Old Soldiers Never Die

The Partition saw not only one of the greatest exodus(and slaughter) of humans in history ,but also the division of the centuries-old Indian Army. Besides the division of assets between the newly created Pakistan and India, whole regiments, some of which had even to be split, were partitioned, with Hindu and Sikh components coming to India and Muslims going to Pakistan. The ten Gorkha Rifle Regiments, were likewise split- with the Second, Sixth, Seventh and Tenth Gorkha Rifles going to the British-of these every regiment shed a battalion or so because some of the men refused to opt for British service The result was that India had to absorb not only the five remaining regiments, but also take in the extra men, who volunteered to serve in India. This resulted in the 8^th and 5^th Gorkha Rifles raising extra battalions from the remnants of the 2^nd and 6^th Gorkha Rifles. We had also to re-raise the 11^th Gorkha Rifles from the Rai and Limbu components of the 7^th and 10 Gorkha Rifles. Since the Gorkha Rifles were the exclusive preserve of the British officers, India had to find extra officers to fill in the void left by the British officers.

There were thus a large number of officers from the Second Regular Course, Indian Military Academy, commissioned into the Gorkha Regiments in 1947. Nine of us, ML Chibber, GS Rawat, K Chiman Singh, DS Katoch, HS Sodhi, OS Allen, VB Sathe, SS Gill and myself, for instance, went to the 4^th (PWO) Gorkha Rifles. Out of the nine, three, Chibber, Rawat and Katoch, were transferred to 6/5 Royal Gorkha Rifles. Sathe, and I, were posted to the 2/4^th Gorkha Rifles. “Ozzie” Allen joined later. (Chibber, Chiman, became Army commanders and Rawat Vice Chief, while Devinder Katoch and Harinder Sodhi retired as brigadiers).

Besides the induction of officers from regiments earmarked for the Pakistan Army, into the Gorkha Regiments, to make up the deficiencies in officers, some outstanding Gorkha Officers(or JCOs) were also promoted in situ in most Gorkha Regiments.This is how we first came in contact with three such Gorkha Officers- Capts Damar Pun, MC, Kam Lal Gurung and Sohan Lal Rajput- when we joined the Second Battalion of The Fourth (Prince of Wales) Gorkha Rifles (24^th GR, in short)..

When I reported to the Battalion HQ at Razdhainandan Pass( or Rajdhan), in June 1948, after a grueling two-day march from Bandipore ,we walked straight into a major crisis situation. The Battalion was holding an extended front stretching from Bandipore to Kanzalwan with just three companies(D Company had been detached and was fighting for its very survival under 2/8^th GR in Leh), The Commanding Officer, Lt Col AW Desai had deployed A Company under Damar Singh at the 12,229 ft Gosain feature, guarding the vital approaches to the Rajdhan Pass. The remaining two B and C Companies under Capt RB Dunne and Kam Lal, Gurung respectively, had been deployed, along the ridges overlooking the Kanzalwan plateau, with the task of securing the Lines of Communication to Gurez .

Unfortunately, these two companies had taken up defences along a spur, which though dominating the Bandipore-Gurais track and the bridge over the Kishenganga River, were in turn dominated by higher ridges. (Kam Lal, later confided that he had indicated these dominating features to Col Desai. Desai, with just 6-7 years service, and little or no battle experience, had dismissed their tactical importance, saying, “Not even birds will go there!”). It was thus only a matter of time before the enemy exploited the fatal error and occupied the heights left vacant, completely isolating the two companies for over five days. With no reserves Desai, found the situation quite beyond his control. He just sat and moped.

With the main road between the Battalion HQ and the companies cut-off, it was decided to send a relief column via Vijai Gali and Gurez held by 1^st Grenadiers. This was a long and circuitous route, which took two days of forced march to reach Kanzalwan. By the time I reached C Company, Kam Lal, despairing of any reinforcements ever reaching their beleaguered positions, had launched a surprise night attack, with a couple of platoons. The enemy fled pell-mell, leaving the position to our troops. Adjustments had been ordered and A Company, under Damar, was in the process of relieving C Company, which had been ordered to move to Gosain Gali, the 12,229 feet feature, vacated by A Company.

Having handed over the stores to Subedar Tek Bahadur Gurung,the Senior JCO of C Company, I wandered off to meet Damar. He was sitting on an ammunition box, giving an almighty tongue-lashing to a hapless jhandi-wallah(as the signalers were then known). Suddenly Damar gave a guffaw, and brandishing a huge staff ,leapt to his feet and with agility, surprising for a person of his girth, gave chase to the signaler. The latter, on the alert and more swift-footed, hared off down the slope. Huffing and puffing, Damar returned to his perch, and pronounced, “Never trust a jhandi wallah-they will always let you down in an emergency”. The “emergency” it turned out, had been the failure of the signaler to transmit an urgent SOS to the Battalion Headquarters, that A Company had run out of rum.

Damar was a stout, squat officer, perfectly rotund, but there was more muscle on him than fat. He wore short-cropped hair and had small eyes hidden in wrinkles of fat. But when he laughed, actually a short bark-like chortle, followed by gnashing of his teeth and an unprintable curse, he resembled a Laughing Buddha. Actually behind the rough and seemingly ruthless exterior, hid a gentle and kindly soul full of compassion, as we found later.

Some months later returning to our respective companies after a conference at Kanzalwan, I joined Damar’s convoy of some twenty pack ponies. Damar himself was astride a pony carrying his mighty staff like a lance. Suddenly a bear ambled out from the woods on the left. Seeing the hordes, with a loud snort, the bear turned tail, creating panic in the convoy. The ponies crazed with fear, bolted off into the blue, with Damar clinging to his panic-stricken mount’s mane and trying to control it. They disappeared around the corner. I caught up a couple of miles later, and saw a scene of appalling devastation. Damar was sitting with outstretched legs, resting on his arms on the grass. All around him were strewn smashed boxes of tinned milk, sacks of rice, atta and sugar and, sadly, broken rum bottles. The ponies having divested themselves of their loads were placidly feeding on the grass. Damar’s body was quaking, much to my alarm. But when I drew nearer I saw to my utter amazement he was shaking with uncontrolled mirth, and an enraged look..

Later, talking to an old Gorkha officer, who had served with Damar in the Fourth Battalion(4/4GR) in Burma, I was told this was characteristic of Damar under pressure. He not only laughed when he was happy, but disaster, rage, nervousness all sent him into paroxysms of merriment. When he was commanding D Company,4/4 GR in Burma, the Commanding Officer had warned him to exercise caution during the assault on Manadaly Hill, where earlier attacks by the Battalion had failed. This had drawn chuckles from Damar. He continued laughing while his men were being mowed down. Still laughing he led the assault personally for the capture of the crest. Violent counter-attacks by the Japanese had only drawn further laughter. When asked by the CO if he wanted anything, he had cryptically replied , “No-only breakfast.Out”. The story goes (which Damar never corroborated) that he had been recommended for a Victoria Cross by Maj Gen TW Rees, GOC,19(Dagger) Division,which the CO had downgraded to an immediate award of a Military Cross, on the grounds that what Damar had done was nothing extraordinary, but in the best traditions of the 4^th (PWO) Gorkha Rifles. History recounts this action as “the most outstanding action in the taking of Mandalay”.

Kam Lal Gurung was the very antithesis of Damar. He was a wiry and lean extrovert, bubbling with energy-an absolute live wire. Like Sir Francis Doyle’s “The Private of the Buffs”, “he jested, quaffed and swore”. While Damar was ponderous and deliberate, Kam Lal was quick-silver, impetuous and impulsive, the very epitome of a leader of “skirmishing troops”. He had been a prisoner of war, when 2.4^th GR was over-run by Rommel’s armour in Knightsbridge area in Libya in 1942. He had escaped, and with a few other Gorkha officers, had joined the re-formed Battalion in Sicily in November 1943. He had fought on the Gothic Front and been awarded a Mention-in Dispatches. The VrC won in Kanzalwan was highly deserved.

I reported to Kam Lal at Gosain. One of the first assignments he gave me, was to explain the mystery of ‘verbal orders’ to Senior NCOs. It left me wondering how the Battalion had managed without me in the last twelve years of its almost continuous active service. But Kam Lal was a shrewd psychologist, and knew that there was nothing better to restore the confidence of a young subaltern, then such ego-inflating assignments. He sent me on patrols deep into enemy territory. ordered me to lay ambushes during nights in the freezing cold, and, most frighteningly, conduct live grenade –throwing exercises for a batch of newly arrived draft of young soldiers. The last grenade I had hurled was at the Indian Military Academy, from behind a sand-bagged bunker. Here the Company Commander expected me to line up ashen-faced, quaking young Gorkhas along an open snow-covered slope, and “teach” them how to throw live grenades into an depression in the ground. I did not blame the men for hitting the ground the moment the grenade left their hands-who cared where it landed ? So without warning Kam Lal, rolled a grenade in front of the advancing column. There was an almighty bang with pebbles and foliage under the thin snow thrown up into the air. Everyone, including me, hit the ground. According to Kam Lal, this was an effective method to teach raw recruits that they must observe that the grenade had landed in the designated target area. It also got them used to battle-noises,he maintained. When I expressed my serious reservations, Kam Lal airily told me that in times of war, casualties were acceptable and could always be accounted for.

Because in lulls of fighting,we could not carry out conventional physical training and games, he ordered free-for-all snow fights. After one particularly vicious battle, Kam Lal himself became the first casualty. He was ignominiously evacuated with tooth trouble. Peace and tranquility reigned for a brief spell in the Company. I often wondered what the Pakistanis, with some of their pickets having observation over us, thought of the mad Gorkhas. I know they must have disapproved of us “tobogganing” on the seat of our trousers, down the forward slopes of the 13,220 feet Losar(where the company had been re-located) and below ridges controlled by them. It speaks volumes for their tolerance and forbearance that they did not fire on us. Sohan Lal, the Quartermaster, was furious when he saw the number of seat-less trousers produced by C Company for condemnation.

Such then were Damar and Kam Lal, and countless other Gorkha Officers, promoted to fill the gaps left by the British officers. Only those who served during the early years of the “Indianisation” of the Gorkha Regiments will appreciate the enormous contribution made by these stalwarts in ensuring a smooth and painless take-over of their battalions. They were a binding force and an essential link between the newly inducted officers and the men. They were our mentors and spiritual advisers, and above all, they were completely self-less and wedded to their regiments and profession with as the poet says, “ hoops of steel”. The passing away of these pioneers had signaled the end of an era. But as the First World War song went-

“Old Soldiers never die,

“ They only fade away”.

Dehra Dun Lt Gen RK Jasbir Singh

18^th October 2009

The Sixth Pay Commission.

The Musings of a Military Dinosaur

“Annual income twenty pounds,annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six,result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery”(Mr Micawber)-David Copperfield-Charles Dickens

The Sixth Pay Commission has caused more heart-burn then any previous such commissions-at least, amongst the “retired fraternity”. The problem at present apparently stems from the recommendations of the 6^th Pay Commission, which has decided to fix the pension based on pay bands, instead of rank. The concept of clubbing several ranks in one pay band is thought to be illogical, especially in the military, which has distinct ranks. These pay bands are applicable from a particular date, leading to a differential in the pensions of persons of the same rank retiring before 1997, between 1997 and 2006, and after 2006.

I suppose it is justifiable to protest. But it goes against the grain for us in the military to resort to mob-like dharnas and what have you. We have a well-established method of airing our grievances through “proper channels”. In the case of retirees, this is normally through Ex-Services’ Organisaations, like the Indian Ex-Services League,founded by late Field Marshal KM Cariappa,and recognized by the Government. There is also an organization in the Defence Ministry,which deals with ex-service problems. Of course, the serving officers do take up our grievances-if not purely for altruistic reasons, then for the simple reason that like death, retirement comes to all.

But for my generation of officers, pay though most welcome, was not the only raison de’etre for joining the Army. There was fascination of glamorous uniforms, the stories of derring-dos of military heroes during the World War of 1939-45, and there was always the great appeal and allure of the prestige that a military rank conferred on one. This was of particular relevance before Independence, when Indians were mostly treated as second-class citizens. For us this is far more important than filthy lucre. It is the down grading of our ranks, vis-à-vis the civilians that rankles most.

When on commissioning in 1947,we were sent off to attend the Weapons’ Course(at that time in Saugor) we learnt a lesson ,which struck us more than all we learnt about weapons. At the first Mess Meeting ,the Commandant, a Major, having highlighted religion, politics and women being strict no-nos for discussion in the Mess, also upbraided an officer for complaining about the Mess Bills. Never, said the Major, must you ever raise money matters in a Mess.

All this has come to me after reading a wonderful article by, a Canadian officer, which I reproduce below.

WHERE HAVE ALL THE TIGERS GONE?

This article was originally written by Colonel DA Nicholson;he is now retired near Kingston,Ontario,Canada

“The dubious honour of prompting this diatribe belongs to an anonymous young helicopter pilot with whom I recently shared a few drinks and a fascinating couple of hours one evening while I was visiting one of our larger training bases. This young man in his second year of service at the ripe old age of 22,spent the entire time outlining for me the plans he had made to cater for his retirement some twenty year hence.He earnestly explained his calculations, including projected promotions, pay increases and investment programmes, which would guarantee him the interest on several hundred thousands dollars as a supplement to his pension.It appeared that he had devoted a considerable proportion of his spare time to the management of his financial program. All in all, it was a most impressive display of logical reasoning and planning,and it left me deeply disturbed about the future of the Armed Forces. There may, I suppose,be those who do not find it incongruous that a young officer, on the threshold on what should be an exciting ,challenging career in fighting forces,should be so completely preoccupied with financial arrangements for a distant retirement. If such there be I suggest they turn now to some other reading material.for they will never understand my concern.

I found myself trying to picture this young man applying this cold logical reasoning process to a situation which required him to assume some degree of risk to land his helicopter in a dangerous spot to evacuate an injured or wounded man ,or to extricate a hard-pressed infantry patrol. I arrived at the unhappy conclusion that our young man might well deduce that to complete such a mission would be neither logical nor sensible, and that in the interests of flight safety and the successful completion of his long term retirement plan he should abandon the attempt.

I do not mean to imply any personal criticism of the young man in question. What I do wish to imply is that this young man has chosen the wrong profession and that those who recruited and encouraged him did so under false pretences.

It is not my intention to decry the importance of logic and planning ability in military officers, obviously these are essential qualities. I do, however, question whether a young officer who devotes most of his waking hours calculating his retirement income possibilities is likely ,in the face of the enemy, to rise to his feet and shout ,”Follow me”, or to inspire others to comply,even if he should in a rare moment of passion consider such a “non-cost-effective” course of action.

What preoccupies me is the suspicion, confirmed by one experience as a member of a promotional board, that the higher-rated officers are the earnest, colourless young men whose chief virtue is technical diligence; who never express boisterous exuberance in the mess;whose manners and social conduct are impeccable;and who always accord their seniors(and their seniors’ wives,of course) the proper degree of reverence. There seems to be a concerted effort to prevent the advancement of any young man who deviates from the nice,neat,grey middle ground.In other words, to flattering ARs. and to promotion, seems to be open primarily to those who “do not rock the boat”. I find it hard to reconcile this approach to officer development with my own experience’ It has always seemed to me that those people with the greatest lust for life are the ones most likely to attempt, in defiance of logic, to achieve the “impossible goal”

You will no doubt begun to detect, and I really admit it, to a twinge of nostalgic longing to meet once again a type of young officer who was fairly common a short years ago. This was the young man who did occasionally express a certain degree of boisterous enthusiasm for his profession. whose exuberance sometimes led to a heart-to-heart talk in my office and an extra tour as duty officer, and who, fortified by a few draughts of “happy hour elixir” would corner me in the bar for a forceful lecture on how I should really be running the unit. These same young officers may have required frequent guidance and steering, and occasional restraint but, bless them, hey never required prodding. They could always be relied upon to put forth that essential extra effort which often means the difference between success and disaster in both peace and war. No task was difficult and no hardship could deter them.Their senior NCOs looked after them like fathers. Their men loved and respected them and followed them without question. It was comforting to know that such men would be available if the crunch came. I am grateful for having had the privilege of serving with them. I only hope that their enthusiasm, gaiety and sheer zest for living have not since become squelched by the pervasive ,bloodless “man in the green flannel suit” syndrome of which I have spoken. Dismiss these remarks, if you will, as the musings of a military dinosaur ,but at least give some thought to the possible validity of this basic plea.

So gentlemen, please let us accept, cherish and develop, along with the nice, manageable pussycats, at least a few TIGERS.

Dehra Dun

Lt Gen RK Jasbir Singh
September 2009

Castro ki Paltan. The Raising Of The Jat Regiment

“CASTRO ki PALTAN

The Raising of The Jat Regiment

The confusion regarding the year of our Regiment’s raising arose from the First Volume of our Regimental History compiled by Lt Col WL Hailles,MC.in 1939. He starts our history with the troubled times prevailing in Northern India in the beginning of the Nineteenth Century,and the raising by the British of two more infantry regiments composed of two battalions each-one of which the 1^st Battalion of the 22^nd Bengal Native Infantry, raised in Fategarh in 1803, later became the 1^st Royal Battalion (6^th Royal Light Infantry) in 1922.

But while our Regiment kept thinking that we were raised in 1803, official history maintained our raising could be traced back to the Calcutta Native Militia raised in 1795.So this required some research to unearth the actual year of our birth.I accordingly started a correspondence with some of our old British officers,mainly with Late Capt William(“Bill”) Hislop, the then President of the Jat Regimental Association in UK.

The clue to our actual raising lay in the mysterious Captain Henry DeCastro who we find had raised “Castro ki Paltan”, at Calcutta in 1795,as the Calcutta Native Militia. In 1859,after the uprising of 1857, the Calcutta Native Militia ,was renamed the Alipore Regiment, and two years later in 1861,it became the 18^th Regiment of the Bengal Native Infantry. In 1864 it became the 18^th(The Alipore) Regiment of Bengal Native Infantry and in 1885,it dropped the “Alipore” part, to become simply the 18^th Regiment of Bengal Infantry. In 1902,it was renamed the 18^th Musalman Rajput Infantry, and then in 1903,the 18^th Infantry. This finally became 4^th Battalion,9^th Jat Regiment in 1922.But then the 4^th Battalion ceased to exist from 1923,when it was amalgamated with the Training Battalion of the 9^th Jat Regiment. The Battalion was raised as an entity in 1940,only to be captured in Malaya in 1942.It was disbanded in 1946,and finally came into existence in its present autar in 1962,after the Chinese War.

The Centre also went through a metamorphosis from its earlier raising in Agra on 20^th November 1917(that’s the day we celebrate as the Regimental Day) as the 2^nd Battalion 6^th Jat Light Infantry . The Jat Regiment Centre when it moved to Bareilly in April 1923. abandoned its perpetuation of the 2/6^th Royal Jat Light Infantry ,and assumed the identity of the old 18^th Infantry, predecessor of the vanished 4/9^th Jat Regiment. It was re-named 10th Battalion. Then during the 1939-45 War,it became “The 1Xth Jat Regimental Training Centre”,and finally just “The Jat Regimental Centre”,as it is known today.(Incidentally, in most older regiments ,the number “10” is always associated with the Centre. Hence we do not have a newly-raised 10^th Battalion).

Officially, the Indian Army List of 1927,traces the history of the Centre from Castro di Paltan. The Army HQ Letter No. A/21171/1(AC 2) of 1923,specifically mentions that in order to preserve the identity of the late 18^th Infantry, which in the reforms of 1922 became 4^th Battalion, 9^th Jat Regiment in the Regular Indian Army, “such identity would in future be incorporated in that of the 10^th Battalion,9^th Jat Regiment.”

Having pinned down our Centre’s(and our Regiment’s) Raising to 1795, what intrigued me was who the hell was Castro. I then started a correspondence with Bill Hislop and other British Regimental Officers. Bill’s reply is revealing.

“I have been able to do some research into H DeCastro. I spent a morning in the India Records Office and Library.and with two of the staff helping, all we could turn up was the enclosed information(now in the Museum as mentioned below).

“It is unfortunate that the H. DeCastro’s service record is not amongst those that came back to England.Even so we found it strange that that there is so little record about some one who served East India Company for over 50 years and who rose to the rank of Lt General. It is also strange that he was on the strength of the 23^rd,53^rd and 18^th Native Infantry,when he was a general officer.

“ We found no evidence that he had raised “The Calcutta Native Militia”.but the producers of the Amry List must have had this information to hand. My two friends in the Library,have promised to go on looking for any reference or information on DeCastro,and Patrick Emerson,who is Secretary of the IA Association, and a Member of the Council of the National Army Museum,has promised to do a search in the NAM records”.

I am afraid nothing came of subsequent research of the elusive Henry DeCastro and his record. Bill, however, who had just been learning the art of calligraphy in an Adult Course, did produce a lovely record of the service of Henry deCastro. This is not possible to reproduce in the article, so it is being displayed in our Museum.

Now the final lingering doubt about our origins remains. How is that we, the Jats, got associated with the “Calcutta Native Militia” ?. We are neither “natives” of Calcutta nor are we “easterners”. To cut a long story short, the answer lies in “trade”. Described as one of the greatest commercial enterprises ever, the “company of merchants of London trading unto the East Indies” the Honourable East India Company ,traded essentially in the principal ports of Bombay(now Mumbai), Madras(now Chennai) and Calcutta(now Kolkatta). Of these three trading posts, Bengal came to occupy the primus position. Hence, despite Madras being the first to recruit soldiers from local men, with some adventurers from further North, followed by the Bombay Army, which depended on men from Rajasthan. Oudh and Bihar( and not on the Marathas, who were then “enemies”), the Bengal Army stuck to recruiting people from Bihar,Oudh, Rohilkand, the Punjab and even Afghanistan- but seldom from Bengal itself.

Despite their “ impressive reputation as soldiers” after the formidable defence of Bharatpore against Lord Lake, the Jats were not exclusively recruited in the Bengal Army. However, towards the end of the 19^th Century, there began a policy to enlist these yeoman peasants, into two Bengal Regiments, the 6^th Jat Light Infantry and the 10^th Jat Infantry, both of which became Jat class regiments. The 19^th Bombay Infantry ,dispatched from Sind, stormed Multan, and after 1903,as the 119^th Regiment, bore the subsidiary title (“The Mooltan Regiment”),which the 2^nd Battalion, proudly bears to date.

Dehra Dun Lt Gen RK Jasbir Singh

September 2009