This is the 40th anniversary of the liberation of Bangladesh. I am reproducing below excerpts from a piece written by my School Senior - Col Pradeep Saxena (Retd) on his personal experiences during the 1971 Campaign for Dhaka, which the Indian Army and Bangladesh's Mukti Bahini won. Pradeep was a young 2nd lieutenant then :
Col Saxena and friends atop a captured enemy tank
On 3rd Dec we heard the news of the Pakistani air attack on our airfields. Soon a flurry of orders reached us and at 8 PM that night our Artillery unit posted at the akhuara border opened with a barrage of 100 guns across in to East Pakistan amidst cries of `Bharat Mat ki Jai' (Victory to Mother India). Similar barrages opened all around East Pakistan from West Bengal to Tripura. THE WAR HAD BEGUN.
By 10 PM our infantry had captured early objectives with very few casualties and there was a general sense of achievement.
The morning of 4 Dec saw the first Pak Sabres overhead attacking us with their machine guns and rockets. Our IAF MiGs arrived soon and the Pak Sabres disappeared as we cheered from down below. It was my first experience of being under an air attack.
By noon two of my course-mates as well as an Artillery officer with an assaulting Infantry battalion had also made the supreme sacrifice. I was immediately asked to hand over my charge and leave to replace him.
I crossed in to East Pakistan 30 mins later amidst firing and bursting shells. Sticking to the road wasn’t a good idea, driving across paddy fields was even worse and invited getting stuck. So I got on to the railway track and drove astride the rail track in between my jeep’s wheels, my driver cribbing all through about the damage it would cause to the tires, even as we kept getting shot at by Pak bullets.
I joined the Paltan by 1.30 PM and moved along with them to capture the last Pak post holding out.
We now had our first Prisoners of War (POWs), some 30 or so, surprisingly no Pak officer amongst them. We had broken the crust and were on our way to Dacca
We were then asked to move towards Brahmanabaria which was some 25 kms away enroute to Dacca Dacca
The Pak Army had meanwhile blown up the only rail-road bridge that existed over the Meghna River (as the Brahmaputra is called in Bangladesh
My CO then said, "So you want to make History”, I replied "Sir aren’t we already doing that?” He burst out laughing, hugged me and said "OK son go ahead and make the most of it.” He then told me that I would be part of the first ever Heliborne Assault by the Indian Army in a War.
The heli-lift over Meghna starts
By 12 noon, the first Mi-4 helicopters had landed in the town’s stadium and by 1 PM, we were on our way. As the choppers formed up in to two inverted “V” formations, we found that they were open from the back and we had to hold on to whatever we could to avoid falling-out; so much for air safety, but then this was War. We were joined by a fighter escort of 4 MiGs who flew around us in circles.
The Meghna is nearly 5000 yards wide, a width most of us couldn’t swim despite knowing how to, and most certainly not in battle gear with 25 kgs on our backs, besides our weapons.
Pak MMG and Arty fire was soon on to us after the drop, and we raced across the open fields towards whatever cover we could get behind, even as we fired back at them. A fire-fight soon developed which lasted for nearly an hour, but then the Pak troops surrendered.
Mercifully neither side had any injured, so we tied them up, blind folded them and put them in the only space available which was the waiting room of the nearby railway station called Methikanda. The ferry-in of more troops followed all through the night and by 4 AM next morning we were all in.
The Infantry CO, had flown in the second batch and called for a briefing in the evening, sitting in the open on the platform. At the end of it, we heard Pak radio make two absurd pronouncements, i) that they were on the outskirts of Agartala and were about to capture it and ii) that a “desperate attempt by the Indian Army to heli-land troops in the interiors had been thwarted and all those involved in it had been killed; bodies were being counted. Two choppers had also been downed”.
The CO therefore felt that a drink was called for to honour our death and soon a few bottles of whisky, brandy and rum materialized from nowhere. We all had our choice of drink poured in to our white enameled mugs, used not only for our daily cup of tea, but also for shaving, bathing as also certain unmentionable acts!
Next morning we were on our way to Narsingdi, some 30 kms away, this time marching along the railway track as no road existed. Midway we found a few empty railway wagons, so we loaded our guns and ammunition on them and pushed them along the tracks. Our march was uneventful except for the few times we had to dive for cover when we heard aircraft overhead, only to realize that it was the IAF heading for Dacca
A few kms short of Narsingdi, we came across an abandoned diesel engine in running condition. One of the officers knew something about rail engines and soon the bogies we were pushing were attached to it and we were chugging along towards our destination, some of us running ahead to change signals and tracks or to ensure unhindered movement. We captured the town around 4 AM, having virtually walked 30 km non-stop. We had by then walked nearly 80-85 kms from Agartala and were still 42 kms North East of Dacca. Sleep overcame the brave and we dropped off where we could in the open.
We the Arty (Artillery), were now required to reach the outskirts of Dacca Dacca Dacca Dacca
That same night, we got our first letters, the Caribous had dropped the mail. I got two letters, one from my Mom and another from my Dehradun uncle informing me that my younger brother (also an XFAPSIAN) was now in the thick of things at a God forsaken place called Hilli and that my Uncle also an Army doctor had moved in to Bangladesh
Nothing much happened till midnight when the Pak Army made an unsuccessful bid to attack our guns position. Our battle continued till early hours of the morning when the remnants of the Pak Army withdrew across the River leaving behind about 20 dead and another 10 wounded. As they withdrew across the river, I lined up one of my guns and fired at the ferry in which they were escaping. We scored a bulls-eye and the ferry sank. The surviving Pak troops then swam back to the other side. The wounded told us that they had numbered about 90 and were shocked to learn that only 30 of us had driven them back. That was to be my last face to face encounter of the war.
By next morning all the big-wigs had arrived to congratulate us and my CO took me aside to tell me that he was recommending me for the Vir Chakra. I took it in my stride as I had missed getting one earlier too and wasn’t surprised that I did not get one after the War either; others probably deserved it more, I guess.
We also learnt shortly thereafter that the US 7th Fleet led by its biggest aircraft carrier the USS Enterprise, had steamed in to the Bay of Bengal in support of Pakistan. My men looked at me for answers; so I told them plainly “From now on we do not wave at every aircraft we see”; we had been doing that the last few days taking every aircraft to be the IAF. Fortunately we did not get to see the USAF overhead.
By 13th Dec over 200 guns had been lined up from North of Dacca to its South and we opened up a barrage with them around 6 PM. The Battle for Dacca
We stopped at 6 AM, just as the first IAF aircraft swopped down to deliver their bomb loads. They kept up their non-stop attacks all through the day till 6 PM. The moment they left we opened up and continued through the night. This continued for the next two days, IAF assaults during day and Arty assaults through the night; aimed at breaking the Pak will and forcing them to surrender.
We received orders around midnight 15/16 Dec that “Surrender Talks were in Progress and all firing was to cease by 06.00 AM next day, viz 16 Dec”. We knew the end was near and worked over time to pump in as many shells as we could in to Pak positions even as our guns grew red hot in color.
We stopped firing at 06.00 am though the IAF did carry out a few sorties till 09.00 AM. There was total silence thereafter and one could hear even a pin drop then. We were a little disappointed that it all ended so suddenly, but the truth was that WAR was OVER.
We were soon buoyed when we were told to get ready for the Victory parade in to Dacca Dacca
We reached the Race Course shortly before 3 PM and formed a semi-circle on to one side as we waited for the surrender ceremony to unfold. People wept openly as we were mobbed, hugged and kissed by every one alike, shouting Joy Bangla and waving flags. Garlands Bangladesh had converged on to Dacca
Sheikh Mujib being recieved by an Indian guard of honour at Dhaka after his release from Pakistan in January, 1972
See Also: 1971:Vignettes from the Past
1 comment:
Good...liked it.
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