KARGIL MANOJ PANDEY

BRAVE PVC STORIES  - THE KARGIL WAR 1999

Of all the wars India fought none caught the imagination of the people as much as Kargil. This was the first war fought with constant media coverage. Indians until now obsessed with film stars got to see for the first time what real heroes looked like as television sets beamed right into our bedrooms images of armed soldiers and gritty young officers bravely climbing the peaks of Tiger Hill and Dras to flush out crafty intruders.

The Tricolor was eventually unfurled on every peak but many of these brave men never returned from the war. We were left with images of coffins being saluted and parents, spouses and little children weeping quietly at funerals that made every Indian realize the terrible loss that every conflict results in. Attacks were launched at heights above 15, 000 feet in subzero temperatures.

Soldiers had to fight in an environment where even breathing is a strain. With heavy backpacks, they had to climb for days on meagre rations and sometimes nothing to eat and face bullet showers and grenade attacks to finally flush out the enemy sitting secure behind sanghars and bunkers and in snow tents. The Indian government’s decision to not let the Army cross the LOC reduced their tactical options greatly. Conditions were nightmarish for battalion commanders when uncompromising orders from the top demanded results almost overnight. These results were achieved but at a great loss. Twenty-five officers and 436 jawans were killed, and 54 officers and 629 jawans wounded at Kargil. Many were disabled for life.

It was in these daunting circumstances that four of the heroes of the Kargil War won their Param Vir Chakras. Two of these were officers and two jawans but only two could survive to tell their brave tales. About the other two we know from the accounts of comrades who fought besides them, witnessed their acts of glory and then brought their bodies home.

A backgrounder

The Pakistan offensive in Kargil was part of a much bigger plan by Pakistan and it took Indian policy planners by surprise. During the winter of 1998-99, some elements of the Pakistani Armed Forces were covertly training and sending Pakistani troops and paramilitary forces, some allegedly in the guise of mujahideen, into territory on the Indian side of the LOC.

The infiltration was code named Operation Badr, and was aimed at severing the link between Kashmir and Ladakh and causing Indian forces to withdraw from the Siachen Glacier, thus forcing India to negotiate a settlement of the broader Kashmir dispute. Pakistan also believed that any tension in the region would help make the Kashmir issue international. Pakistani Lieutenant General Shahid Aziz, then head of ISI analysis wing, later stated that there were only regular Pakistan Army soldiers who took part in the Kargil War. ‘There were no mujahideen, only taped wireless messages, which fooled no one. Our soldiers were made to occupy barren ridges, with hand-held weapons and ammunition,’ Lt Gen Aziz wrote in his article in the daily The Nation in January 2013.

By early May1999, Pakistan had extended its defences well across the Line of Control (LOC) in the Mushkoh, Dras, Kaksar and Batalik sectors. The extent of penetration across the LOC varied from 4 to 8 km in each sector. Strong defensive positions were established by regular troops of the Northern Light Infantry and Special Service Group commandos, with full support of artillery, mortar and antiaircraft missiles. Military stores were dumped and anti-personnel mines laid. A force of 2000-strong had moved into Indian territory. They were directly overlooking the Srinagar—Leh highway.

The first reports that there were intruders came in from a bunch of shepherds on 6 May 1999 and it took the army time to determine the size and extent of the intrusion. A patrol that was sent out never returned and it was only on 10 June 1999 that the Pakistani Army returned to India the cruelly mutilated bodies of Maj Saurabh Kalia, the patrol leader, and his five soldiers. The bestiality of the Pakistani soldiers and the manner in which they had treated the Indian soldiers who had been taken prisoners was shocking. What was even worse was that the government of India, other than making a few statements, did not and has not till date taken the case up more strongly with the world bodies. Major Kalia’s father is still waging a lone war against the war crime.

The extent of intrusion in Kargil, when it was fully known, was staggering. Fighting on mountains is always to the advantage of the defender who is secure behind his defences while the attacker who has been ordered to ‘throw them out’ is totally vulnerable in the open as he climbs steep slopes which are at times almost vertical and require the use of ropes. The defending Pakistani soldiers were very confident that the odds were so much in their favour that they could beat back any attack.

It would have been a difficult war to win but for one factor in the Indian armed forces that the enemy had not factored in—raw courage. Through sheer grit and determination, young officers in their 20s led their men to impending death, paving the way for others to follow.

Initially, without maps, supplies, adequate ammunition and even winter clothing, the ill-equipped infantryman fought and eventually won this battle for India. He was supported by the gunners who tried to reduce the odds by continuously bombarding the heights where the enemy soldiers were lodged and the Air Force pilots who fearlessly flew overhead and bombed the enemy bunkers.

In many vital points, neither artillery nor air power could dislodge the Pakistani soldiers, who were not in visible range. The Indian Army had no option but to send up soldiers for direct ground assaults which were slow and took a heavy toll, given the steep ascent that had to be made on peaks as high as 18, 000 feet. Since any daylight attack would be suicidal, all the attacks had to be made under the cover of darkness, escalating the risk of freezing.

Accounting for the wind-chill factor, the temperatures were often as low as -15 degrees Celsius near the mountaintops. The high-risk frontal assaults could have been avoided if the Indian Arm had blocked the supply route of the enemy, virtually creating a siege, but this was not permitted since it meant Indian troops would have to cross the LOC, something that India was not willing to do since it would have reduced international support for its cause. The Army thus had to pay a very heavy price for diplomacy by losing brave young soldiers in circumstances that were biased against them.

According to India’s then Army chief Ved Prakash Malik, and many other scholars, much of the background planning, including the construction of logistical supply routes, had been undertaken much earlier. Some analysts believe that the blueprint of attack, that had been sidelined by other political leaders, was reactivated soon after Pervez Musharraf was appointed chief of army staff in October 1998. After the war, Nawaz Sharif, prime minister of Pakistan during the Kargil conflict, claimed that he was unaware of the plans and that he first learned about the situation when he received an urgent phone call from Atal Bihari Vajpayee, his counterpart in India. Sharif attributed the plan to Musharraf and ‘just two or three of his cronies’, a view shared by some Pakistani writers who have stated that only four generals, including Musharraf, knew of the plan. Musharraf, however, asserted that Sharif had been briefed on the Kargil operation 15 days ahead of Vajpayee’s journey to Lahore on 20 February.

Two months into the conflict, Indian troops had slowly retaken most of the ridges that were encroached by the infiltrators; according to official count, an estimated 80 per cent of the intruded area and nearly all high ground was back under Indian control.

Four brave soldiers were awarded the Param Vir Chakra for their supreme bravery in Kargil. They were: 1. Grenadier Yogender Singh Yadav, 18 Grenadiers, Param Vir Chakra. 2. Lieutenant Manoj Kumar Pandey, 1/11 Gorkha Rifles, Param Vir Chakra, posthumous. 3. Captain Vikram Batra, 13 JAK Rifles, Param Vir Chakra, posthumous. 4. Rifleman Sanjay Kumar, 13 JAK Rifles, Param Vir Chakra.



Manoj Kumar Pandey

Batalik sector, Kargil

2-3 July 1999
no photo
Manoj Pandey sat crouched in a trench, almost blending in with the rugged brown slope. He was watching a burst of Bofors fire light up the purple sky. The unruly stubble on his chin made his face itch. He could smell the nauseating sweat in his hair even from under his helmet with a rip in the lining where the hard metal pressed against his scalp— cold yet strangely reassuring. Under the grime smearing his face, his features were good—a well-defined straight nose, firm mouth, broad forehead creased in concentration. He didn’t wear a moustache. His chin was determined, his eyes warm, brown and finely lashed, though at that moment they were bloodshot from serious lack of sleep. He sat motionless, staring stonily ahead, his rough, weather-beaten hands clasped firmly around his Insas rifle.

A khukri (a traditional Nepali dagger) hung from his belt and rubbed against his thigh, the evil glint of its cunning blade sheathed in soft velvet. At the regimental centre in Lucknow, where he was trained to be a Gorkha Rifles soldier, he had been told it was the best weapon to use in close combat, small and deadly, instilling instant terror in the enemy. He had been trained to slice a man’s neck off, cutting swiftly across the skin—right to left, left to right, ripping through veins and sinewy muscles in one powerful move.

At the regiment’s Dussehra celebration when he had just joined his unit two years ago, he had been asked to prove his mettle by cutting off the head of the sacrificial goat after the puja. For a moment his mind had wavered but then his arms had lifted in the air, bringing the glittering blade of the sharp dagger down on the scared, bleating animal’s neck, severing it from its twitching body in one massive blow that sprayed his nervous, perspiring face with warm blood. Later, in his room, he had trembled at the act and washed his hands half a dozen times to take away the guilt of his first deliberate kill. He had always been a vegetarian and a teetotaller.

In the past two months, Manoj had come a long way from his natural humane reluctance to take lives. He had contrived attacks, planned kills and used stealth to surprise enemy soldiers as they sat on craggy peaks. He had climbed up freezing mountains, trudging through snow and sleet, even without winter clothing in the initial days. He would use woollen socks as gloves to shield his freezing fingers, peeling them off when they got soaked in a sudden shower, twisting them to squeeze the water out and slipping them on again. He had fixed targets within the sight of his rifle, taken aim and pressed the trigger; tracing the bullet’s path with his eyes as it zipped through the distance and embedded itself in human flesh. He had killed in cold blood, shooting men through their heads, through their hearts, dispassionately watching them bleed to death. His expertise with the khukri as a weapon of execution had, however, not been tested yet. His instinct told him that tonight could be the night.

Manoj Pandey shifted his weight and winced. The edges of his briefs were cutting into his groin. Every time he moved, the rough fabric would slice through the raw skin, digging a microinch deeper. He had been wearing the same clothes for almost a week. Running a hand across his soiled combats, he felt the murky stiffness of sweat and grime. His fingers hovered over the rips and tears where the fabric had been ragged threadbare by crawling on razor-sharp rocks. But there was consolation in company. Cocking his head slightly, he silently observed the dark outlines of his men—short, stocky Gorkhas, grouped unevenly around him in the darkness—dirty, starving and battle-fatigued, yet brave. He made no sign, his eyes remained dark and languid, no emotion flitted across his face, but for them he felt deep warmth in his heart.

The sun had disappeared, dropping an impregnable black quilt over the terrain. It hid the crisp green of the grass, the blue rush of the sparkling water, the mesmerizing beauty of the district; and he preferred it that way. Daylight just added to his outrage at Pakistan’s audacity to sneak in and occupy the heights around them. Emotion interfered with resolve; tonight all he needed was cold reason and an animal’s instinct for survival.

Somewhere behind him, in the gloomy darkness intercepted only by the call of crickets, the Ganasak Nala gurgled, lapping against the quiet of the still night. Ahead loomed a steep though blurred 70-degree incline. That was Khalubar, the 5000-metre high ridge he and his men had to climb that night. Their task: to reach up undetected, take the enemy by surprise and destroy the Pakistani bunkers on top before daybreak.

He knew not many of them were expected to return but that didn’t bother him much. He remembered the emotional words he had once scrawled in the depths of a diary he had been maintaining since childhood: Some goals are so worthy; it’s glorious even to fail. Signalling to his men to follow with a curt nod, Manoj got up, slung his gun behind him and started to walk.

For more than a month they had been on almost continuous assignments, one following the other. In the Army, they called it a rodent’s life— scampering up hillsides under cover of darkness, finding holes to crawl into when daylight broke, carrying on their backs 4-kg backpacks that held sleeping bags, extra pairs of socks, shaving kits and letters from home. They would nibble on hard, stale puris when hunger struck. Though the nala was close, with its fresh water beckoning, they could never reach it because the enemy would fire from the top. Instead, they would reach into crevices to snap off icicles that they would suck greedily on to quench their thirst.

They would fill their water bottles with crushed snow for the endless rocky climbs where water would not be found and crack icicles under their teeth, swirling them around in their mouths like the coloured iced lollies from their childhood. When Manoj returned to his trench after a taxing assignment, bonetired and shivering, and closed his eyes for a few moments of respite, images that were hidden in some corner of his mind, carefully wrapped in the cobwebs of time, came back to haunt him. ‘Bhaiya kuch toh le lo,’ (Brother, take something, at least) the three-year-old could hear his mother’s voice from somewhere in the distance. His eyes were lost in the cacophony of sound and colour that play an important part in the wooing ritual of young innocents by the habitual seducers, big cities.

It was his first visit to Lucknow and the little boy from Rudha village, dressed in his best khaki shorts and cotton shirt, was looking with wide-eyed wonder at the new world unfolding before him. He had never beheld these sights before. Around him there were hawkers selling sticks of fluffy pink candyfloss and bright-orange bars of ice-cream; crisp golgappas were disappearing into open mouths, and on a wooden cart, a man was grating ice to a fine powder that he would collect in a mud bowl, sprinkle with some bright red syrup, stick a wooden spoon into and hand over to outstretched arms.

He felt his mother pull on his little hand and suddenly his senses were assaulted by a big man with a ferocious black upturned moustache and yellow paan-stained teeth that flashed in his face when he parted his lips in a big smile. Behind him, on a wooden pole, were tied balloons and bright plastic toys— pistols with brown butts, squeaky green parrots with shiny red beaks, catapults, whistles and dolls.

What caught his eye was a brown wooden flute, dotted with darker stains. ‘I want that,’ he told his mother. She tried to tempt him to buy a toy since she felt he would not be able to play it but he was undeterred. Finally, she gave up and paying Rs 2 to the vendor, placed the flute in her son’s little hand, quite sure that he would throw it away before the day ended.

She was wrong. The flute stayed with Manoj for the next 21 years. He would take it out every day, play a tune on it and then place it back in his cupboard next to his neatly folded clothes. Even when he went away, first to Sainik School, then the National Defence Academy (NDA) and finally, the snowclad peaks of Kargil, the flute would remain in his trunk of old clothes and memories that his mother would eventually stop looking at because it always made her cry.

Deep in his stomach, Manoj could feel a faint rumble. He wondered if the man beside him could hear it, too. Hunger pangs were striking. There was an cold puri lying in his backpack somewhere, but he didn’t care much for it. It was like chewing on cardboard. This time it was his tongue that tempted his mind to go back to the mess where dosa, sambhar and that spicy chutney called gunpowder would be served on Sunday afternoons for brunch. ‘Gunpowder, ‘ he said aloud and laughed dryly. His mind went back to that first Sunday in the regiment when the commanding officer (CO) had asked him for a glass of wine. A teetotaller, and new to the Army then, he didn’t know how wine was served and summoning the mess waiter had naively asked: ‘How will you have it, Sir? With soda or water?’ The bar had rung out with amused laughter.

Manoj shook his head to shake the memories out of it and concentrated on the task ahead: He and his men had been climbing in miserable darkness for almost nine hours. Most of them had rolled up their jackets and shoved them into their backpacks. Manoj had a pair of spare woollen socks that he had wrapped around the breechblock of his rifle to keep it warm and lubricated and protected against jamming in the cold. A seized weapon in war could make the difference between life and death. On the last mission, a man’s breechblock had jammed and he had had to hastily light a precious fuel tablet under it to get it back in working order. He didn’t want that happening tonight.

Though the night temperature was touching sub-zero, the arduous climb made the soldiers sweat. Manoj led his men, quick and noiseless. He would slip his fingers into cracks in the rocks and pull himself up, feeling his way ahead, deliberately keeping his mind off the fact that there could be a snake or a scorpion sitting in a crevice, ready to strike. The ascent was slow and nerve-wracking. Besides the terrain and the bad weather, there was the constant trepidation that the very next fold in the ridge could be an enemy hideout or a bunker. Every still shadow in a crevice appeared to be a Pathan lurking with a gun. The fear was constant, dogging them at every step, constricting their throats with its suffocating grip, making goosebumps erupt on their cold, wet skin.

Climbing was a thirst-inducing business and most of the men had finished their one-litre water bottles. They found some patches of snow under larger stones. While some of it was fresh and could be picked up in greedy fistfuls to quench thirst, most of it was too contaminated by gunpowder to be of any use. Manoj ran his tongue over chapped lips and didn’t reach for water even though he was tempted. There was just one last sip left. He wanted it there for psychological support till the end. His thoughts went to his mother and lingered lovingly over there. He saw her, brow-lined with worry, gentle and caring in her faded green cotton sari, leaning forward to kiss his forehead softly as he told her stories of Siachen from where he had just returned. He blinked the moisture out of his eyes.

As often happens with children who have grown up in humble circumstances, Manoj had always been a careful spender. His father ran a small hosiery business and had a family of three sons and a daughter to bring up. Being the eldest son, his parents’ efforts to make ends meet were never hidden from the quiet child, who spoke little but observed a lot from underneath dark eyelashes that were always bent over a course book. He was an outstanding student right from the beginning. He knew he had to do well in life so that the future could give his family all the happiness they couldn’t afford right now. He wouldn’t ask for new clothes till the old ones started showing tears that could not be darned anymore; whatever he had would be neatly folded and put back in the cupboard. His books, with brown covers, would be put back into his school bag after every use, his notebooks would be filled with his neat and steady handwriting, with its delicate right slant, just the way his Montessori school teacher had told him to write; his copies would never have an ink stain or an untidy scribble running across the page. Manoj knew money was short, he knew the value of each hard-earned rupee. He understood just how difficult it was to get a family two square meals a day, just how tough it was to keep hunger at bay.

The train had slowly started moving out of Jhansi railway station. Suddenly a dark, ugly, wrinkled face thrust itself at him from behind the iron rails of the window. A pair of dull eyes, hazy with cataract, looked greedily at the shiny silver- foiled paper plate of food he was holding. A dirty hand shot forth and gestured towards a hollow stomach, with dark folds of scaly skin hanging over the edges of a faded petticoat. ‘Bhook lagi hai beta,’ (I am hungry, son) the withered old woman grovelled, her grey hair falling untidily over her face. Before his father could reach into his wallet for some change, Manoj had put his hand out between the bars and handed her the steaming hot plate of chole bhature. The train picked up speed and chugged out of the platform; the old lady was left behind holding a full meal in her calloused old hands.

Since he hadn’t been well, Manoj hadn’t eaten for a day after his passingout parade at NDA and his father had got down at Jhansi to get him something to eat. When his mother scolded him for giving the food away he had told her affectionately that he was a strong young man and could stay hungry for two days but the old woman needed to eat. The men had been climbing for more than fourteen hours. They hadn’t slept for twenty-four. Sudden downpours of sleet and snow had left them chilled to the bone. They had miscalculated the treacherous path, lost their way twice in the dark and it was already morning by the time they spotted the hazy outline of the top.

They had the option to go back before the enemy spotted them but Manoj made up his mind—they would complete the task they had been sent for. There would be any turning back now. They would storm the enemy bunkers, making the best of the bad weather and the wet mist creeping up the cliffs, with its cold fingers on all it found in its path.

Another volley of fire lit up the sky. Manoj knew the guns were lined up on the highway, all along the Indus, firing at least 20, 000 rounds at a time. The aim was to distract the enemy, which was why he and his men had been able to climb the 70-degree incline unnoticed do far. However, this time the fire seemed to be coming dangerously close. The burst of the shells was accompanied by a hail of bullets and suddenly a soldier screamed out in pain and collapsed. ‘Take cover,’ Manoj shouted, ‘this looks like enemy fire.’ The bullets, rockets and machinegun fire were coming at them with an unnerving accuracy. The cries of men who had been hit rang out through the stillness of the chilly morning.

From behind the boulder where he had taken cover, Manoj looked out. Around him was death and destruction. Limbs had been torn apart, flesh ripped into, and blood was seeping into the soil as the gut-wrenching screams of his men echoed in the impersonal stillness of the bare brown mountains.

He knew they would have to storm the enemy in a daring daylight attack, right now. As soon as him mind was made up, the rush of adrenaline overcame indecision, fear and nervousness. The paralysing cold seeping into his bones was replaced by the heat of blood coursing through his veins. As the tracer bullet came flying past, lighting the place with a deadly cocktail of shrapnel and fire, Manoj stood up, tall and brave, his slight frame coiled like spring, his face a mask. Through the scream of the wind, he roared at those of his men that were fit to fight, ordering them to follow him through the hail of bullets. Like a colossal god with invincible powers he walked into the curtain of shells and bullets. He didn’t look back even once to see who had followed his final command but if he had he would have been a satisfied man. All his Gorkha jawans who could pick themselves up and walk were right behind him, their khukris gripped firmly in their hands. Leaving behind those dead or dying, the men charged like angry lions, placing their feet firmly on the sleet-covered jagged rocks, following the man, who was not walking through flying bullets for the first time. They had seen him do it before. Just about a month ago.

About a month back In a narrow gulley, the bodies of four men from an ambushed patrol had been lying for more than 10 days since the Kargil War had started. They were from an initial patrol that had been sent to reconnoitre the occupied heights when the Indian Army had grossly underestimated the enemy infiltration. Completely unaware that they were being watched by the Pakistanis from both sides of the gulley, the men had walked into a deadly trap. They were shot dead at point-blank range by enemy soldiers sitting at a height on both sides. All efforts to retrieve the bodies were repulsed by the Pakistanis, who would start firing indiscriminately the moment they spotted any activity from the Indian side.

Manoj volunteered to go and get the dead men back, insisting that their bodies be wrapped in the Tricolour and sent home to their families. He and his men had crept behind boulders and climbed the heights, reaching higher than the enemy. Then while some men were engaged in firing, the officer and a few of his men crawled down to where the bodies were lying, and ignoring the hail of bullets flying past, dragged the bulletriddled bodies out of the gulley.

Manoj had been one of the first to reach and had boldly crawled up to a dead man, pulling him behind a boulder. For a moment, he had stopped to look at his dead mate and his heart burned with rage. The body was badly mangled by shrapnel and he couldn’t make out the man’s face. On his bloody finger there was a gold ring that told him the man had probably been married. Even the belt he wore around his waist was punctured with bullet holes.

‘You bloody dogs, I’ll throw you out of my country,’ he had promised the enemy, shouting out in anger and had then used all his strength to drag the dead soldier back.

It was a miraculous retrieval and even a decade later officers who had watched the operation would sit with a glass of whiskey in the mess and remember the amazing man who had managed the impossible. ‘It needed a very big heart to do what he did,’ they would say. ‘Only he could have done it.’

The time has come to show that daring once again and Manoj does not disappoint his men. Adrenaline coursing through his veins, he gestures to them to follow and, steeling his heart against every instinct for selfpreservation, walks into the curtain of flying bullets to reach the first bunker on the ridge—a pile of cut rocks with a boulder for a roof grainy in the brooding fog that is sweeping across the landscape. He can make out the shadowy outlines of two Pakistani

Northern Light Infantry soldiers. He is not conscious of an effort but a sharp tug at his belt apprises him that his hand has gripped the handle of the khukri hanging there and whipped it out in a silken move. The sheath falls away limply by his side as his hand flashes its ferocious blade up in the chilly wind. The thumping of his heart is left behind in an instant as he runs across the uneven terrain, jumping over boulders in the falling snow, his face a grotesque mask of death, and falls upon the enemy soldiers, ferocious and proud. There is a swish in the air as the blade, cutting through the falling snowflakes, flashes and slices into human flesh.

Right to left, left to right. Then again. And again. The bodies of the shocked Pakistanis, terror written in their eyes, fall in a bloody pile. They could have never imagined that someone would walk in through the deadly fire. Had he been watching, the young officer’s regimental centre khukri ustad would be proud of his student as he lets the blood drip off his khukri and looks up to find his next target.

Sprinting across to the second bunker, the men fiercely pounce upon the enemy and a bloody hand-to-hand combatfollows, ‘Jai Mahakali, Aayo Gorkhali’ piercing the cold morning. Return shots ring out. Some of the enemy soldiers are charging with their bayonets, but most find they are no match for the gutsy Gorkhas with their lethal khukris that are splashing blood on the wet rocks. Suddenly Manoj winces. He has been hit in the shoulder by a bullet. Unconcerned, and feeling no pain in the heat of the moment, he takes out his gun and moves on to the next bunker, spraying the ones hiding there with a shower of bullets.

Another bullet comes and hits him in the leg, making him stagger unsteadily. ‘Naa chodnu,’ (Don’t leave them) he cries out in Gorkhali, telling his men to carry on the carnage, and drags his injured leg forward. Reaching out for a grenade, he lobs it at the fourth bunker from where mortar fire is coming at them. Even as an explosion rents the sky, throwing up a dull grey cloud of stone and debris, a fatal shot bursts through the air and hits the officer in the forehead. There is a flash of yellow and he is engulfed by the smell of burning cordite and a warmth in the freezing cold.

His whole body is wracked by a terrible pain; his brain is on fire, his lungs gasping for breath, his heart seems to want to force itself out of his chest and his tongue is dry and swollen with thirst. He wants to go on and shoot the Pakistani soldier he can see leaping out of the burning bunker and race down the slope, but his disobedient body had stopped listening to his commands. He can only watch as his arms let go of the rifle he has been holding, his fingers lose their grip on the trigger, his knees buckle under him and his neck slumps forward on his heaving chest. Blood courses down his face, blurring his vision. There is a spurt of light in his head, then stark darkness and silence. Finally, he has to close his eyes.

Manoj Kumar Pandey of 1/11 Gorkha Rifles is dead; his bloodstained body tilts in an arch and falls gently to the ground in front of the fourth bunker of Khalubar. He is 24 years and seven days old.

About six years ago ...

On a warm, sultry summer afternoon, a thin boy with a side parting in his hair and shiny new leather shoes walked down for his service selection board interview for NDA. He was trying to keep his mind off the bite in his toes, the sting of the cheap elastic in his socks and the guilt he had felt asking his poor father for money to buy them. He reminded himself that he was the best NCC cadet in his state and desperately hoped that his basic knowledge of English would not desert him during the interview.

‘Why do you want to join the Army?’ the interviewing officer was stern and abrupt, and looking straight into his eyes. ‘I want to win the Param Vir Chakra,’ he replied returning the stare, hoping the sentence was grammatically correct. The interviewing officer looked at the others on the board and exchanged a smile. Sometimes, they say, there is magic in the air and we must be careful about what we say because it will come true.

Not only did young Manoj Kumar Pandey from Sitapur district in Uttar Pradesh get into NDA, he also won the Param Vir Chakra, the Armed Forces’ highest gallantry award. Unfortunately, he hadn’t said he wanted to wear it live.



Yogender Singh Yadav

Grenadier Yogender Singh Yadav was lying in a pile of bodies. Around him lay his comrades, all six of them, brutally ki

continued

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