kargil::from mouth of a soldier

Another train journey and here I am with another varied experience. Na its not about poor people this time .Its about the people who fight for you, its about people who lay their life for you and you don’t even know them, its about people who risk their life every time so that you can live safely in your home, its about the people who don’t get to see their families or celebrate festivals with them are they not privileged enough??? Na it’s not about privilege. Maybe they are the luckiest people around because they are serving their Motherland. No marks for guessing now, ya it’s about our soldiers who are there fighting for us at the border, keeping vigil. There are those bodos in Assam with their deadly traps , the naxals in Andhra , and pak funded terrorists in J&K .If it hadn’t been for such a strong army India would have dissolved into small states a long time ago .

I met this person oh I must correct myself , I met this soldier belonging to 4th Para Jumpers at delhi .He was traveling to Agra. In a free wheeling conversation between my friend ,myself and this jawan this is what I gotta hear and conclude ::

The guy belonged to himachal , ok you can accuse me of being a state chauvinist but this conversation owe its origin to the fact that three of us belonged to same state , anyways moving further . I was not much interested about this guy and went to my berth in the coach but when the topic of kargil came about I was forced to stand up and listen . The soldier said

“ Before this we have only seen wars in many films but it was Kargil which gave us an opportunity to fight one. We were told that it was a normal jump and air lifted from Agra. Some of people did not have their lunch too but soon they realized it was not normal jump as they were no parachutes around , it was time for Action .”

Now what the hell was Indian Army thinking , how can they lift soldiers up without telling them where they are going , the people landed in Srinagar an hour and half later.

These people were not allowed to leave the premises of the airport and same place where food for 500 people was used for cooking food for 3000 people. There was a fracas for food , with people josting for a single munch , anyways it was time of war and I guess the people had no other option but too satiate their hunger by tasting blood rather then food.
After food these people were given dress and ammunition , mainly a gun and a bag weighing 25kgs containing first aid, some pills of vitamins .

When I asked him about how many days you can survive in these pills in their bag he said

“ two days . and added that their task was to relieve the jawans of Rajputana Rifles (who were fighting in the peaks ) , they were to supply them with ammo,food and medicines and fight and go further top of the hill and try to capture the peak .

The Strategy was simple :

WE were divided into buddy pairs the mantra was “ Survival . chahe job hi hoo jaaye saathi ki jaan naa jaane paaye.”

and their order was to kill the enemy and capture the peak at all costs . The enemy he said mainly were jawans of Pakistan . now all of us knew that first casualty of Kargil War was Amol Kalia and then Saurabh Kalia respectively , from the body of Saurabh Kalia eight kgs of nails were recovered , he quipped . Saying that every pore in his body had a nail hammered into it. All his nails were ripped off .

Then he told about his own role telling us that he fought for 52 days , supplying soldiers with medicines ,ammo and battling enemy . He said for four days continuously at a strech he had no food , One incident he told about was how he gave water to a Pakistani soldier who fell to his feet begging . Humanity does exist in that battlefield as well where you can fell prey to that hungry bullet searching for your body anytime .

Bofors ::

Controversy or no controversy bofors did the job for us ,told the Jawan. He said that it shook everything each and every bunker of the enemy .
Speaking of bunkers he said that the enemy made permanent cemented bunkers on the top of peaks and filled them with ammunition which could last years . They had even captured schools in some locations . The air force he said was helpful but never had much accuracy.

When I reached home I had beard, my face was chaffed, hair was sticky as resembled that of a sadhu , and my body stinked told the jawan .