ALL FOR THE DEAR MOTHERLAND
(A leap from Kargil ……)
Death stared at Indian soldiers at every step
they crept along the cold steep slopes from high above. But when it came to
responding to the call of duty, sky was the limit.
The enemy and weather vied with each other
seeking to assert supremacy knowing little that the last hurrah was reserved
for the Indian Jawans whose heroism in recapturing the Tiger Hills has already
become part of the army folklore.
“With artillery shells whistling overhead and
empty stomach...we kept crawling up along almost perpendicular rocks to reach
the destination fast”, recalled Satpal Singh, one of the first two jawans who
returned from atop the Tiger Hill on successful completion of the operation.
“The journey to the hill top is next to
impossible as there are no tracks in the conical mountain. The rocks are steep,
almost perpendicular”, he said.
Well aware of the “death trap” ahead, the
Indian soldiers with rope tied round their waists kept climbing and crawling
until a forward observation post was established which would direct the fire of
a battery of artillery at Dras.
“Weather God also played tricks at times...”,
he said.
As the Indian soldiers neared the goal,
grenades were thrown at them by intruders who shouted “Indians go back”,
recalled Madan with a stony face. The intruders, were holed up in bunkers while
the Indian soldiers had to hide behind boulders in freezing cold, he said. But
every Indian soldier that night was charged and motivated to evict the
intruders and there was no looking back, Madan said.
“Neither the shelling
by the enemies nor the weather, not the steep climb could deter us from
completing the mission”, he recalled - PTI
[Courtesy ‘The Hindu’]