*A DRINK WITH A FIELD MARSHAL.*
A Sam Bahadur story, penned by an unknown merchant banker, pulled out of the archives... ❤
Two and a half decades ago I was a merchant banker, a stint in my career which probably gave me some of my most memorable moments. But the cherry on top of that very motley cake was when I was asked to be present at the press and brokers' conferences to launch a certain company's maiden public issue. Not that these conferences were unusual, one was perpetually in and out of them those days: but this was out of the ordinary, for the Chairman of the host company would be present himself, and the worthy was no less than Field Marshal Sam Maneckshaw.
From the moment I received the invitation I went into overdrive as they say these days. The press conference was a lunch affair, and I was there well before anybody else. The company chaps and the advertising agency people were busy making arrangements, the hotel staff were setting the buffet, and amidst all this, looking slightly lost, in a cream suit and arms akimbo, surveying the distance was that famous pair of eyes and the telltale nose crowning the now white mustache. I walked up to him, clicked my heels and bowed, and said, "Field Marshal, may I have the honour of shaking the hand of a fine officer and gentleman, and the only Field Marshal's in my life?!"
He held his hand out with a twinkle of his blue/grey eyes, with a dismissive wave of his hand saying, "Oh come on, don't be silly! Who the devil are you?"
I said I was a dreary banker with a taste for soldiers, at which he laughed. But by now the press was trickling in, and soon he was mobbed. But my moment with him I preserved for the evening, when the brokers would leave him to me. In any case they couldn't tell the difference between a Field Marshal and a court martial: I was reasonably sure of having the old boy to myself.
Just before the evening's brokers' affair began I sidled up to Sam Bahadur and told him I would be hijacking him immediately after the audio-visual and his ritual speech: I told him I wanted to talk to him as a soldier, not as a company chairman. That intrigued him. He raised his eyebrows in mock wonder, before he was led away to the dais.
Half an hour or so later, I rushed up to him and said, "Now, Field Marshal!" The cocktails were on, the broking community was tanking itself up, and I quietly led Sam to a sofa on the sidelines. Calling the supervising waiter I instructed him to look in on us every twenty minutes to refill our glasses, but otherwise to leave us alone.
Settled in well with our drink, I asked him the first question: Field Marshal, what happened at the Sittang Bridge in April 1942?
He nearly choked on his drink. Recovering, he screwed up his eyes and looked very curiously at me, almost disbelievingly. "How the hell do YOU know about Sittang Bridge?? God heavens man, no one's asked me that in fifty years, even in my own army!" he said incredulously. I smiled, and gently told him I knew he got his MC in that action. "You astonish me!" he said. "And you said you were a banker?"
"Yes Field Marshal. As I said earlier, one with a taste for soldiers. So, could the bridge have been saved? I know that decision is debated to this day. Jackie Smyth's position…and Hugh-Jones taking his own life so many years after it was all history…"
The FM shook his head in wonder and incredulity at my knowledge. "God! How the hell do you know all this??" he kept asking. I reassured him it wasn't entirely unusual for bankers – or some at least – to be interested in military history.
And for the next twenty minutes I had the unique privilege of an eyewitness account of that infamous military disaster during the retreat from Burma. The FM's own moment of glory had come while leading the defence of "Buddha Hill" on the wrong side of the still intact Sittang Bridge, when he was critically shot in the thigh and abdomen: his CO thought he was dead, and promptly gave him the Military Cross – his own, as it happened.
After a refill of glasses I brought him up to 1962, and the debacle against the Chinese. I asked him about the late Gen. Kaul, and slyly reminded him about his nickname for Kaul's acolytes, "Kaul boys." He guffawed into his drink, saying, "Trust you to remember that!" But the old boy was nothing if not a gentleman: he refused to say a word about the man who had vilified him and sidelined him, and brought such infamy on the fair name of the Indian Army. "Thank God the government finally saw reason," was all I could get out of him. Modest for someone who replaced the very same Kaul as Corps Commander of the thoroughly demoralised IV Corps. Yet not above a soldier's vanity to be indifferent to praise: he blushed a pretty red when I said his appointment was the shot in the arm that the army so badly needed then, and how later, his military advice to Mrs. Gandhi carried the day in the Bangladesh operations.
This piece would be unconscionably long if I were to narrate all the stories he told me about his famous chats with the Prime Minister (she called him Sam). But one I think must find place.
He was Army Chief at the time, and his daughter came home from boarding school one day unexpectedly. His wife was away in London. Father and daughter decided to spend the night out discoing in Delhi's nightspots. At one of these they were dancing very close, cheek to cheek – so he said. The next morning the Prime Minister summoned him: Sam, will you step across for a minute?
He went in, saluted and stood, waiting for her to speak.
"Sam…I don't now how to say this…"
"Yes Ma'am? What is it?"
"Well…you were seen by my people last night…"
"Seen?? Where?"
"Well…some disco or other…dancing…"
This time Sam decided to have some fun. "You see Ma'am, my wife's away shopping in London, I'm a soldier, I'm lonely. I needed a woman"
"But Sam…! At your age…you ought to be ashamed…I mean, they tell me she was young enough to be your daughter…cheek to cheek, they said…"
"But Prime Minister, she WAS my daughter!"
At which Mrs. Gandhi laughed and said, "Oh Sam…! You're impossible! Still, I wish you were more discreet about these things…"
And Sam told her there wasn't much chance of that with her RAW tails all over the place.
Four hours later I took leave of him – even Field Marshals had to sleep. But before parting he invited me to his place in Coonoor, and paid me a compliment I cherish. Shaking my hand warmly he said, "You know, you should have joined the army. You'd have been one of us!"
*****
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