The perfidious intrusion by Pakistan in the Kargil sector in May 1999 surprised the Army and the nation. The Pakistanis started pounding the NH1D and the settlements around Kargil and Dras heavily with their artillery fire at regular intervals, hence the population had moved behind to safer places. Reports were now coming from the Dras, Mashkoh, Kaksar and Batalik sectors that patrols and helicopters on reconnaissance were being fired upon by the intruders. Efforts to remove the intruders were being met with fierce resistance. They were making it quite clear that this was no ordinary intrusion but a deliberate ingress of occupying the ground. It was apparent that the enemy had established a significant foothold at several points on dominating grounds. Sporadic skirmishes were taking place every day.
Induction into the Battle Zone
My unit, 17 Jat, was part of 79 Mountain Brigade, the corps reserves. We were inducted into the Mashkoh valley on 26 May 99, in the Dras sector. Dras is India’s coldest inhabited place with temperatures dipping to around minus 40 degrees in winters. During the initial briefing, the brigade commander of the Dras brigade briefed us on the latest situation in the area. During his briefing on Point 4875, he told us dryly that “there were not more than eight to ten infiltrators on the heights overlooking Mashkoh valley, just go up, he ordered with casual bravado, and bring them down by their neck”. Till now no patrols had been sent in Mashkoh valley and the heights around it by any unit so far.
Point 4875 dominated the entire Mashkoh bowl. Besides this, Point 4875 was like a virtual fortress, and anyone who was defending it could quickly push back the attackers and inflict heavy casualties on them. The slopes were almost 70 to 80 degrees, and the feature’s height was 16200 feet. The rocks were barren without any cover. The ridges were virgin with no foot tracks leading to them. There was not enough oxygen to breathe.
As I sat barely, 10 km south of the border with Pakistan, my thoughts raced back to Jul 78, when I joined my battalion as a Second Lieutenant. At that time, I believed the chances of leading my battalion into battle were virtually nil. How wrong I was! It seemed that fate had intervened and I was to get my chance to command in war after all. I could not believe my luck, and I could barely contain my excitement when I told my wife Indu, on the telephone, that operations were imminent. I could feel the uneasy calm in her voice when I told her that I was in the battle zone. They heard on television about the Pakistani infiltrators in the Kargil sector and the regular exchange of fire between the troops and the infiltrators. I also had an uneasy feeling that being a soldier was in direct conflict with my duties as a husband and father. There was no doubt that I wanted to go to war, but I also felt slightly guilty that I might be reneging on my parental duty to stay alive and bring up my children. As I became more and more embroiled in the planning process, the dilemma faded from my thoughts. The reality of responsibility towards the lives of 800 troops under me and getting them back safely from the battlefield had never been so clear.
B Company Attack
On 29 May, Subedar Harphool at 2000 hours approached Point 4875 from the eastern direction. When the platoon was 100 meters short of the objective, it came under the effective fire of eight enemy machine guns located there. It was a hellacious barrage of fire unleashed by the enemy. Subedar Harphool and his platoon were taken by surprise. A fierce gun battle followed after that with a heavy exchange of fire. The shooting continued from both sides. It was a substantial firefight. A volley of gunfire rattled back and forth between the patrol and the enemy positions. The platoon commander was shaken up. It had been his first real firefight. Subedar Harphool and his men were outnumbered and encircled by the enemy forces. Sub Harphool got hit by a bullet in his arm but was undeterred; he kept firing at the enemy soldiers and motivating his men to fight back. He got hit by two more shots in his head and third on the chest and collapsed on the ground. He was killed in action. Along with him, five more soldiers lost their lives, fighting valiantly. There were approximately ten others who were injured with gunshot wounds. The attack had to be called off because of casualties and injuries. The platoon was bloodied so severely that it finally hit me what we were really up against. With virtually no cover and intruders entrenched all across the ridge in sangers, the advance was stopped even before it began.
I had never been in a situation like this. The enemy was occupying the critical heights, and we were at the base of the hills and vulnerable to his fire. These were heavily armed and dangerous men sitting on dominating heights and determined to kill anyone challenging them. Were any of us to fall into their hands, we could expect to be tortured in unspeakable ways and then decapitated for all to see. They wanted nothing less than to kill us before we dared to come near them.
Detailed Recee and Establishment of Firm Base
As a result of this tragic incident where we lost one JCO and five other ranks. We undoubtedly learnt our lessons. We revised our operating procedures and planning methodology to mitigate risk better. Since there was massive opposition on the eastern side, I decided to probe the south-eastern and south–western direction to the objective through my patrols, to get detailed information about the enemy, before making further exploitation.
My reconnaissance patrols reported enemy strength of approximately 70 to 80 persons on Point 4875, as against eight to ten as intimated to us earlier. It required three battalions to capture Point 4875. By 05 Jun, we had encircled the enemy from three directions and established our firm base accordingly.
A Company Attack
The task of A company was to capture Pimple 1. A company under Maj RK Singh left the staging area at 2100 hours on 04 Jul. The night sky suddenly lit up like a laser light show as Pimple 1 was attacked. The fire support group of the company fired a massive barrage of machine guns, sending their streak of red tracers at the enemy positions. We could hear the boom of machine-gun fire mixed with intermittent explosions of artillery shells on the objective. As the assault went in, some enemy pulled back to Pimple 2 under heavy pressure.
Pimple 1 was captured after hand to hand fight for two bunkers by 0500 hours 05 Jul as per plan. Two enemy dead bodies and one UMG were recovered from the position. However, when the company was reorganising itself after the first light, it was subjected to heavy artillery/mortar airburst shelling by the enemy.
The casualties of the company started to rise slowly. One of the soldiers was hit by an enemy sniper round. He lost his eye and took substantial damage to his face. He was at once evacuated to the hospital. Three weeks later, we heard that he had lost his eyesight. This news was crushing.
D Company Attack
Whaleback was D company objective. D company under Maj Deepak Rampal left the staging area at 2100 hours on 04 Jul 99. At around 2130 hours, one of the artillery shells landed near the assault troops of D company, injuring one JCO and six brave soldiers. Seven casualties at the beginning of the assault were enough to lower the morale of the assaulting troops. The attack was stalled even before it started. I directed that “under no circumstances the attack should stall and the momentum of attack be maintained at all cost”. Despite all odds, the leading platoons continued with their assault. The enemy, after stiff resistance, realised that his position was getting untenable, and fled behind, leaving a couple of dead bodies and few weapons. Whaleback was secured by 0500 hours 05 Jul. Four enemy dead bodies were recovered along with two UMGs, from the objective and three enemy sangars were destroyed during the battle.
As dawn broke, the enemy on Point 4875 brought down fire against our troops on Whaleback and our casualties began to mount. Murderous bursts of machine-gun fire hammered our position. Rounds snapped inches above our troops. RPG rockets followed in a rapid sequence of three to four, exploding with a tremendous concussion against the rocks. The troops were separated from the bone-jarring explosions and deadly shrapnel by a meter or so. Despite the onslaught, D company held on to their positions. At 0800 hours, Lt Shamsher Singh who was on the forward slopes of Whaleback observed some
enemy troops approximately twenty of them were regrouping and forming up for a counter-attack at a distance of just 300 meters. The forward observation officer, Capt Gildiyal was requested to bring down heavy artillery fire on the enemy regrouping for the counter-attack. Screaming shells started falling all around as they rained vengeance on the enemy. Rounds fell just 100 meters away from Whaleback’s forward slopes. The enemy soldiers in the open were taken entirely unawares. They started falling one by one like a pack of cards. The enemy counter-attack was beaten back.
C Company Attack
Major Ritesh Sharma, the C company commander, left the firm base at Whaleback at 2300 hours on 06 Jul and started moving towards Pimple 2 to launch the final attack. Unfortunately, while moving forward, Major Ritesh and his five men suffered severe injuries due to enemy artillery shelling. I was quite upset with the news of the company commander being injured even before the attack had started. Well, these are ironies of war situations which are unpredictable, and you have to find solutions to overcome the crisis. I kept my calm and told him to hand over the charge of the company to Captain Anuj Nayyar, the company second in command and asked all the injured to fall back to the RAP for their first aid. Pimple 2 was well reinforced by remnants of the enemy falling back from Pimple 1 and Whaleback, and it was now a tough nut to crack. Captain Anuj continued to command his leading platoon into attack under heavy enemy artillery and mortar fire. As the men moved up further, they met stiff resistance. Four machine gun positions on the ridge right in front of them were impeding their progress. Clearing all these positions was a considerable challenge. By 0100 hours on 07 Jul C Company managed to reach within the assaulting distance from Pimple 2. After a fierce firefight for three hours, Captain Anuj and his men were able to capture three enemy sangers. Captain Anuj’s platoon was pinned down by heavy fire from the fourth sangar. It could not be cleared due to the ineffectiveness of RL rounds on the rock face of the sangar. It was already nearing the first light.
It was around 0500 hours on 07 Jul; I had lost radio contact with Anuj as he had stopped responding. I tried my best to contact him, but he would not respond. My sixth sense told me that something was wrong! I asked B company commander Major Punia, who was a reserve for this operation, to take a platoon ahead and try to establish physical contact with Captain Anuj as he had stopped responding on a radio set. It was almost 0700, 07 Jul, hours and broad daylight when Major Punia started moving forward with his platoon. Crawling up, inch by inch, against the smooth incline in the face of the enemy fire, made the task of the troops highly risky. We were losing men. Every movement against the enemy was being met with deadly sniper fire from the adjacent heights. Major Punia could finally establish visual contact with Captain Anuj and his team at about 0900 hours and found Anuj and five of his brave soldiers lying motionless next to the fourth sangar. Captain Anuj while making a final attempt to clear the fourth sangar, was hit by the enemy RPG round on his neck. “Come back, victorious. Never show your back to the enemy and do not become a prisoner of war or be declared missing”, Anuj Nayyar’s father had said to him on a satellite phone, just a day before. Anuj was to get married to Timi immediately after the war. Anuj got his promotion to the rank of Captain just a few days before the war and I had pipped him with the captain status in the war zone. I can now vouch with confidence that he lived up to his reputation and commitment much beyond my imagination. Second-highest wartime gallantry award MAHA VIR CHAKRA was awarded to Captain Anuj Nayyar on 15 Aug 1999.
After the objective was captured, bodies of soldiers killed in action started arriving at the Regimental Aid Post. Some were in sleeping bags, some in improvised stretchers and some wounded were writhing with pain. Some came back limping. Some had broken arms and some with damaged eyes. It was a nasty sight to see your comrades in such a condition. I could not control my emotions and cried silently, standing there stoically and wondering what price we had to pay for the capture of our objective. The joy of victory was slowly converted into the sorrow of losing so many men. It was one officer, one JCO and 34 other ranks and almost a hundred injured. It was a heavy price to pay. I said to myself that I had failed to keep up my promise to bring all my soldiers alive after the battle. Under the circumstances and the enemy opposition, we were facing it was nigh impossible to complete our task without suffering casualties. But I will carry this guilt throughout my life that I could not save the lives of my Soldiers – guilt about surviving when others have not.
17 Jat troops had done incredibly well. Their outstanding performance would remain indelibly etched in military history. We earned on the spot ‘COAS Unit Citation’, ‘Battle Honour Mashkoh’ and ‘Threatre Honour Kargil’. In addition, we earned forty-one individual awards including one MVC, four VrC, six Sena Medals, 20 Mention in Dispatches and ten Commendation Cards.
Conclusion
War is the most destructive and pitiless of all human activities. And yet the experience of war has a profound and strangely compelling effect on those who fight. Combat kills, maims, and terrifies, but it can also reveal the power of brotherhood and selfless sense of purpose. It is an experience that changes soldiers, and those changes last a lifetime. The capacity of self-sacrifice among human beings is nowhere more evident than in the bond between soldiers during the war. The willingness to die for another person is a form of love and is a profound and essential part of the experience.
