White as the Shroud by Myra MacDonald

Author:Myra MacDonald [MacDonald, Myra]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: null
Published: 2021-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

11

CAPTURING A POST

“War is not a polite recreation but the vilest thing in life. And we ought to understand that and not play at war. The aim and end of war is murder.”

Prince Andrei, in Tolstoy’s War and Peace

Bana Singh was getting visibly irritated. I had been interviewing him for the best part of six hours and I kept coming back to the same question. “How did it feel?” I asked. “How did it feel to be out in the open on top of a mountain, so near the Pakistani post that you hardly dared move or speak?”

He was the only man in the world to have captured a military post at 21,000 feet and I had flown to his hometown to talk to him about it. “How do I explain?” he said. “You don’t think. This is the whole point about the army. You never think. You obey orders.”

“Were you not cold?” I asked. Surely he must have been exhausted and edgy as he waited overnight for the orders to launch the final assault. “How do I explain?” he said again. “It does not matter whether you are freezing, whether you are sick. You don’t think. You have to complete your mission. This is how the army works.”

But there was still another question I had to ask. “And how do you bayonet a man at 21,000 feet?”

* * *

In April 1987, India realised that Pakistani troops had managed to set up a post on a mountain peak overlooking the Bilafond-la that had previously been thought too difficult to reach. It was the perfect observation post since it gave Pakistani artillery spotters a clear view of Indian camps around the pass, along with their supply lines. Pakistan could then use its artillery to make it impossible for India to send helicopters or fresh ground troops to support its men. The Quaid Post – at 21,000 feet nearly four miles above sea level – was perched atop near-vertical ice walls and accessible only by climbing up on ropes. It looked impregnable. It threatened the entire Indian deployment around the Bilafond-la. It had to be captured.

In one of the most brutal battles of the Siachen war, Indian soldiers fought their way up to the Quaid Post, only to be gunned down, beaten back, or overcome by the weather. Then, in a last desperate assault led by Bana Singh, they overran the Pakistani post, killing every Pakistani soldier left up there. No one knew for sure exactly what happened in those final hours. No Pakistanis were left to tell their side of the story, and even on the Indian side the commanding officers were far below the scene of the battle, so that the versions I had heard in both countries were contradictory and unsatisfying.

As I sat drinking tea in Delhi with a contact from military intelligence, I complained I was never going to get to the bottom of it. “Myra,” he said. “There is only one man who can tell you what happened.

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