A place in fiction

Lt. Gen. Inderjit Singh Gill passed away on May 30. And all who gathered at his home remembered his role at Headquarters in Delhi during the Bangladesh war when he was in charge of planning and strategy; they recalled him as GOC-in-C Western Command, and they recounted tales of the Colonel of the Parachute Regiment's lifelong passion for parajumping. They spoke of the rectitude with which he guided the Guru Nanak educational institutions founded by his father, Col. G.S. Gill of the Indian Medical Service who became Inspector General of Prisons, Madras Province, and whose friendship with Rajaji, a friendship between prison warden and detenu, resulted in his making Madras his home. But few, including those who did the military honours, knew of the Harling Mission and the Military Cross Inder Gill had won for his role in it. This piece, which first appeared in the Indian Review of Books (1997), will , S. MUTHIAH hopes, complete the picture of Inder Gill for many.

AS was expected worldwide, "The English Patient", based on Sri Lankan-born Michael Ondaatje's Booker Prize-winner of the same name, swept the 1996 Oscars. There was, however, one Oscar that it did not win - and that was for the Best Supporting Actor. Friends from abroad, who have seen the film, say that many critics felt that Naveen Andrews, whose roots are in Madras and who played Kip, the Sikh lieutenant, deserved the award. But Andrews is not central to this piece, Lt. Kip, the Sikh explosives expert, is.

While outlining his story, Ondaatje must undoubtedly have been aware that there were several Ceylonese sappers and miners from the Ceylon Engineers who served during World War II in the Mediterranean theatre of operations. Why didn't he pick one of them for his explosives expert who dallies with the English patient's nurse in a cave in Italy where they are all hiding, awaiting "liberation" by the Allied armies? Why did he pick an Indian demolition expert? Perhaps there will be an answer to that rather unimportant question some day. Meanwhile, however, a curious coincidence - generating some wild speculation - warrants being recorded in this context.

The coincidence is that there was indeed a real-life Sikh lieutenant from the Royal Engineers who was a demolition expert and who served in the Mediterranean theatre, earning a Military Cross in the process. Now, there were undoubtedly several Indian lieutenants who were explosive experts, but I did not think any of them got the kind of exposure this one got, making it entirely possible that anyone reading the war literature of the late 1940s and 1950s would have caught up with him and decided he had a place in yet another book, this time fiction.

Lt. Inderjit Singh Gill, the sapper of record, has figured in at least three books and several films and documentaries based on "Operation Harling", which took place in late 1942. The books in English include We Fell Among Greeks by Denys Hamson (Jonathan Cape, London, 1946), Greek Entanglement by Brigadier E.C. Meyers (Rupert Hart-Davis, London, 1995), and Harling Mission - 1942 by Themistoles Marinos (published by Papazisis Publications, Athens, for the Society for the Study of Greek History in 1993, the Greek original having come out in 1992 to mark the 50th anniversary of the mission). There is also C. M. Woodhouse's Apple of Discord (Hutchinson's, London) which I have not been able to lay my hands on but which might well refer to "Operation Harling" and Lt. Gill, Woodhouse having been the second-in-command of the operation and who stayed on in Greece for much of the rest of the war, trying to get the various guerrilla groups to team together. There have also been several books and films in Greek. Two TV films, Greek State TV's "This is How We Blew Up Gorgopotamos" (1980) and "SOE - The Greek Entanglement" by the BBC in 1984, are said to be the ones that have stuck closest to reality. In all of them, you will find Lt. Inder Gill. (Author's Note: Just recently, a friend passing through Madras showed me a pocket book anthology on sabotage; the collapsed Gorgopotamos bridge was on the cover and a chapter inside was on the Harling Mission. Sadly, I did not note the name of the book or its author, but it was a comparatively recent publication.)

All who have written about Inder Gill recall him as being not yet 21 at the time, a lively young bantam full of fun. Themi Marinos, the lone Greek in the operation and its liaison with the various andarte groups (partisans), and Gill were birds of a feather, able to enjoy themselves throughout their stay behind German lines despite being only too well aware of the dangers "Operation Harling" constantly posed.

This operation was the first major "unorthodox" military activity Britain's the Special Operations Executive (SOE) initiated during World War II. Its intention was to cut the German's main supply line to Africa and enable General Alexander to launch an offensive from El Alamein (in Egypt) against a thus-weakened Gen. Rommel. The Germans were sending men and material to North Africa by rail to the Greek port of Piraeus (near Athens), from there to Crete by ship and from the island by ship or air to Tobruk, Benghazi and other North African ports. The SOE plan to cut the Salonika Athens line was to blow up one of three major viaducts across deep gorges to the north of Athens. The task fell to 12 volunteers who were to parachute behind the German lines, team up with the andartes and blow up one of the bridges. The SOE group was airdropped in three teams of four into rugged country swarming with Italian troops and some German forces. Endangering them further was their local guerrilla support, which they could never be sure of, there being so many different groups, all at loggerheads with each other. Equally, they could not have done it without the guerrillas and the Greek people, many of whom paid for it with their lives when the Germans later exacted bloody retribution.

This is not the fascinating story of the blowing up of the massive Gorgopotamos bridge either. But it is how the little Indian lieutenant is seen through the pages of these books. Marinos, describing the team, writes: "The youngest of the team's officers, Inder Gill, an Indian with a Scottish mother, was a University student in England (and) had volunteered for service with the British Army ... He was delicate, polite, mellow, simple and well liked. After the operation, he participated in various demolition activities (in Greece). He liked the Greeks and had learned Greek quickly ... A year later, he returned to Cairo and on to Italy for similar operations with local resistance groups. After the war, he (transferred) to the Indian Army and was eventually appointed commander of the armed forces of Western India, in the rank of Lieutenant-General".

September 27 was the team's last night in Cairo and "we decided to live it up", remembers Marinos, going on to describe the evening which "might easily be the last night of our lives, and in fact very nearly was". "Inder and I," he recalls, "rented a car and went around from bar to bar, intent on spending all our money. Around midnight we ended up in deluxe Shepherd's Hotel mixing our drinks ... It was after one in the morning when we staggered out of the hotel for the drive back. Inder wanted to drive and after a small argument about who was more drunk than the other, I let him drive. We set off at a slow pace, but the road was spinning and, suddenly, just as I realised we were on the pavement, the right front type struck something and burst ... A few local urchins changed it in no time (and now) it was my turn to drive. Inder had his opportunity ... We took the highway (with) the railway lines running alongside and separated from it by thick, tallish bushes. The road was quiet, so I increased our speed. Suddenly I felt the car going over barriers (and) realised that we were no longer on the highway but driving on the rail tracks with a train coming in the opposite direction. I turned the wheel sharply, and brought the car back over the bushes to the road. The train passed at a speed that would have crushed us to pieces. The next morning, Inder and I woke with a terrible hangover and went straight to Shepherd's Hotel where the barman gave us something with raw egg in it to drink, which, strangely enough, cured us. That morning we received our final briefing ..."

When the expected ground flares failed them and their team had to return to Cairo to await another drop date, Marinos and Gill "became temporary members of the Ismailia French Yacht Club and tried our sailing skills without much success. We nearly drowned ourselves". They also found the leader of their group, Major John Cook, a commando, less than inspiring, being arrogant and uncivil to his subordinates. "The position of Inder and especially of Doug (one of the team) was very difficult, as any reactionary attitude on their part could well lead them into a court- martial ... Inder, despite his mild and easy-going manner, could not accept the situation ..."

After a "blind drop" on October 27 in which their team lost everything but the clothes they wore, Marinos and Gill found themselves under fire, but eluded the Italians and, after a long trek, joined up in mid-November with the other two teams who had found sanctuary in a cave and awaited them not far from the target.

The SOE group and the andartes divided themselves into seven groups for the raid on the bridge. Inder Gill was in the sixth group, the demolition squad, one of three sappers in it. They brought down one towering pillar and two complete bridge spans. It took the Germans six weeks to resume traffic on it.

Denys Hamson, who led the cover for the demolition squad, was the first to write about "Operation Harling". In his book he writes, "Inder, the sapper, was the baby of the party, not yet 21 in those days". He goes on, "His Indian father and Scottish mother had certainly produced a queer mixture. His shyness was probably due to this and to youth, but I never knew him to be afraid of saying what he thought; and when it came to action, he always seemed to be cool and without nerves."

Hamson also recalls a day in the cave. "Inder was in good form. He was almost beardless and his bare sallow face accented his youth. An usual he was slouching with his two hands in his trouser-pockets, this, with the piece of string he tied around his waist, being the normal means of keeping his trousers up. He was untidier then ever and wore his service dress hat carelessly on the back of his head. He began his favourite song, "Boogie Woogie" ... to mark my entrance. Bey (one of the guerrillas) was delighted. He had taken a great fancy to young 'Eenda', as he called him, or 'the Benjamin', as he later christened him."

Later, waiting for the submarine that never came to take them off, marking time with sabotage activities and building an airstrip for a rescue plane that might come some day, Hamson and a part of the SOE team lived off the land. Of this period, Hamson writes, "Ted and Inder seemed to find a good deal of attraction in the younger members of our new neighbours ... It seemed slightly ridiculous and unreal to come up from a day's work at the air-strip ... to find a 'cocktail party' in full swing at my H.Q. with Inder winding up an old gramophone and Ted telling a tall story to some languishing girls from the town. Which was perhaps the reason why we appreciated it."

And then it came time to leave Greece ...

Was Ondaatje's decision to choose an Indian for his explosives expert happenstance, that the sapper in English Patient was also a Sikh coincidence? Even more curious is the coincidence of the Madras connection both Andrews and the real-life sapper share. Indeed, the Gill family's Madras connections go back many decades and are remembered in educational institutions, various associations and residential localities in the city. As for Inderjit Singh Gill himself, he stopped parajumping only in his mid-seventies (when a twisted ankle had Mohini Gill finally crying "Halt"), still prefers to drive himself, likes to take a turn on the floor whenever he can, and always says it as it is, bluntly but reasonably, just as he did in Egypt and Greece.

S. Muthiah is a heritage buff who occasionally looks beyond Chennai, his favourite beat.

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