The nation is rightly commemorating the victory of the Liberation War won 50 years ago. It was a great victory which led to the creation of the new and free nation of Bangladesh. Its end saw the largest public surrender by an Army in history. It changed the geopolitical equations in the Indian Subcontinent. While victory in war is cause for national jubilation, it also the source of personal sorrows and tragedies, for families who lose their sons to the war. The 1971 war was no different. The scars and tragic memories of it are borne till today, by hundreds of families.
I was a Major about to command a battalion, posted in the Operations Directorate. The planning team had worked for months getting the Army in the right places and condition for the war. On December 3, General Inderjit Singh Gill, Director of Military Operations, General Manekshaw, Chief of the Army Staff, and the staff in which I was a member had just finished briefing Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and Defence Minister Babu Jagjivan Ram. News had come in of the Pakistan Air Force attacking our airfields. The PM went off to Parliament and later made a national broadcast.
I had put myself down on a mat on the floor to catch a nap. I was woken up by a junior staff officer to say that a fierce battle had started at Hussainiwala. My battalion, which I was later to command, had been attacked by a Pakistani brigade. In about two hours, half the battalion had been overrun and there were heavy casualties. I knew the two company commanders as family, of whom one was killed fighting bravely. He had already won a Shaurya Chakra. His wife was a lively young mother with an infant daughter. The other, wounded, was seen being taken away by Pakistani soldiers. He was the son-in-law of a Brigadier. Despite all attempts, the body of the dead officer could not be found. The other officer was never acknowledged by Pakistan as being with them, and the family has tried to find his fate for decades.
On the last day of war, after ceasefire was announced, Lieutenant Colonel A.O. Alexander was killed when his jeep blew up on a mine on a Pakistan desert opposite Rajasthan. Lalitha, the young widow with two children, was in Wellington, near Coonoor. She lived in Chennai for five decades and is a mother figure of the Madras Regiment. Alexander’s is the first name on the 1971 list of dead in the Chennai War Memorial. He was my mentor in my younger days . The three widows, like many others, have stoically borne their sorrows for 50 years. Comde Gopal Rao, who earned the Maha Vir Chakra in the attack on the Karachi Harbour, was a Chennai resident until he passed away recently. Always modest and reticent, he was the exemplary war veteran.
The battle of Longewala took place in Rajasthan. A young Major Kuldip Singh Chandpuri, out on a limb with his company in the desert, held off a tank force for a whole night with only a couple of antitank guns. Trying to get around Chandpuri, some of the Pakistan tanks got bogged in soft sand. His Commanding Officer, from some miles behind, galvanised artillery support and arranged for air support. As day broke, the Indian Air Force flew in to see the tanks in such numbers. There was no sign of the Pakistani Air Force and the Indian jets systematically demolished the tank force. The intrepid Chandpuri earned a Maha Vir Chakra, a film was made on the battle, and he rose to become a Brigadier. This iconic sturdy simple Sikh, who became a legend in his lifetime, passed away not long ago. Few know that he was also an Olympics-level referee for the 50-km walk event. Lieutenant Colonel M.K. Hussain, the elegant Commanding Officer who backed up Chandpuri and made the victory possible, retired to Hyderabad, and like all good soldiers passed silently into history. Such instances can be multiplied by dozens for the 1971 war.
As the war is rejoiced over, there are those who earned laurels, others who fought and were wounded and live to tell the tales, and those who carry their sorrows silently. Let us remember all of them, whose combined efforts did India proud.
The author is a retired Lieutenant General living in Chennai
