D.P. Singh not only runs marathons but has also skydived.
 Flight Lieutenant Gunjan Saxena was Kargil’s lone woman warrior.

Soldiers of 13 J&K Rifles respectfully buried enemy soldiers killed in battle.

 Late Capt. Kernal Sher Khan whose bravery was recognized and endorsed by the Indian Army.

Memories of Kargil martyrs sprout from the same soil that they gave up their lives for. These trees
that grow in Kannur, Kerala, were planted by an anonymous person or organization.
Mrs Hema Aziz and artist Hutansh Verma with the latter’s painting of Capt. Haneef.
Jitendra Singh is a security guard from Surat who has written more than 4500 letters of condolence
to the families of martyrs since the Kargil War. Unable to join the Army on medical grounds, he
serves the armed forces in his own way.
Jitendra dreams of having a war memorial in Mumbai where he can display his own work and
collection.

Battle of Tiger Hill

Troops of 18 Grenadiers being briefed before the attack.

Victorious troops of 8 Sikh on top of Tiger Hill after it was captured.

Soldiers of 18 Grenadiers after capturing Tiger Hill.

Soldiers of 18 Grenadiers on Tololing with weapons seized from enemy posts.

Troops of 9 Para (Special Forces) take a break after the capture of Zulu Top.
Soldiers of 9 Para (SF) after capturing a Stinger, a man-portable air-defence system.

Operations of 21 Para (SF)

Working their way up the treacherous mountains where the battles were fought.
Making themselves comfortable to take a break.

Getting ready to fire at the enemy.

Tololing Top and Point 4590

Soldiers of 2 Raj. Rif. occupy a firebase while attacking Tololing.

Troops of 2 Raj. Rif. after the capture of Three Pimple.

 Chief of Army Staff (COAS) Gen. V.P. Malik with the victorious troops of 2 Raj. Rif.

General Officer Commanding (GOC) Maj. Gen. Mohinder Puri, 8 Mountain Division, celebrating
with the soldiers of 2 Raj. Rif.
Capt. Padmapani Acharya being promoted just before the attack on Tololing.

Triumphant soldiers of 1 Naga on the Objective.

Battle of Point 4875

 13 J&K Rifles at Point 4875 after it was captured.

Capt. Vikram Batra inspecting a weapon that was seized.

 Capt. Batra being pipped before the attack.

The COAS with the soldiers of 13 J&K Rifles.

Commanding Officer Col. Umesh Bawa, 17 Jat, finalizing the attack plans.

Victorious troops of 17 Jat on top of the feature.

Soldiers of 17 Jat with the weapons seized from Pakistani posts.

2 Naga enjoying a light moment a day before the attack.

Capture of Zulu Spur

The Commanding Officer of 3/3 Gorkha Rifles (GR), Battery Commander and Company
Commander take a break.

Troops of 3/3 GR immediately after the capture of the feature.

 The POW captured by 3/3 GR.

Capture of Point 4745

Soldiers of 1 Para (SF) get ready to attack.

 Troops of 1 Para (SF) after the capture.

Soldiers of 6 Para after a successful assault.

Action of 1/3 GR

Soldiers of 1/3 GR after occupying Point 5000.

Artillery and Engineers Effect

Army Aviations Corps’ Role

Providing logistics support to ground troops.

 Providing fire support.

Firing laser-guided bombs to destroy enemy positions.

After the War

The COAS with COs and officers.
The COAS congratulating the COs of victorious units.
Soldiers of 17 Jat with the Tricolour on Pimple 2, a part of Point 4875, after a fierce battle.
Soldiers climbing up a naked rock face.
A rocket launcher detachment of Delta Company (‘D’ COY) engaging a target on Tiger Hill.
 Soldiers take a breather.

Troops resting at the battalion base.

Troops displaying captured weapons, ammunition and documents of the Northern Light Infantry
battalion of Pakistan.

Victorious troops after capture of their objective.

The Kargil War Memorial in Dras.
 People and Organizations Working for Martyrs

This is a list of some people and organizations that work for the cause of
the martyrs and their families. Please feel free to look them up and/or join
them if you desire.

Desh: It is a joint effort by Adrija, Ansuya and Vikas, three individuals who
put their heads together and decided they would become family to the loved
ones of martyrs. They visit the families of the martyrs, take them bouquets
to them on birthdays and anniversaries, and try to fill in for the ones who
have left forever. Volunteers are welcome. For more, visit:
https://m.facebook.com/groups/360093104133395.

Honourpoint: It is an online memorial to honour and remember martyrs.

With nearly every martyr listed on its website, Honourpoint is an effort to
ensure that the sacrifices of soldiers and their families remain in the nation’s
collective consciousness. For more, visit: www.honourpoint.in

Vasantharatna Foundation for Arts: It is run by Mrs Subhashini Vasanth,

wife of late Col Vasanth V., Ashok Chakra, who was killed in action while
trying to prevent heavily armed infiltrators from crossing the India-Pakistan
border at Uri in 2007. The foundation attempts to keep the memories of
martyrs alive by instituting memorial awards in their name at educational
institutes and asking their widows to give these away. Mrs Subhashini
received the Neerja Bhanot Award for her exemplary services towards the
families of martyrs.

Martyr Captain Tushar Mahajan Memorial Trust: It was started by

renowned Udhampur educationalist and retired principal Dev Raj Gupta
and Asha Rani Gupta, in the memory of their son—Capt. Tushar Mahajan,
Shaurya Chakra, 9 Para (SF)—who lost his life during a militant attack in
Pampore, J&K, in 2016.

Jitendra Singh: A security guard from Surat, Gujarat, was unable to make
it to the Army but decided to do whatever he could for the men in uniform.
He has written more than 4500 letters to the families of martyrs and tries to
visit them too. He dreams of opening a museum in Mumbai.

Rashtriya Riders: Himmat Singh Mandrella heads this group of riders who
ride to the places where soldiers fought. They also visit the families of
martyrs. For more, you can visit their Facebook page.

Heroes in Uniform: It is run by Sonali Singh, the daughter of a soldier,

who spreads stories of the courage and sacrifice of our soldiers so that they
are not forgotten. She also runs initiatives to equip retired soldiers with
skills that allow them to take up new jobs (having trained close to 450 so
far), runs entrepreneurship programmes for soldiers’ families and organizes
fundraisers for those in need. For more, you can visit the Facebook page.

Major Akshay Girish Trust: Set up by the family of this young officer
who led an attack against heavily armed terrorists and fell fighting after
being hit by multiple bullets in Nagrota in 2016, the trust promotes
nationalism, and motivates and helps those striving for a career in the armed
forces. For more, visit: https://majorakshaytrust.org/.

Portraits of Patriots: Delhi-based art teacher Hutansh Verma pays tribute

to the brave soldiers by making portraits of them and personally delivering
them to the families. He does not like doing this in public functions.

Martyr Tushar Mahajan Trust: The trust presents awards and

scholarships to meritorious students, besides conducting medical camps and
a host of other social programmes. Capt. Tushar Mahajan of 9 Para SF was
killed in action while leading a daring midnight operation to rescue
hostages in the Pampore attack in 2016. For more, visit:
www.facebook.com/captainTusharMahajan9Para/.

Maj Mohit Sharma Foundation: Maj. Mohit Sharma, Ashok Chakra, SM,
of 1 Para SF, laid down his life battling terrorists in the Hafruda forests of
J&K in March 2009. His family runs this foundation in his name and
organizes a number of social programmes and initiatives for those in need.
For more, visit: www.majormohitsharma.org and
www.majormohitsharmafoundation.blogspot.com.
 Acknowledgements

I am grateful to the families of our martyrs for sharing with me their

memories of the men they loved and lost. I hope my stories do justice to
these precious remembrances.
I am thankful to the brave soldiers and officers who fought the Kargil
War and took out time to share their experiences with me. Without them,
this book would not have been possible. I would also like to thank the
Additional Directorate General of Public Information (ADG PI): Col. A.R.
Singh, director, ADG PI, for being a pillar of support at all times; Col. Saji
Abraham, for being my guide and facilitator; and Maj. Dibya Satapathy, for
sifting so painstakingly through war pictures to help find photographs for
this book.
It was a pleasure working with Gurveen Chadha, my book editor: sincere,
meticulous and as passionate about making Kargil the best book we could
as I was. She shared my respect and concerns for the men in uniform. I am
also grateful to Ahlawat Gunjan, head of design at Penguin Random House
India, for creating a cover that captures the spirit of the war.
And, lastly, I would like to thank my husband, Col. Manoj Rawat, for
reading initial drafts, for dropping and picking me up from airports and
train stations, and for ruling with an iron hand our two boys, Hukum (the
crazy golden retriever) and Saransh (the wise teenager), single-handedly
while I was away or writing obsessively.
A thank you is also due to my kid brother, Col. Sameer Singh Bisht, SM,
VSM, for sharing his Kargil War experience with me, for finding stories
and phone numbers for me, and for being my sounding board at all times.
He stepped in to be the first reader of the complete manuscript since Dad
was no longer around to do it. ‘It’s come out very well. Good job!’ he said
as I waited impatiently for his verdict. It’s strange how I sometimes see my
dad in him.
The people we have loved and lost might never come back, but they
continue to live in the ones left behind. That’s what researching for Kargil
has taught me. And that’s what writing it has taught me as well. I am
grateful for it all.
 THE BEGINNING

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EBURY PRESS
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Ebury Press is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found
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This collection published 2019

Copyright © Rachna Bisht Rawat 2019
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Jacket images © Ahlawat Gunjan
This digital edition published in 2019.
e-ISBN: 978-9-353-05591-2
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent,
resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding
or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this
condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.