Indian Defence Review

The Wehrmacht, enfeebled, bloodied but unbowed, counterattacked to open a corridor between Königsberg and Pillau, which held till early April.  While the civilian evacuations carried on apace, General Otto Lasch of the Königsberg garrison used his debilitated military to launch guerrilla attacks from their foxholes and pillboxes.  The stunned Soviets responded by ferocious aerial bombing and artillery shelling, following through with a massive land assault by troops just drilled in urban warfare.  With casualties mounting, Gen Lasch radioed Hitler for the nod to surrender, but was told to get even with the Russkies.

The shooting raged on.  Multitudes of terrified, fleeing residents were mercilessly massacred – shot or strafed – and the vessels ferrying them were torpedoed.  Overwhelmed by the tragedy and cruelty, Gen Lasch surrendered and the fighting ceased by midnight of April 9.  Livid, Hitler ordered Gen Lasch’s execution but there were none to enforce the diktat, for Königsberg was under Soviet jackboots!

Königsberg overrun, the Red Army goose-stepped towards Pillau.  The 20,000-strong plucky German garrison there fought tooth and claw, inflicted colossal havoc but in the end the Soviet juggernaut crushed their stiff defiance, forcing them to wave the white flag on April 26 to avert another carnage.

Post-war, Joseph Stalin annexed East Prussia.  Königsberg was renamed Kaliningrad.  Thousands of Germans were banished, several hundreds packed off to Soviet gulags, and many preferred suicide instead of succumbing to Soviet brutality.  The Russification completed once the planted settlers of Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian stock struck root there.

One may split hairs whether the Battle of Königsberg can be categorised as a last stand, but what is unarguable are the unspeakable horror let loose on the populace and the hopeless but heroic resistance against the numberless, ruthless raider.

Rezang La

From the south bank of Pangong Lake in Ladakh, a cluster of high mountains slopes towards the Spanggur Lake.  A 2-km-wide clean gap exists in this range known as the Spanggur Gap.  The Spanggur Gap joins the Chushul plateau in the west to the Tibetan plateau to the east.  The village of Chushul lies west of the Spanggur Gap.

In 1962, the Chinese Army planned to attack Chushul via the Spanggur Gap along the road from Rudok, and the Chushul-headquartered 114 Infantry Brigade of the Indian Army was tasked to foil the Chinese invasion.

Overlooking the Chushul plains on the east, Gurung Hill, Muggar Hill and Rezang La form a towering massif, and the Chinese Army obviously had to get past it to smell the Chushul air.  Rezang La, a pass, is nearly 11 km south of Spanggur Gap.  The craggy, snowy heights about Rezang La, a feature with ginormous girth, soar to 5200 metres.  Rezang La guards the southeastern approach to the Chushul Valley and its occupation would enable the Chinese to cut off the single road that linked Chushul to Leh via Dungti – the lifeline of the Chushul garrison.

Starting October 27, there was a lull in the war that enabled India to fortify her defences and China to further build up their strength in the Spanggur area.  114 Inf Bde had tasked the just-inducted 13 Kumaon battalion to cover the southern flank of Spanggur Gap.  Lt Col H S Dingra, the commanding officer who was hospitalised but had inveigled the doctors into letting him rejoin his boys, assigned two companies to the defence of Muggar Hill and the Charlie Company with a section of 3-inch mortars to Rezang La.

Major Shaitan Singh Bhati, officiating as the battalion quartermaster, was told to assume charge of Charlie Company.  Though the Himalayan winter made it arduous, he had his 123 men of three platoons and the mortar section prepare sangars and defensive positions about their over-two-km-broad company defended locality.  The topography shut out his company from the rest of his battalion (the nearest was a company of 5 Jat located at Tsakala), which meant reinforcement was out of the question.  The shortage of field guns deprived him of artillery cover.  Besides having to prepare to face the enemy from all directions, geospatial isolation also meant that his company could not influence the battle much.  Worse, none of the equipment of the Indian Army was designed for operating in subzero-temperature.  Odds stacked one upon another, yet the Major did not give up halting the Chinese charge as lost cause.

The People’s Liberation Army commenced the battle for Chushul in the wee hours of November 18.  At Rezang La, it was a frigid, windy morning for a two-hour storm had lashed the area with snow and gale the previous night, making clasping of weapons tad more difficult than it already was.

A battalion of the PLA launched raids from the south and the east.  The nullahs they were trudging bogged them down, leaving them sitting ducks for the Indian mortars and grenades.  The lucky survivors took cover and retraced.

Having been repulsed, the Chinese changed ploy and resorted to artillery and mortar fire, which was ineffective but destroyed the company’s communication lines to the battalion HQ.  On sighting the ‘pyrotechnics’, the post at Tsakala raised the Kumaon HQ (oblivious of the showdown), but reinforcements would take hours to make it.  With even radio gone, the company commander knew they had to deal with the Chinese all alone.

The frontal attack having misfired, the Chinese revised tactic and launched another wave of attack on Rezang La, in strength, this time from three directions, under the cover of artillery barrage.  In an attempt to beat back the assault by two companies on the rear platoon, Jemadar Surja Ram and his men engaged the Chinese in a hand-to-hand combat.  All men of this platoon died fighting.

Major Shaitan Singh hustled from trench to trench, sangar to sangar, redeploying the LMGs and spurring his men on.  Soon, withering machinegun fire mowed down the Chinese troops and Rezang La was strewn with motionless bodies of Chinese troops.

Meanwhile Major Shaitan Singh was hit grievously in the abdomen by MMG sniper-fire but refused evacuation and succumbed to injuries.

The hard, bitter, bloody battle raged on.  Wave after wave of Chinese reinforcements emerged to wear down the Indians.  Despite the mounting toll, despite depleting men and ammunition, Charlie Company intrepidly engaged the Chinese.  They neither retreated nor surrendered.  The gallant men fought to the last trench, last man, last round and last breath.  Ultimately, the boom of gunfire that resonated off the hills ceased resounding, and brought the shroud down on the last stand at Rezang La.

The nation learned of their courageous fight only when the Indian Army took possession of the bodies in February 1963.  Captain Amarinder Singh noted in his book Lest We Forget: “In an unusual mark of respect for which the Chinese are not usually noted, their bodies had been covered with blankets, pegged down with bayonets.  There could have been no greater tribute to their courage than this acknowledgement by their enemy.”

All casualties bore multiple bullet and splinter injuries.  Not to mention their frozen hands still clutching their weapons but without ammunition.  The mortar man died with a bomb in his hand.  The medical assistant held a syringe of morphine and bandage.

The 96 bodies recovered from the battlefield were cremated on a common pyre.  In 1965, a shepherd recovered two bodies at a LMG position on a flank.  In all, 113 died with their boots on; five wounded were taken prisoners of war, of whom one expired in captivity; six gravely injured (including Naik Ram Kumar Yadav), mistaken as dead, later staggered back to the battalion HQ.  The PLA sustained well over 500 casualties.

The nation honoured the exceptional valour of Charlie Company with gallantry gongs.  Major Shaitan Singh was decorated posthumously with the Param Vir Chakra.  Jemadar Surja Ram (posthumous), Jemadar Ramchander, Jemadar Hari Ram (posthumous), Naik Ram Kumar Yadav, Naik Hukam Chand (posthumous), Naik Gulab Singh (posthumous), Lance Naik Singh Ram (posthumous) and Sepoy Dharampal Dahiya (posthumous, of Army Medical Corps) were conferred the Vir Chakra.  The Sena Medal was bestowed on CHM Harphul Singh (posthumous), Havildar Jai Narain, Havildar Phool Singh and Sepoy Nihal Singh.  Jemadar Jai Narain (posthumous) was mentioned in despatches.

Brigadier Ashok Malhotra, the author of Trishul Ladakh and Kargil 1947-1993, recalls the mind-boggling account of Naik Ram Kumar Yadav, the mortar section commander.  I paraphrase: Though his body was riddled with nine wounds, he kept directing the fire of mortars until a Chinese grenade knocked him flat, nose completely blown off.  Presuming him to be dead, the Chinese picked him, threw him into a bunker and set it afire.  The heat of his burning clothes jolted him into life and he leapt out of the bunker.  Seeing his condition, the Chinese let him be.  As he began trudging, he slipped, hurtled down a slope and went unconscious.  He regained bearings later and wended six miles to the battalion headquarters to recount the incredible valour of his comrades-in-arms.

The last stand at Rezang La stands out and exemplifies the embodiment of soldiering – selfless devotion to duty even in the face of death.  It inspired Chetan Anand to make the classic film Haqeeqat.

The Indian Army enshrined their martyrdom in a memorial at the site of mass cremation near Chushul.  It is a simple white marble pillar with the names of 114 martyrs etched on two sides, in Hindi and in English.  The following lines (the first four from Thomas Macaulay), poignant yet stirring, inscribed on the third side pay homage to their deed:

How can a Man die better

Than facing Fearful Odds

For the Ashes of His Fathers

And the Temples of His Gods

To the sacred memory of the Heroes of Rezang La,

114 Martyrs of 13 Kumaon who fought to the Last Man,

Last Round, Against Hordes of Chinese on 18 November 1962.

The Charlie Company comprised Ahirs who hailed from the Rewari district of Haryana.  Rewari raised a monument for its brave sons who laid down lives for the motherland in Gudiani village.  It is a granite slab emblazoned with the names of the martyrs, radiating their intrinsic courage with the hurrah shoorveeron mein ati shoor veer – veer Ahir.  Reportedly, the inert administration has let the gated Rewari memorial go to seed.

The last stand

Battle of Roncesvalles, Custer’s last stand, the Alamo, Siege of Masada, Iwo Jima, Siege of Khartoum, Wadborough Hill, Napoleon’s Imperial Guard (Battle of Waterloo), Stalingrad – the bloodiest of them all, … fascinatingly, though as rare as the dodo bird, military history is still rich with recitals of last stands.  By the way, the Pakistanis believe that in the 1965 Indo-Pak War, once the 1st Armoured Division of the Indian Army pulverised their 6th Armoured Division at Phillora in one of the most furiously fought tank battles of the war, the remnants retreated and regrouped to put up a last stand at Chawinda.

It is but natural for the last stands to inhabit our consciousness as inspirational deeds of gritty heroism.  Why do soldiers resort to a last stand when they know it is suicidal and hopeless, and the enemy will all but overrun them?  A surge of adrenaline?  To uphold their honour?  Are there moral and cultural dimensions to it?  At a higher plane, is fight to the last ditch a tactic like what happened at Camarón?

Well, the whys and wherefores of last stand would challenge even the most eminent psychoanalyst.  Militarily, if a cornered force believes that their sacrifice can contribute to the larger cause, maybe even the outcome of war, if the commander finds the benefits of a final duel outweighing the benefits of surrender or retreat, a last stand is on.

But to inspire and lead troops on to a last stand, the commander must truly command the absolute allegiance of his men, be a standard-bearer like King Leonidas, Havildar Ishar Singh, Captain Jean Danjou, Lieutenant John Chard, Husain ibn Ali and Major Shaitan Singh were.

Lest we forget

It is 50 years since that dismal November.  We dub the Indo-China War as the ‘1962 debacle’, which indeed it was.  But while doing so, we forget that the Indian soldier has invariably never flinched from his duty even in the most trying environment.  Here’s a quote from the 30 November 1962 edition of Time magazine: “…the fighting has shown that the Indians need nearly everything, except courage.”  No wonder then that any epic of heroism pales beside the saga of Rezang La.  Let us proudly remember the lion-hearts of Charlie Company on November 18.