During the hurly-burly of the Goa campaign in 1959 Bijji Kaul had assumed direct supervision of border operations in NEF A in order to ease the workload of an overworked DMO. Once he became involved with Operation Onkar (the establishment of Assam Rifles posts along the McMahon Line) he came to regard his control of this area as a personal commitment and continued to deal with it personally, even after the end of operations in Goa.
When he finally handed it all back to me in May 1962, I was somewhat out of touch with affairs on the north-eastern frontier where a new GOC, Niranjar Prasad, had taken over command of 4 Infantry Division. Clearly, it was time for me to pay a visit to Tezpur and Kameng FD. The Chip Chap and Galwan river episodes in Ladakh kept me at my desk during most of the summer and it was not till early August that I managed to get away from Delhi for a few days.
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When I called at HQ 4th Division in Tezpur, I found the atmosphere gloomy, in some ways almost hostile. Niranjan Prasad received me with a studied coolness, but he was too old a friend and too extrovert a character to continue with that for long. It was obvious that he was nursing a grievance and I persuaded him to come out with it.
Not so long ago it was I who had railed against the mindless rush to hustle troops up to the McMahon Line without giving them the potential to offer battle; now, as a representative of Army.
Once he had started, the floodgates opened. He virtually accused the General Staff of cravenness for meekly accepting from the government so impracticable and tactically pointless a task as Operation Onkar. He said that the establishment of thirty-five posts on the McMahon Line, some of them many days march even from the nearest mule-track, would strain his resources to such a degree that stocking programmes for his two infantry brigades would in. all probability have to be cancelled.1
Niranjan pointed out that although the forces to be deployed on Operation Onkar consisted of Assam Rifles personnel, it was his division that had been made responsible for establishing the posts and, despite disclaimers to the contrary, it would be from his quota of airlift that the Assam Rifles’ maintenance requirements would be met, thus hindering the logistical build-up at crucial places such as Towang and Walong. Furthermore, he saw no sense in locating a whole platoon at each of these remote border sites where, in any case, their potential for defence was virtually nil. A section at each site, he felt, would be sufficient to offer initial and temporary resistance.
In his opinion some of the less critical approaches could be covered by periodic patrolling from bases in the rear. He added that when he had tried to offer these suggestions to the CGS during the latter’s visit a month or so before, all he had received for his trouble was a blast of invective and threats, even though his own Corps Commander, Umrao Singh, had supported his arguments. The CGS had peremptorily asserted that since it was the Prime Minister himself who had ordered the posts to be set up, no counter-proposals would be entertained.
Niranjan asked me why Army HQ had accepted such operationally absurd directions from the politicians. Was the General Staff merely acting as a post office? He gibed.
“¦that in case we were proved wrong and the Chinese did launch a cross-border attack, the Army HQ plan was not to fight the main battle at the border”¦
Nirarijan’s tirade placed me in an awkward situation because essentially I sympathised with the greater part of his complaint. Not so long ago it was I who had railed against the mindless rush to hustle troops up to the McMahon Line without giving them the potential to offer battle; now, as a representative of Army. HQ, it was my role to defend that policy; it was I who would now have to act the would-be hus1ler. I felt that it might help clear the air if I gave a talk to the brigade commanders and the divisional staff to explain the General Staffs border options. I suggested as much to Niranjan and he willingly agreed.
In my talk to the officers of 4th Division I reiterated the Intelligence Bureau’s appraisal that while the Chinese might actively demonstrate against our posts, as they had done in the Chip Chap and I Gal wan valleys, they were unlikely to go to war on the border issue – and certainly not in NEF A, where they had tacitly agreed not to press their claims. This estimate, I said, was accepted by the government and by Army HQ and I added that in case we were proved wrong and the Chinese did launch a cross-border attack, the Army HQ plan was not to fight the main battle at the border; the Assam Rifles, after offering token resistance, would fall back to join the army, who would plan the main defences at selected and prepared positions such as Towang, Bomdila or Walong. I emphasised that that had been the concept of battle when I had commanded 7 Brigade; no orders from Army HQ had suggested a change front that concept.
I had expected a barrage of complaints about inadequate logistical cover but, curiously, no one raised that issue, and I assumed that the maintenance arrangements at Towang and other forward areas had improved as a result of the progress of road-building activities. (The road to Towang had reached Dhirang and beyond. Over Se-la it was still only a jeep track, expected to reach Towang within a month of the end of the monsoon season.)
Later, almost as an afterthought, Niranjan told me about the incident of the Dhola post and about his doubts regarding the alignment of the McMahon Line in the area west of the Nyamjang-chu. He said that whereas all the way from the Burma border to the Nyamjang valley the McMahon Line, as marked on the quarter-inch scale Survey of India map sheet, coincided with the Himalayan Crestline, westwards from Khinzemane the Line was marked as lying well to the south of the main Thag-la ridge. (The extent of the area between the Thag-la crestline and the McMahon Line marked on the map was about 60 sq km.)
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A patrol had set out across the Nyamjang River in mid-July to establish an Assam Rifles post near the Bhutan border. The political officer’s representative accompanying the patrol had insisted that the Thag-la ridge itself was the watershed border and. that was where our post should be. The patrol leader, a regular army officer, disregarded this advice because his map clearly showed the McMahon Line as passing well south of the ridge. Accordingly, he established a post on the southern bank of the Namka-chu, a stream flowing along the lower slopes of Thag-la ridge. He called it Dhola post, though in actual fact the site was known as Tsedong. Actually Dho-la was a pass on the ridge 3 km to the south.
“¦my experience of continuously having to resist pressure from the division to push more and more troops up to the McMahon Line. I had warned him, informally, to resist such pressures if he could, because of the logistical difficulties.
HQ 4th Division had referred the doubt about Thag-la ridge to HQ XXXIII Corps, asking for clarification on the exact alignment of the McMahon Line west of Nyamjang-chu. Niranjan had also suggested in his letter that if indeed the border lay along Thag-la ridge, he would like to establish his post tactically on the crest of the ridge, rather than in the valley below. In the month that had since passed he had received no reply and now, he added, the Chinese had beaten him to it because they had occupied Thag-la ridge. He told me that he would still like a clarification of the correct alignment of the border and asked me to have the reply expedited from Army HQ.
I had wanted to make a flying visit to Towang to see my old brigade, then commanded by Brigadier John Dalvi, but since the CGS had allowed me no more than five days off from Delhi for this tour, the only way I could have managed the visit would have been by helicopter. Unfortunately, the air force was unable to lend me one and I had to forego my visit to 7 Brigade in Towang.
Earlier in the year Dalvi, on his way to NEFA to take up his appointment, had called at my office and asked me for any personal information that I could pass on to him about the brigade and its area. I had recounted for him, among other things, my experience of continuously having to resist pressure from the division to push more and more troops up to the McMahon Line. I had warned him, informally, to resist such pressures if he could, because of the logistical difficulties.
As he records in his book, Himalayan Blunder, I had also told him about my uneasiness regarding the dominating heights of the Thag-la ridge overlooking Khinzemane, and my own remissness in not having undertaken a reconnaissance of that area two years previously. I had suggested that he might do that as soon as possible, especially now that his Brigade HQ had moved up to Towang. I would greatly have liked to have discussed these matters again with Davli, especially as his brigade’s operational jurisdiction had by then been extended to the Bhutan border (with the establishment of Dhola post). Unfortunately, I never got even as far as speaking to the Brigade Commander because the telephone lines were down.
On my return to Delhi I referred the Thag-la dilemma to the Director of Military Survey. The latter commented that as the existing maps of the area were ‘sketchy and inaccurate, having been compiled from unreliable sources’, the map co-ordinates of the new post quoted by the patrol leader were of doubtful accuracy. He confirmed that the recognised border was the watershed, but qualified this statement by adding ‘the exact alignment of [this] will depend on accurate survey’. This, he added, would take two to three years to complete.That was not greatly enlightening so J sent the file to the Ministry of External Affairs. The Historical Section of which replied: ‘We may permit the Army to extend the jurisdiction, if they have not already done so, up to the line suggested by them.’ Since the Chinese had already occupied Thag-la, I went to see Dr S. Gopal, Director of the Historical Section (and, incidentally, son of the then President of India) in order to double-check before I passed on this decision to HQ 4th Division. Gopal explained that at the time of the boundary talks with the Chinese, the government of India had been aware that the actual terrain in the area of the trijunction was different from that depicted on the quarter-inch scale map sheet.
The Chinese were therefore given the reference in northings and southings (91o 40’ East, 27o 40’ North). He noted on the file: ‘This point was further north of the tri-junction shown on our maps and nearer the point now suggested by Army Headquarters. Furthermore, the Chinese had been told that the alignment (of the McMahon Line) followed Thag-la ridge, which is also the ridge shown by Army Headquarters in the sketch.’ What Gopal had not told me – and I found out only later – was that the Chinese had not accepted our arguments and had counter-claimed Thag-la ridge, as well as the valley at Khinzemane, as Chinese territory.
This short spell of detente ended in early September, when there was a sudden increase in the severity and frequency of Chinese protests.
I passed on Gopal’s remarks to HQ Eastern Command for onward transmission to 4 Infantry Division, but by then it was mid-September and events in that remote region on the border of Bhutan and Tibet had already reached a critical stage.
Although the post at Dhola had been established as early as June, for three months the Chinese had made no protest about its siting. This was probably in conformity with the relatively soft diplomatic approaches by both Delhi and Peking during July and August. This short spell of detente ended in early September, when there was a sudden increase in the severity and frequency of Chinese protests.
As a mark of appreciation for my work during the Goa crisis, as his COS Committee Secretary, Admiral Katari had promised that he would send me on a cruise on the aircraft carrier Vikrant whenever he found a suitable opportunity. This soon presented itself. The Ministry of Defence invited a group of members of parliament ‘to attend a naval exercise off the coast of Goa in September 1962. ‘Lieutenant General Muchu Chaudhuri was to accompany them as conducting officer and, true to his word, Katari suggested my name as Liaison Officer (or some such sinecure role). I was to leave Delhi on the morning of 9 September, meet the rest of the party at Cochin the next day, board the Vikrant and attend routine naval manoeuvres in the Arabian Sea off the coast of Goa. We were to be landed at Bombay on 15 September.
It happened to be a quiet period in the Sino-Indian “˜confrontation; the PM was about to take off for Europe for a prolonged visit, and the Defence Minister was shortly due to go to the UN General Assembly session. It was reasonable to conclude that the government did not expect any crisis to develop in the near future.
The proposal for the cruise had been made during the period of the detente, so Kalil had raised no objection to my joining it. However, since then Krishna Menon and Kaul had fallen out. This was a periodic occurrence in their relationship, but this time Kaul had insisted on taking a month’s leave and going off to Kashmir on holiday; an added reason being an illness in the family. After Kaul’s abrupt departure on leave I should, in all conscience, have voluntarily withdrawn my name from the naval junket, but I was able to justify the excursion to myself. It happened to be a quiet period in the Sino-Indian ‘confrontation; the PM was about to take off for Europe for a prolonged visit, and the Defence Minister was shortly due to go to the UN General Assembly session. It was reasonable to conclude that the government did not expect any crisis to develop in the near future.
It did, and at the eleventh hour when I could not extricate myself from the cruise. On the evening of 8 September, just as I was sitting down to dinner, I received a message from the Ops Room conveying the alarming news that a large body of Chinese troops had come down the Thag-la slopes and surrounded Dhola post. (Tsedong). They had destroyed one of the several log bridges over the Namka-chu in order to isolate the Assam Rifles detachment; the JCO in command had asked for urgent reinforcements.
It was then that a personality problem that must have been long brewing suddenly projected itself on the General Staff tableau; it concerned Major-General Jogindar Singh Dhillon, the officiating CGS.
When Kaul had been putting his team together, picking the best and the brightest for his staff, he had nominated Jogi Dhillon as his Deputy CGS. Originally an Engineer officer, Jogi had been specially selected for command of an infantry brigade. Thereafter, having come to the notice of higher authorities (including, it is said, the Prime Minister) he progressed along the command and General Staff chain. His last appointment before being posted at Army HQ had been that of Chief of Staff to Lieutenant General Kulwant Singh, GOC-in-C Western Command, whence he had been sent to attend a course at the Imperial Defence College, London. He possessed all the qualifications for assured advancement.
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Kaul was unwise in selecting so high-powered an officer for a Job that was one of the least glamorous or challenging in General Staff Branch. The Deputy CGS did not figure in the chain of interaction in sensitive matters such as Operations and Intelligence. By tradition and usage these key functions, as well as policy matters on Staff Duties and Military Training, were dealt with between the directors and the CGS. The Deputy CGS supervised the more routine directorates such as those of Armour, Artillery, Signals, Infantry, the Territorial Army and the Security Corps. Furthermore, even in the absence of the CGS he was not admitted into the mainstream of events; it was the DMO who dealt with the Army Chief on operational matters, as did the DMI on intelligence. The DCGS was not even routinely kept informed on these matters; by definition he was not a member of the inner circle.
My one great thrill was the experience of being catapulted up on an Alisee aircraft and then violently jerked to a landing on a deck that seemed no larger than a postage stamp from the air.
It would have been unusual for someone as high profile as Jogi not to have resented relegation to a side stream while a junior colleague conducted the main flow of crucial operational transactions. I had sensed this resentment, though to be fair to Jogi he had never allowed it to surface or to affect our formal relationship. Nor had he ever explicitly expressed his dissatisfaction with the system. Despite his well-built and impressive physique, and a seemingly strong and fearsome mien, he was by nature too compliant a subordinate to say or do anything that Kaul might construe as criticism.
When I tried to ring up Thapar on the evening of 8 September to convey the news about Dhola post I was told that he was busy entertaining dinner guests, so I telephoned Jogi instead, mainly to inform him that I intended to cancel my cruise on the Vikrant just in case the Dhola incident led to graver consequences. Jogi reacted forcibly; he expressly forbade me to do this, saying that he could handle the situation adequately and that I was to fulfil my obligation to the parliamentary delegation. When I suggested that we consult Thapar about my departure, he said that I need not worry, he would see to that himself.
When I told my wife what had transpired on the telephone, she at once suspected Jogi’s injunction as a manoeuvre to pack me off and get into the act himself. She strongly urged me to go and see Thapar, the rear gate of whose residence was not a hundred yards down Dupleix Lane from our house. My wife had had occasion to experience Jogi’s brusque and captious nature and enjoined me not to be too complaisant in the matter. She argued that I would be letting Bijji Kaul down if a crisis developed in his absence and Thapar were left without either adviser.
Even if it were in my nature to disobey a direct and lawful order from a superior officer, I would have been constrained by doubts about whether Thapar would in fact have asked me to cancel my tour in order to stay at my post. During the past two years, he had not drawn me into his confidence. On the few occasions, I had gone to him directly to discuss operational matters he had been distant and matter-of-fact, as though wishing to make it clear that there was to be no return to our former closeness of association. In the circumstances, I decided that I had no option but to go on to Cochin to join the cruise and hope that a demarche would not develop during the next week.
The cruise on the Vikrant was enjoyable even if the so-called naval exercise was little more than a demonstration of naval gunnery, resupply at sea and other routine functions. My one great thrill was the experience of being catapulted up on an Alisee aircraft and then violently jerked to a landing on a deck that seemed no larger than a postage stamp from the air.I put Delhi out of my mind and threw myself into discovering something about the navy and, of course, its aircraft carrier. During after-dinner walks on the flight deck I met and had long talks with many naval ratings, and I came to realise that in our navy a great gulf existed between the men and their officers. Unlike in the army, man-management did not appear to be part of the value system of the navy.
I never saw an officer take a walk on the long flight deck – only the ratings did this – and the latter’s obvious pleasure in seeing a senior army officer (and an occasional member of parliament) mingle and talk with them informally was almost embarrassing. I recall an occasion when I asked the captain if I might dine with the ratings some night, my request ‘was regarded with total amazement, even disbelief. Although it might be an unconscious exaggeration, my recollection is that he replied that he didn’t even know on which deck in that multi-level ship the men’s dining-room was located. I never got my dinner.
It was not until the drastic switchover to Russian equipment in the late 1960s that this imperial subservience at last faded.
I remember wondering at the time if the same culture prevailed in the British Navy, of which (at that time) the Indian Navy seemed to be an of Tshoot – at least, it deported itself as though it wert. Whereas we in the army had merely retained anglicised ways in speech, dress, professional procedures and messing customs, the Indian Navy virtually operated as part of the ‘parent’ arm in Britain. Its ships regularly attended the Royal Navy’s exercises, and training courses, visited their home and overseas bases and (unless, again, I am unconsciously exaggerating in retrospect) shared common training systems and even codes and ciphers. It was not until the drastic switchover to Russian equipment in the late 1960s that this imperial subservience at last faded.
During the voyage I received no news about the NEF A incident, because on the few occasions I could persuade a naval officer to tune in his set to the AIR news bulletin, there was nothing on border incidents. Also, of course, we received no newspapers, not even when we put in for a few hours at Marmagao harbour in Goa. It would be only a slight exaggeration to say that officers of the Indian Navy seemed to be unaware that there was a crisis along our northern borders.
The Vikrant berthed at the naval docks in Bombay on the morning of 15 September and I caught the next plane to Delhi. As soon as I arrived home, I rang up Kaul’s house, to be informed that he was still on leave in Srinagar. This was somewhat reassuring. If he were still on, long leave, no critical steps could have been taken by Army HQ – or so I consoled myself. Just how wrong I was I found out when I went to my office early next morning.
During the voyage I received no news about the NEF A incident, because on the few occasions I could persuade a naval officer to tune in his set to the AIR news bulletin, there was nothing on border incidents.
Military Operations Directorate was in a state of con fusion, its normally confident and cool deportment clearly fumed. From what I could gather it had suddenly found, itself relegated from its normal dynamic functioning to a role of silent proxy. The directorate was now merely relaying orders on behalf of the officiating CGS, or handling telephone and signal messages from, Command and lower HQs .to the CGS secretariat. Lieutenant Colonel Pritpal Singh of MO-I section told me that as a result of the Dhola crisis 7 Infantry Brigade had been peremptorily ordered to move from Towang and concentrate post-haste at the bottom of Thag-la ridge, with the task of chasing the Chinese up the mountain and across the watershed.
He could not show me any minuting, records of meetings or other documents to indicate how or by whom such an incredible decision had come to be taken. MO Directorate had merely been ordered to issue the necessary signals; it was not consulted in the process. I clearly remember being shown an operational signal authorised by the COAS, addressed to all formations down the chain, ordering the capture of Thag-la by 19 September! I could scarcely believe my eyes.
Pritpal told me that the decision to mount an attack on the Thag-la ridge appeared to have been taken at the Defence Minister’s conference three or four days previously, on the advice of Lieutenant General Sen, GQC-in-C East. I could only presume that ‘Bogey’ Sen had given this advice after consulting Umrao Singh, the Corps Commander in Shillong, but there was nothing on record in MO files. After 8 September, we had simply dropped out of the running.
It was’ difficult for me to believe that Niranjan, with all the logistical difficulties he had encountered in maintaining one weak brigade in a defensive role in Towang, could have agreed to 7 Brigade moving into the attack in the uninhabited desolation of the Bhutan frontier – where even footpaths were difficult to find – against a stronger and better armed enemy. How could an infantry brigade with all its impedimenta of battle move out on a man-pack basis to mount an attack across an unknown, mountainous tract? And what of Towang? Who would take over its defence which was 7 Brigade’s main task?
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These questions and a number of dire doubts and anxieties kept crowding into my mind. Pritpal could not enlighten me about any of them, and Jogi was at the Minister’s conference all morning. I do not recollect how I whiled away the hours. My thoughts were in turmoil, reflecting on the desperate unreality of the task that had been given to 7 Brigade. I tried to conjure up, from memory of the air reconnaissance over Towang plateau, a mental picture of the bleak and forsaken heights that towered above the Nyamjang-chu on the west.
I even remember consulting Lieutenant Colonel Bailey’s old book, No Passport to Tibet, to see if the author had included a reference to the area of Thag-la or the Namka valley. He had, but it was of no help. Captain Morshead’s sketch showed Thag-la ridge, and also the Namka-chu, running roughly north to south, whereas our small-scale map showed them going north-east to south-west!
It was not until the early afternoon that I was at last able to catch Jogi in his office. My memory of -that meeting could well be biased, as much by retrospective recrimination as by emotional distortion. (I had at last realised, not without both chagrin and alarm, that Jogi, had done exactly what my wife had suspected he would do: set about eliminating the DMO from the General Staff chain in order to consolidate his seizure of the operational network.) Therefore, in order to preserve objectivity in my recollection of that meeting with Jogi, I shall begin the account by first quoting from a report written nearer the time, my Summary of Events and Policies:
Army Headquarters involvement in the day-to-day operations was necessitated because of the need to direct the build-up of the necessary logistical support, which at that time was beyond the capacity of Eastern Command”¦
I arrived back at Headquarters on 16 September 1962. Broadly, the situation at that time was as follows: According to the reports of Intelligence Bureau personnel deployed on the Towang border, there were only 50-60 Chinese located in the vicinity of Tsedong [Dhola] and about two companies between the Namka-chu and Thag-la. Having destroyed the bridges in the vicinity of Tsedong, the Chinese had withdrawn to the north bank of the river. As for our own forces, 9 Punjab was ‘moving up to Tsedong, with orders (emanating from Army Headquarters)’ to capture the Chinese post north of Tsedong, contain the Chinese south of Thag-la and, if possible, establish posts on the watershed heights west of the Thag-la Pass.
At the same time, the rest of 7 Infantry Brigade had begun its forward concentration in the Lurnpu area while three (newly arrived) Infantry battalions were on the move from Misamari to Towang. 62 Infantry Brigade was on its way from Ramgarh to join 4 Infantry Division. Stocking for the Tsedong operations was to be undertaken by Headquarters Eastern Air Command, commencing on 28 September and to be completed by 5 October.
The pattern of operational policy and high command decisions evolved during these days was that the Defence Minister ,held a meeting everyday which was attended, from the Army side, by the Chief of the Army Staff, the Officiating CGS (the CGS being on leave) and GOC-in-C Eastern Command whenever he visited Army Headquarters. I was informed by the Officiating CGS that minutes of such meetings were maintained by the Joint Secretary, Ministry of Defence, though they were first, seen in draft form by himself. He also stated that he had access to these records at all times and therefore I was not required to maintain separate records in Army Headquarters.
As I did not attend any meetings held by the Defence Minister, or any meetings that may have been held at PSO level at Army Headquarters, I am unable to comment on the various considerations or discussions that led to policy decisions during this period. Action to be taken on them, however, was conveyed to me by the Officiating CGS or COAS and recorded in my files.
As for command and control of the operations, although the responsibility was entirely that of XXXIII Corps, Headquarters Eastern Command exercised close supervision and also consulted Army Headquarters at each step. Army Headquarters’ involvement in the day-to-day operations was necessitated because of the need to direct the build-up of the necessary logistical support, which at that time was beyond the capacity of Eastern Command…
The criticism implicit in these paragraphs is a restrained expression of my feelings at that first meeting with Jogi in the CGS’ office, the remembrance of which has not dimmed with the years. After summarising developments in the Towang sector, he told me that my responsibility as DMO would now be to ensure that the concentration of troops at Lumpu and in the Dhola area was proceeding at an adequate pace. He added that since it had been confirmed that there were only about sixty Chinese at Dhola, one battalion (9 Punjab) was considered adequate for the task of evicting them.Ignoring the implied dimunition of the DMO’s function, I tried to explain to Jogi the constraints imposed on troop movements, even’ on foot, by the terrain, weather and lack of mule-tracks and footpaths forward of Towang, and I expressed doubt that adequate logistical support could ever be built up at Lumpu, let alone within the time stipulated. When he glibly remarked that Army and Air HQ would ensure sufficient air supply sorties to fulfill 9 Punjab’s requirements, I countered by pointing out that the high Lumpu spur had never been tried out as a dropping zone, that the weather at that time was most uncertain and that the collection and retrieval of loads in the mountains was a major problem.
Jogi remained unimpressed. He assured me that the Army Commander was confident about the task being carried out successfully. I told him that I knew the terrain lat Lumpu, whereas Bogey Sen had never visited the mountains of NEFA; nor had Umrao, to the best of my knowledge. I urged Jogi to obtain the views of the Divisional and Brigade Commanders before the Army Chief took a final decision but he rejected this suggestion as improper and quite contrary to procedure. He told me that I could best serve the army by ensuring that Lumpu base was developed and stocked as early as possible.
When I raised a point about possible reprisals by Chinese forces north of Thag-la, he assured me that there would be no major Chinese attack across the watershed.
Jogi remained equally adamant when I changed tack to discuss operational matters. When I raised a point about possible reprisals by Chinese forces north of Thag-la, he assured me that there would be no major Chinese attack across the watershed. As for my concern about the defence of the divisional vital ground at Towang after the move out of 7 Brigade, he said that a brigade from Ranchi was being sent there for the purpose.
It was obvious that Jogi was not open to persuasion. I suspected that he had been so fascinated by his chance involvement at the summit of the decision-making process that he was not going to allow it to be threatened by doubts cast on what should have been his main purpose: the ordering of priorities. He focused on the political decision the attack to clear the Chinese from Thag-la ridge rather than on the logistical and tactical factors that clearly denied the feasibility of that option. His mind-set was so rigid that further discussion could only become banal and defeatist and, in the final analysis, irrelevant.
Before I left I broached the subject of formal staff procedure. I said that I had found no papers in MO Directorate recording the various decisions taken at the Defence Minister’s conferences and that I would like’ to have all such documents to start maintaining proper records of decisions taken and orders issued. Jogi glared at me; and the otherwise informal conversation changed to a formal tone. Sternly the officiating CGS instructed his DMO that he, the DCGS, was in full control. The records were being maintained, he said, by Joint Secretary Sarin in the Ministry. He, the DCGS, was satisfied with that procedure, because he had access to those records at all times and I was not to concern myself with them. He emphasised that I had a full job on my hands and I was to get on with it.
“¦focused on the political decision the attack to clear the Chinese from Thag-la ridge rather than on the logistical and tactical factors that clearly denied the feasibility of that option.
Back at my desk, I called a meeting of MO-I staff to improvise a system of maintaining aide memoirs, in the absence of formal records, on Operation Leghorn (as the Namka-chu operation ‘had been codenamed). In addition, I directed Pritpal to maintain a day-to-day situation report on the build-up of ammunition and stores at Lumpu. He was to try to obtain figures of airdrops directly from 4th Division (whose main HQ was still at Tejpur) and not rest content with information provided by the air force because the latter could indicate only tonnages dropped, not quantities retrieved by the troops.
Although not too familiar with the lie of the land beyond Lumpu, I nevertheless realised that little of what was dropped there, even if retrieved, could in fact be sent forward to the troops deployed along the Namka-chu. This was because only porters could negotiate the 4,600 metre pass at Hathung-la, and “each porter, after carrying his own blankets and rations for the four-day turn-round to Dhola, had an effective load capacity at those heights of only 5-6 kg, as against a battalion’s estimated battle requirement of 2-2,500 ‘kg per day even when fighting with small arms only. Also, the number of porters to be found in that sparsely populated region was limited (and even they soon melted away, so that the troops meant to’ fight the Chinese eventually had to do their own porterage).
It seemed a time out of reality. I spent the rest of the afternoon brooding in my office, uncertain what action to take to reverse the potentially disastrous process that had been set in motion. I shirked the obvious but openly defiant course of going to see Thapar over Jogi’s head, although I think I might have done just that had I not felt convinced that Thapar would spurn my protests, making my position as DMO untenable.
The surprising fact was that Thapar knew the terrain, at least as far as the Towang plateau. I had earlier persuaded him to visit 7 Brigade, and although he had done the trip by helicopter, I had sent a bright young MO-I staff officer, Major Sant Singh, to accompany him and to, brief him on the, terrain, communications and logistics of the Towang commitment. (I had hoped, in good time, to persuade Thapar to order a rethink on the defence of Kameng so that the main defensive position could ‘be pulled back from Towang, to Se-la or Bomdila-Manda-la.)
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My surmise was that Thapar was being arm-twisted by Menon to accept the impossible operational commitment of Operation Leghorn, and that Jogi had failed to advise caution and deliberation. Summarily, orders for an offensive had been passed down the line. Bijji Kaul – I felt sure would have been more deliberate’ and consultative. I began to perceive the wisdom of Thiniayya, whose happy-go-lucky solution to the problem – as I have recorded – was to wink at implausible directives from the PM or the Defence Minister and merely pass down to Command HQ what he, Timmy, thought was a feasible plan. But then only a Thimayya could have done that and got away with it!
I decided to seek out Bogey Sen who, I learned, had come to Delhi for the Defence Minister’s conference. Although Bogey and I had not been closely associated for some years, we had served together on familiar terms in tile past. When I had joined the Indialised 5th/10th Baluch Regiment on my first commission, he had been the hero of all the subalterns, a popular and much admired adjutant. His wife’s family and mine had known each other on an intimate footing at one time, so that his house and table ‘soon became a young bachelors occasional, ‘refuge from the rigidity of British-Indian mess life.
An opportunity for personal persuasion did not come till a fortnight later, and by then it was “˜no longer within HQ Eastern Commands power to alter the decision on Operation Leghorn.
During the war Bogey was second-in-command and I the senior company commander of a battalion of Baluchis on the Burma front. In November 1947, when suddenly ordered to proceed to Srinagar to command a newly raised brigade against the Pakistani raiders, Bogey (then Deputy: DMI) had walked into my office in Army HQ and asked me to take a few days leave and fly up to Kashmir with him to set up his Brigade HQ for him – an arrangement to which (then) Brigadier Thorat, my boss, had reluctantly agreed:
Bogey’s senior general staff officer was also an old Baluch colleague as well as a friend and kinsman. I think that had I at that stage been able to meet them both personally and impress upon them the realities on the ground at the Thag-la front, I might have been able to moderate Eastern Command’s headlong meddling in 4th Division’s operations, especially, in view of the fact that Bogey had, till the Dhola affair, been content to playa low-key role on the operational scene. Unfortunately, when I called at the house where he had been staying with friends, he had already left’ for the airport. An opportunity for personal persuasion did not come till a fortnight later, and by then it was ‘no longer within HQ Eastern Command’s power to alter the decision on Operation Leghorn.
Either that day or the next I wrote a personal letter to Bijji Kaul in Kashmir, urging him to return to duty. I informed him that there had been gross ‘over-reaction’ to the Dhola incident on the part of all concerned and that his presence at Army HQ was now indispensable. I hoped that he might rejoin duty almost at once.
It then occurred to me that the best person whose support I should attempt to enlist was Mullik; I knew he held me in high regard and had confidence in my professional judgment. I called at his office late in the evening and told him about my anxiety and alarm at the runaway operational extravaganza unfolding on the Namka-chu. Knowing that he had visited many remote Himalayan regions, I assumed that he would be aware of the difficulties of movement and maintenance in the mountains but my expectations were disappointed. Mullik shrugged off my remonstrances.
He roundly asserted that it was the army that is, General Sen – that had quite definitely assured the government of the feasibility of the operation. To my protest that it did not matter who had given that advice, it was still wrong advice, he paid no heed.
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