When I joined the Indian Military Academy, Dehradun, in January 1961, for the first of the four six-month-term pre-commission training, I was assigned to Imphal Company of ‘C’ Battalion. A Gentleman Cadet by the name of G.V. Prasanna Rao was also billeted in the same wing.
I remember Prasanna Rao as a gentle, ever-smiling person. He was a Kannadiga, his family originally from the erstwhile Mysore State. Being from the south, I had an immediate rapport with him.
We were together from January 1961 to June 1962, when Prasanna Rao was commissioned as a second lieutenant and posted to the Fourth Battalion of the Grenadiers Regiment, “4 Grenadiers”, in military parlance. Sadly, that was the last time I saw him.
In October 1962, he was commanding a company of 4 Grenadiers troops in NEFA (as it was then called), in the Khinzemane Sector. I was still in the IMA, in my final term of training, due to be commissioned in December.
Hostilities on
Chinese military action had grown increasingly aggressive until on October 20, 1962, the PLA attacked India both in NEFA and Ladakh. The iconic battle of Rezang La in Ladakh’s Chushul Sector saw soldiers of ‘C’ Company of 13 Kumaon heroically fighting to the last man and the last round, and finally resorting to fighting with bayonets. They were all martyrs for the cause of our nation. The heroic Rezang La battle rightly occupied media space, but the battles fought in NEFA have not attracted as much attention.
In early-to-mid November, as news trickled in regarding the military operations, we final termers in the IMA were fired with the idea of joining the troops on the fighting front, hoping that we would be immediately posted to units in the field. But that was not to be, because on November 20, the PLA unilaterally declared a ceasefire and withdrew.
It was soon after that we learned of Prasanna Rao’s heroic stand along with his fine Grenadiers troops. Being in command, young Prasanna Rao chose to defend his post, which came under attack on October 20, by far superior numbers of a PLA battalion supported by heavy mortars. Following repeated attacks which were repulsed at heavy losses to themselves, a soldier manning his light machine gun was killed. Thereupon, Prasanna Rao himself manned the LMG, and died fighting at his post like a true soldier, in the highest traditions of the Grenadiers Regiment and the Indian Army — with just four months of military service, precisely five days after he passed his 22nd birthday.
We were so proud of our gentle, ever-smiling Prasanna Rao, our dear colleague who had been posthumously awarded Maha Vir Chakra (MVC) for gallantry in the face of a vastly superior enemy. It was only after Prasanna Rao was awarded MVC, did I get to know the expansion of his initials “G.V.” as Gopalakrishna Venkatesa, from his MVC Gazette Notification.
The heroism of 4 Grenadiers led by iconic Second Lieutenant G.V. Prasanna Rao is not widely known. We need to also remember that every Grenadier soldier of Prasanna Rao’s Infantry Company was a hero in his own right. They all died, all martyrs, fighting for our nation.
sg9kere@live.com
