THE GARUD STRIKES

by Mukul Deva

  Desperate to extricate the Commandant, Glucose shrugged off emotions and focused on the task. He ordered the Forward Air Controller (FAC) to direct an airstrike at the Pakistani position opposite Bravo Company. He also ordered Maneck to lay down a smoke screen in front of Bravo defences.

  The minute Maneck came to know about the situation, he re-directed all the mortars and they laid down barrage after barrage of smoke between Bravo and the enemy. For Maneck, it was not just a professional task. Where Himmeth was concerned, Maneck felt a deep emotional attachment, too.

  ‘Despite being considered a trouble-maker, and against the advice of the top brass, Himmeth took me into the war with 4 Guards. He believed in me, trusted me… In fact, he often told me that I had not been handled well,’ Maneck’s admiration for the old man was abundantly visible. ‘I was an Acting Captain but had been reduced to my substantive rank when I was attached to 4 Guards. Himmeth even spoke to the powers that be and got my acting rank restored when we went to war.’

  Fired with this zeal, Maneck ensured his mortars landed with telling effect; to provide Himmeth the required screen to extricate.

  Meanwhile, the air strike also arrived. It was deadly accurate and forced the Pakistani machine gun to go silent. However, the enemy artillery was already locked on to Bravo Company location and they continued with their deadly tattoo, affected neither by the air strike, nor by Maneck’s mortars.

  Willy-nilly, Himmeth managed to get back to the battalion HQ, bringing back the injured Nahar Singh with him.

  One of the first things Himmeth did on reaching the battalion HQ was to have the doctor take a look at Nahar Singh’s hand. Doctor Sutra confirmed what Himmeth had feared; the injury was a major one. Despite Nahar Singh’s protests, Himmeth ensured Glucose put him on the first chopper out, back to the hospital.

  Meanwhile the action all around 4 Guards was escalating rapidly.

  At Kodda, Delta Company again attempted to capture the bigger bridge, which Alpha had tried on 2nd December.

  ‘We were already in the Forming Up Place (FUP) when we realized the bridge had been reinforced by the Pakistani tank troops that had withdrawn from Akhaura. Now there was no way we could take that post with the resources available to us,’ said Granthi grimly. ‘But by now we were hemmed in. The Pakistani artillery had ranged in and were really hammering at us. For a change, even our own artillery fire was a real pain since we were too close to the enemy, so friendly fire was hurting us as much as the enemy artillery.’

  Just then, Lance Naik Dhuni Ram saw some Pakistani soldiers come running forward. They were trying to outflank his section. Knowing the section would be written off if that happened, Dhuni Ram stood up and boldly engaged them. He was wounded almost immediately, but kept firing and finally beat them up.

  Not too far away from him, Lance Naik Chhotu Ram was also holding the Pakistanis at bay with his LMG. So effective was his fire that the enemy brought an RCL to bear on him. Chhotu was injured, yet he stuck to his guns and kept firing.

  Despite the tremendous pressure they were under, Bravo continued to deny the enemy all movement along the riverbank and the Akhaura railway station. This proved to be of vital importance in enabling the capture of Akhaura by 18 Rajput on 05 December 1971. In addition, Bravo also inflicted a lot of losses on the Pakistanis during their withdrawal on 05 December. And they managed to capture intact the bridge across Titas river.

  DAY FIVE

  05 DECEMBER 1971

  B y now, the Forward Air Controller (FAC) Pilot Officer Daljit Singh Shaheed had reached Kodda.

  Daljit, a youngster with barely one year’s service, had joined 4 Guards as the FAC a few days before the war. He arrived armed with a puny little pistol, a big radio set and a bigger attitude: the kind that wins wars.

  ‘Right from the first day, he hounded Himmeth to give him something to do,’ Glucose grinned; for a moment giving a glimpse of why he had been so nicknamed. ‘Something more active, I mean. Unable to resist his enthusiasm, Himmeth tasked him to look after the Prisoners of War (POWs) during the advance on Akhaura. Not content with that, Daljit insisted on being sent on patrols. The old man did send him out a couple of times, but refrained when he realized that he would be a hard man to replace in case of some unforeseen eventuality. And the chances of that were rather high because Daljit was one of those irreprehensible, boisterous characters. It was very hard to keep him in control. He was always up to something.’

  Glucose thumped the arm of his chair. ‘Let me tell you what he’d done just the previous day. A Pakistani machine gun bunker at Akhaura was continuously harassing us. Located along the line of the bund of the railway line that runs from Akhaura to Brahmanbaria, the bunker was a really tough target to take on. Daljit decided to take matters in hand and call in an airstrike, but we had no sorties available. Totally unfazed, he happily requisitioned a sortie that had actually been allocated for 73 Brigade. The requisition may have been dubious, but the strike was masterful, to say the least. Directed by Daljit, the strike leader flew in barely thirty feet off the ground. He hit the bunker with every rocket he fired. So did the other aircraft following in his wake.’

  A long silence followed, as we all tried to imagine a modern, high-speed aircraft zooming on to a target at that height; thirty feet is barely treetop level.

  By now the attack mounted on Akhuara by 18 Rajput and 10 Bihar had attained critical mass. It proved to be the last straw for the Pakistanis. Their nerves had already been rattled when 4 Guards had cut them off from behind. Now literally under siege from all sides, they just got up and started to run away.

  The bridge on the Akhaura-Brahmanbaria railway track, which first, Alpha and then Delta Company of 4 Guards had tried to capture, fell to the Rajputs almost immediately. It broke the back of the Akhaura defences totally. The Pakistanis fled helter-skelter. Within minutes, the tone of the battle had altered dramatically.

  ‘It became a duck shoot,’ Paunchy cut in. ‘They were running right across our front and our boys shot down many of them.’

  The same scenario was also playing out in front of Bravo Company. The Pakistanis fleeing in panic fell to the guns of the waiting guardsmen.

  ‘Most of them were from 33 Baluch, as we discovered from the dead bodies,’ Glucose added. ‘It was a total rout.’

  The five PT 76 tanks that had made life miserable for Alpha Company the previous day also fell into the hands of the guardsmen. It was only now that Paunchy found out the real reason why they had refrained from attacking him, or from using their main guns on him. Due to non-availability of spares, the main guns of all five tanks were no longer functional.

  Operation ‘Nut Cracker’, the investment and capture of Akhaura had succeeded.

  Akhaura was a vital block on the road to Dacca, and its capture did crack the Pakistanis. Now the Indian forces had broken past the hard outer shell and were inside the soft kernel; which proved to be much softer than what the Pakistanis had imagined it to be.

  Himmeth got the message that Brigadier Mishra was on his way forward. They decided to meet at Bravo Company location. Himmeth was soon back in the same location from where he had barely escaped alive just hours ago. However, now, the mood of the boys was remarkably different. Their morale was sky high and the guardsmen were raring to pick up the chase and hunt down the withdrawing Pakistanis.

  As evening fell, the two commanders bent their heads over the map, in the light of a lantern, and began to confer. Unaware that, a few metres away, shielded by the fading light, a wounded Midha was listening to every word.

  ‘Life seldom gives us such opportunities, sir,’ Midha heard Himmeth tell the Brigade Commander. ‘God knows when we will get the orders to advance… By then, it might be too late. I think we should just keep the pressure on and go after the enemy. This is a chance of a lifetime… We should not give them any time to stabilize.’

  Both were obviously experienced commanders and unwilling to let this golden opportunity pass, since that is pr
ecisely what they did. Mishra told Himmeth to press on while the Pakistanis were still falling back in complete disarray.

  The guns had barely fallen silent on Akhaura and the Pakistanis were still pulling back helter-skelter when 4 Guards resumed the chase.

  ‘I cannot tell you how I felt when I heard them talking,’ Midha was clearly emotional. ‘It made my morale soar. Suddenly, all the death and destruction that we had lived through the past four days seemed to become worthwhile.’

  Though raring to be part of the chase, the injured Midha was ordered to get the dead and wounded back to the ADS, which had been established on the IB.

  As night fell, the cold deepened. Surrounded by the dead and wounded, Midha shivered through the freezing night. All around him, he could hear the battalion getting ready to advance.

  Unaware of all this, Alpha Company was busy collecting the bodies of the seven men from Desraj's platoon, which they had been unable to do earlier.

  ‘I don't know whether you know what happens to a body when it has been lying out in the open for a couple of days,’ the expression on Paunchy's face was hard to describe, an admixture of pain and anger.

  I didn't. Not sure of what to say, I just shook my head.

  I didn't. Not sure of what to say, I just shook my head. ‘The bodies were in pathetic condition; covered with ants, flies and blue-bottles … some even partially eaten by dogs.’ He looked sick at the memory, as I did simply listening to him. ‘We finally got them on stretchers and then Subedar Makhan delegated twenty-eight of my boys to take them back to the Quartermaster, a few kilometres to the rear.’

  The stretcher party had been gone about half an hour when Himmeth gave the orders for the unit to commence advance to Arhand. Pursuant to the discussion between Mishra and Himmeth, the Brigade Commander had ordered him to resume advance and set-up a roadblock at Arhand. The plan was to dominate the Brahmanbaria-Chittagong highway, the main artery between the two Pakistani formations opposing them.

  ‘The taste of victory had yet to seep in when we got orders from Brigade HQ to move ahead and establish a roadblock at Arhand by first light,’ said Glucose. He quickly drew a rough sketch of it for me, as he realized that the civilian map was inadequate. ‘Though there was no time for reconnaissance to be carried out, and we were battered and exhausted after five days of non-stop action, our morale was high and the boys were raring to go.’

  But Alpha Company was in no condition to resume advance. They had already lost half of Desraj’s platoon during the Pakistani counter-attack on the smaller bridge. Another twenty-eight men (almost a complete platoon) was ferrying the dead bodies back to the Quartermaster, Captain Pradhan, so that he could dispose them of properly. In fact, if the battalion had not received a large number of reservists just prior to commencement of operations, Alpha Company would no longer have had the manpower to exist as an independent entity.

  By now Paunchy was getting worried; it had been quite a while since his men had been gone with the bodies and there was no sign of them. When he finally managed to get through to them on Pradhan’s radio set, he learnt that they were being sent back to Agartala with the bodies for proper disposal since Pradhan had no resources available with him to conduct their last rites.

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

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

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

  DAY SIX

  06 December 1971

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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