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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