Death of a CO on the Line of Control

   

The army's main business is war, and an outcome of this is death. Many a time, death occurs in peace time and near almost war like scenarios. I am reminded of the deaths that I saw from very near as I think of my second commanding officer, Colonel MD Moorthy, who passed away yesterday from a heart attack.     

    In 2002, I was attached with 121 Light Regiment (Congo), deployed on the LC in Rajouri - Poonch sector in Jammu and Kashmir. It was another regiment with a honour title from Congo in 1961, like my own, 52 Field Regiment(Sanjoi Mirpur). This was during Operation Parakram, the mobilization that took place after an attack on the Indian parliament by Pakistan backed terrorists. I along with all other instructors at School of Artillery, Devlali were attached to various regiments that had been mobilized against Pakistan.

     I was posted at the regiment HQ and our two batteries were participating in shelling almost on a daily basis. During Operation Parakram, along most of the Line of Control, light regiments fired throughout the 11 months, since they had bigger firepower(120mm mortars) than infantry mortars(81mm), but not big enough to call it 'escalation'. Remember, a field gun is 105mm calibre, but has much longer reach. During one such fire assault, there was effective counter bombardment fire, and one of the gun detachment NCOs was hit by splinters and died. I was tasked to escort the last remains of the gunner from Rajouri to Jammu airport and get it on a plane. This is done on a truck with a black flag to indicate a funeral journey, and throughout the 7 hour journey,   I saw military vehicles stopping and soldiers saluting as we passed by. Airport and airline staff were bureaucratic but helpful and we could coordinate the movement and reception at his home station well.

    I was sent as a battery commander to one of the two batteries soon afterwards. It was in direct support to an infantry(Dogra) battalion in Naushera area. The CO had recently taken over, a thorough professional with a Shaurya Chakra and Sena Medal to his name. A few days after reaching, I was at my battery, which was down the mountain slope and took about an hour of walk and jeep to reach. I think we were preparing for an admin inspection by the brigade commander. In the evening, when I reached the battalion headquarters, I found the subedar major (SM/Sergeant Major in other armies) at the command post bunker with the radio set and frantic transmissions going on. He told me that an operation was on and the CO was involved. Suddenly the phone rang, and the SM handed over the phone to me, saying it was the brigade commander. For me, 'commander' meant artillery commander, and when he asked me, what is happening? I said I don't know, the infantry battalion SM is here, and he says an operation is going on. He started shouting at me that I was unaware of the situation. And I was wondering why the artillery commander was calling on the infantry line. It turned out that he was the infantry brigade commander, and the CO had been killed in an operation involving terrorists who had sneaked in across the LC. There was no one else at the battalion headquarters, so I manned their radio for the next few hours, till their second in command fetched up. Apparently, the CO used to always be on the move between companies and platoons deployed on that ridge. He had walked in on a group of terrorists who had sneaked in during the afternoon, and planned to cross the ridge at night. He and his team had got caught in a firefight and he was shot before the terrorists escaped across the LC, which was just 400 metres away. We spent the rest of the night handling phone calls from all over the army, including from the Vice Chief's office. He was from the same regiment and was keeping a close watch on things from there.

    The battalion was asked to send a citation for the CO, and since he had already received two gallantry medals, the next higher one was to be recommended. Since the battalion officers were involved in the funeral and other duties, I along with one of their company commanders got down to writing the first draft of the citation. We next got orders to engage the enemy posts across the valley with artillery and everything else we had.

The next 3 to 4 days were busy, as I and the officiating CO of the battalion moved from company to company post, executing fire assaults on the enemy, sending the message that if they tried to push terrorists across, they would have to face the fury of our firepower. A number of bunkers were reported to have been destroyed every day, but I have not yet seen a change in posture or long term effect of these 'destroyed' bunkers. One of the command bunkers down in the valley and closer to the enemy was destroyed the day after we engaged the enemy from there (they were a day late in doing that, luckily for us). We also had some hot words a couple of times, when infantry wanted me to engage a particular bunker and I had to tell the CO that artillery, least of all mortars cannot directly be aimed to hit pin point targets like bunkers. That day, we were at a post where there was no artillery line(radios could not be opened), and we were to engage with field guns. I had arranged to use the infantry line on time sharing basis(innovate when required, like a good gunner officer!), but the exchange would keep switching the line for other admin tasks and our shoot was taking a long time. The CO said "we could get this over with as soon as artillery is able to fire" or some such remark, and I gave back "we could start the fire as soon as the infantry stops using the line to coordinate rations". But in the end, we had an eventful day, because the enemy correctly guessed where we were firing from and hit us with everything they had(artillery, rockets machine gun fire).

     About a month later, the army commander, Lt Gen Nanavatty was to visit the battalion. He is famous in the army for being forthright and blunt with his command, and also sacking people who could not meet his expectations. It seems that the citation for gallantry had reached the command HQ, and the general wanted to confirm the events stated in the citation. He landed at a helipad a couple of kilometres away and was to drive up to the battalion HQ. He was a soldier's soldier, and did not want the usual line up of the chain of command there, so only I and the officiating CO were waiting for him. He got off the jeep, looked at me, and said "Your 3 ton (truck) driver tried to kill me on the way up. This sikh boy doesn't know how to drive! I want you to sort him out." I knew that we did not have a sikh driver in my battery, so I told him "not my man, sir". I was still a Captain then (attached officers do not get field promotions, although there were majors dime a dozen in the formation with 3 years of service, while I had about 9 years under my belt), and everyone standing (including Gen Nanavatty) there gave me that look which said "he's bought it, disagreeing with the army commander".  So he said, "no, it was your man, the truck had the tactical number '255'"(army units have unique tactical numbers that identify the type of unit, without giving away which specific one within a division). I immediately said, sir, that's the engineer regiment, we are tac number 234! That saved my skin!

     I also spent a lot of my spare time reading up military history for the staff college exam that I intended to attempt next year. They had included military history as a  subject from that year, and the campaign was the Indo Pak war of 1948-49. I was posted in the area of most of the action - Jhangar, Nowshera, Rajouri, Poonch (some interesting links about the battles of 1948) etc, and I made the most of it, seeing many of the battle locations on ground.

     A couple of weeks later, I moved out from the battery since another major, senior to me was posted in and he took over. Of course, the move might have been sped up a little, because I had discovered discrepancies in ration accounting while reviewing documents for the admin inspection later that month. Since I was an officer attached with the unit for the operations, this was not taken very kindly by the CO.