‘HELL OF A HANKA’ ‐ TTW YELAHANKA

I was christened with four bottles of beer and ‘passed‐out’ of the Air Force Academy (at Dindigul), not because of any ability to fly, but simply because I had a sum total of 54 hrs and 15 mts in my pilot’s log book and had not distinguished myself by crashing either the HT2 or the T6G Haward. There were dark ominous war clouds on the horizon and perhaps the IAF was short of pilots, those who would do it, and die, with or without any ability to fly. I cannot find a single good reason now, why my instructors in AFA made me drink four bottles of beer to ‘pass‐out’. Beer or no beer, I was ready to go to war and pass‐out because I was just turning from a teenager into an adult, testosterone by itself was enough as an intoxicant.

Perhaps it was my singular talent those days, which helped my instructors to decide that I was ‘transport pilot material’. I could hold back four bottles of beer without puking, I only passed out. But when I was asked to do aerobatics, I would puke continuously and leave a yellow contrail behind the aircraft. So it was that I was given a kick and told to go and ‘shovel shit’ in the esteemed transport command with ten other compatriots because they puked after two to four bottles of beer each, even though they did not leave contrails behind aircraft. You see, the prerequisites for becoming a fighter pilot those days were the ability to drink 2 bottles of beer without passing out, and the ability to do aerobatics without leaving yellow puke trails that ruined the ozone layer. The IAF was a very environmentally conscious service those days. So the ten of us were then put on a train and sent to Transport Training Wing (TTW) at Yelahanka in the fervent hope of IAF that we would one day do it and die, with a wing and a prayer. The fighter pilot instructors in AFA heaved a sigh of relief, ‘Good riddance to bad rubbish', they perhaps muttered collectively after we left.

‘I say chaps, it is Hell of a Hanka’, remarked ‘DeeKays’ after a very long truck ride from Kempagoda to Yelahanka through bleak and desolate countryside. I felt like a convict shipped out to ‘Kalapani’. Yelahanka was so far away from civilisation that there was no hope of finding a GF in the neighbourhood. GFs and frequent firing of our front guns were uppermost in our dubious juvenile minds those days. Becoming an officer and a gentleman, or contributing to the war effort, these were perhaps the farthest thoughts.

As soon as we got down from the 3 ton truck, we were made to ‘fall in’ by the venerable Chief Ground Instructor (CGI). ‘Get rolling’, he commanded, putting an end to all juvenile dreams of GFs and front guns. Front rolling on the national highway was good for removing all trace of ego. We were later to learn that the sum total of what we were to do as Co‐Pilots, was to retract the undercarriage and put the flaps up in a Dakota Mk‐III. God or the Navigator would make them go down even if the pilot commanded them not to do so. The CGI played an extremely important role, the most significant of which was to make us retract our dreams of GFs and front guns, just like undercarriage and flaps, during our stay as cadets in ‘Hell Of A Hanka’.

The Cadet’s Mess resembled a juvenile correction home, or perhaps a prisoner of war camp, with barracks and cubby holes, two of us stuffed like sardines in the hell hole. There was only a public convenience with dry sanitation scavenged by the pigs, whose union demonstrated and complained volubly if we took too long to do it.

There were no amenities whatsoever, neither for sports, entertainment, recreation, nor any sensible way to convert juvenile delinquents to officer and gentlemen. The process of conversion was to be done purely by coercion and punitive action, basically under the care of two ACGIs perhaps chosen because of their distinctive character trait of sadism exceeding Marquis de Sade.

‘What is TCRL?’, was the introductory question of our initiation to the mighty Dakota Mk III, the workhorse of the IAF. After the piddly HT2 and T6G Havard, the Dak was a huge menacing monster, enough to make me feel crappy when I went near it.

‘TCRL…….errr, something to do with Tits, Cunt and Roving Lund ?’, proffered ‘Dada Govil’, perhaps still dreaming of firing front guns, while all our such ambition had already retracted along with our undercarriage.

‘Get haunching, all ten of you’, commanded the CGI getting us to ‘bunny hop’ right there on the national highway to Nagpur. Collective punishment was to ensure the development of camaraderie and spirit de corps. Come to think of it, whatever we did ‐ we did it all together. Taking ‘Panga’ and getting punished was our raison d’etre and only source of entertainment.

‘TCRL is Transport Command Reference Datum Line’, said the venerable CGI afterwards, drawing a vertical line way ahead of a Dak’s nose, on a roll down black canvass chart, with the sectional drawing of a Dak. TTW had classrooms with benches but no blackboards in our time, just roll down black canvass charts, on some of which one could write with a chalk stick, and wipe it off with a wet cloth. I have often wondered, right through my laborious long service career in IAF, even as an Experimental Test Pilot, about what was the significance of a TCRL and why it was about ten feet ahead of the Dak’s nose. I think it was one of those dark secrets of the AF, told only to CGIs in transport command. Perhaps the US CINPAC (C‐in‐C Pacific) who owned the 7th Fleet in Manila Harbour had threatened them not to reason why. Everyone was scared of the CINPAC and 7th Fleet those days in 1971.

CGIs and Pilot Nav instructors had a field day with us since most of the flying instructors (QFIs) as well as the Daks were flying their pants off doing logistic support, gun-running 303s from Barrackpur to Dhimapur and causality evacuation on the return leg, even in Jul 71, many months before 3 Dec when the war was declared officially by All India Radio. AIR and Radio Ceylon were our coveted source of entertainment and ‘Amin Sayani’ made our day once in a week with Binaca Geet Mala. 

The war with Pakis in the east started as a ‘Lungi War’ as early as 26th May, with the BSF and regular army dressed to kill in a ‘Lungi’. The Lungi is a lovely dress, especially at half-mast, good for fighting as well as for fun, but not bulletproof. So TTW was called upon to backload the Lungi warriors to the Military Hospitals in faraway places like Poona, Hyderabad, Lucknow and Bangalore where they kitted‐ out the guys whose Lungi came off, with spare balls, to add valour. They were then sent back into the Lungi war ASAP. As I said, we were cannon fodder, not supposed to reason why, just do it and die with or without the Lungi.

In between, when QFIs returned once in a while for rest & recuperation, and ‘de‐sludging’, a transport command euphemism for authorised quota of sex under the AF Act for married pilots, we the underdogs were given joy rides in a Dak, more often all together in the dickey, mostly to teach us how to put undercarriage and flaps up, the same things that the CGIs had already taught us on the national highway.

My first joy ride in a Dak was with Flt Lt Manjrekar, a very jovial and friendly instructor who took pity and gave me the controls to hold for a few minutes. The Dak was quite capable of flying on its own, without divine or my intervention. But when I touched the controls, it bucked like Rangila, my favourite horse in NDA, and started to roll and yaw, just as Rangila did when I climbed into the saddle. Manjrekar laughed and told me to go to the stinking ‘Elson’ compartment (toilet) and stand on my head. When RIAF became IAF, Air HQ had issued routine orders that the Elson was not to be cleaned because all British had left and India was rid of their crap. So the Elson was a lovely place to get the taste of the free Republic, while doing upside-down yoga, with the Dak bucking when my peer group tickled it turn by turn.  The most valorous and exciting contribution to the war effort that we did during the 71 war was to front roll inside the Dak while Sqn Ldr Dhaliwal went looking for the 7th fleet all over the Bay Of Bengal, a seven hours forty minutes endeavour, logged against the training syllabus of all ten of us jokers simultaneously. I was convinced that USS Enterprise was a nuclear submarine and dived under Bay of Bengal due to fear of Dhaliwal dive-bombing it from the Elson which was much like the toilet on a train, with a through and through bombing chute. The US navy was not enamoured with shit falling from the sky which was the main reason why US 7^th fleet ran away. At the age of 21, that was my colourful perception.

By end Nov 71, before the war started, we had flown around 89 hrs each in TTW, mostly from the Elson compartment, but sometimes in a classroom Dak (with ten cubicles for training Navigators). We were made to permanently wear unwieldy and mostly unserviceable astro compass around our necks, because the IAF and the Nav instructors had a private agenda to make all ten of us into Navigators instead of pilots. To add to our woes, we were kitted out with a Nav Bag, each weighing about 75 Kilos, containing maps, charts and Jepson let down charts all the way from Yelahanka to Dallas in USA. The Nav Bag was also meant to carry oily Parathas and Punjabi Pickle, wrapped in the latest Kannada newspaper, all of them totally inedible including the south Indian damsels who adorned the pages of the oily newspaper. Everything inside the Nav Bag soaked up the oil and hence it was very difficult to figure out which map or chart was what and hence Jepson was a real ‘let down’, cursed by all.

We took serious umbrage to the ruddy oily Jepson who let us down, and hence did not learn navigation and often plotted the oily navigation charts upside down. That was because our view of the world in the Elson compartment was upside down. ‘Hopeless Idiots’, our Nav leader pronounced one day and we were saved from becoming Pilot Navs, in my opinion, a very culturally undesirable Hijda crossed breed. So it was that TTW decided to make us thoroughbred co‐pilots, but none of the VIPS were willing or available to ‘commission’ us – they were all hiding in trenches in Delhi expecting bombing raids by the US 7th Fleet.

It was not until 7th Fleet was seen returning back to Manila harbour, that Jagjivan Ram, the Def Minister, ventured out of his trench to remove the white shoulder tabs to reveal the piddly little stripe that proclaimed us a ‘Pilot Officer’. Gp Capt Gurdip Singh, the Station Commander, then gave us a typed slip of paper saying ‘Awarded Flying Badge in accordance with regulations of the AF, para 222, wef 22 Jan 72’, but forgot to clarify whether we were officer and gentlemen. It was left to us to prove it ourselves. I stuck the ruddy slip of paper into my logbook and decided not to be a gentleman.

‘Make up your mind’, my mother asked me afterwards, ‘Are you a Pilot, or an Officer ?’. She could not believe that I was either or both. Frankly, I was not too sure myself, the minuscule width of the stripes on my shoulders was not commensurate with all the ‘ragda’ that I had to undergo in NDA and the flying colleges. The only reason that made me believe that I had become an ‘Officer’ was because the CGI gave us the privilege to go to the ‘officer’s mess’ and sign bar chits for  Rum & Coke. That was a privilege that made the incredible ‘ragda’ worth its vile (pun). 

Before we left ‘Hanka’, after much pestering, Wg Cdr RC Sondhi, the Chief Instructor gave us another typewritten slip that proclaimed that ‘we were qualified to perform the duties of a second pilot on Dak by day and night’. To the great consternation of the CGI, we immediately went to ‘Ganesh Lodge’ in Kempagoda to let our undercarriage down and to fire our front guns, just to prove to ourselves that we were capable of flying a Dak day and night and could claim our name and fame as a ladies‐man, if not a gentleman.

The very next day we were shipped out, sent by train to Jorhat. When we boarded the train, there was a collective sigh of relief, ‘Wow, we are done with Hell Of A Hanka’. We had no forward vision or foresight. All of us were back in Hell Of A Hanka within a year to do ‘Command’ or ‘Captain’s Conversion’.

Well, that is another story.

By 1972 we were Rum drinking, English speaking, Flying Officers, Commander-in-Chief of the famed Dakota, fully conversant with the art of warfare of the birds and the bees, very legitimate ladies-men. Bangalore came under severe threat from the ‘Motor Cycle Gang’ from Hell Of A Hanka.

Cyclic

‘TITAR STRIKES’

The summer of 1990 was unusually warm, sultry and windy in in Bhatinda and Suratgarh. The ‘Loos’ and sudden sand storms were more frequent. Sometimes the towering Cumulus clouds rose further to form Cumulonimbus and threatened the area with thunderstorms, though more often than not, they moved eastwards and the inevitable deluge wreaked havoc in area around Sirsa.    Perhaps it was an unusual weather phenomenon that happened once in a long while. Helped by the weather and plenty of water supply from the Indira Gandhi canal, there was a bumper crop of wheat. By the end of Aug, the wheat crop ripened and the harvesters moved in.

That is when the avian phenomenon came about with such vigour that there was no parallel in the memory of that generation. The birds, mostly Titar and Parakeet, went wild breeding. They wouldn't stop. The tractors moved in after the harvesters left, to churn the soil for the next rice and cotton crop, exposing mineral rich fodder, wheat droppings, worms and other victuals for the avian. They loved it like Viagra. They began to breed as if there was no tomorrow.

The Titar and Parakeet have ESP and build in sensors that gives them early warning to danger. They spook easily. If one bird in the flock spooks and takes off, their whole squadron takes to the air immediately and unquestioningly in a ‘bulbo’. Hundreds of them in close formation who do an aerial tattoo of wing overs, stall turns, steep turns very close to ground like the perfect orchesis of a Russian ballet. With no spoken command, the formation silently wheels, the outers pull up and accelerate, while the inside men go lower and slower, some of them just six inches above ground. And when they have appeased their gods with their short display of avian skill, they land back, mostly from where they took off, to feed and to mate with zest and utter abandon.

Aug - Sep was also the vigorous exercise time for the Army in X Corps sector. In the summer of 90, it was 16 Div’s turn to flex their muscle. In Jun-Jul they had brainstormed over a sand model at Ganganagar with all the army brass in X Corps in attendance. In Aug, they deployed in their exercise area north east of Ganganagar in two sections, Red and Blue Land, eye ball to eye ball, to fight the ‘Battle Of Double Ditch Cum Bund’. Cyclic was asked to be an observer during the sand model ‘Tamasha’. While the Div deployed for the post sand model tactical exercise with troops (TEWT), Cyclic excused himself and went back to his Squadron at Bhatinda. He had work to do, the junior most of his boys were undergoing operational conversion under the vigorous and zestful supervision of the Flt Cdr Bhupi. It was Cyclic’s privilege to fly with each of the under trainees to first clear them as two aircraft leaders and then to see how they fared in air-to-ground weapons delivery at Sidhwan Khas (Halwara) and at Phokran (Jaisalmer) ranges.   For Cyclic life was chugging along like a superfast goods train, alternating between stand-up comedy talk shows to the army on employment of his tool (Mi-35), and operational flying training of his boys to act in synergy with the strange tactical doing of the army.

One morning a day or two after the army started doing it in the Ditch and on the Bund, when Cyclic went to work at Bhatinda airfield, he found an army Signal Unit tentacle deployed right outside his office, with HF aerials strung up on top the blast pen next door. On enquiring, the Havildar simply said ‘Sahab Ji, 16 Div Ne Bheja Hai’. So Cyclic called the BGS of the Corps on ‘Plan Aren Net’ to enquire and was told, ‘Enjoy yourself, go have fun in the Ditch. Coordinate the rest with GOC 16 Div’.  Soon a Captain, GLO from the Int  arrived and joined the gang in 104.

 

In 104 those days, there was a 40 x 20’ briefing room of their own. The side walls, floor to ceiling and front to back had sliding boards on rails with 1” map of the entire western sector. On the other wall were similar boards, where one of the young pilots had done the impossible, matched the corners of million maps which Lambert, the inventor of such polyconic maps, had proclaimed was an impossible task. The million maps covered the whole of India. There were also clichés on the sliding green glass briefing board, written in coloured chalk which said, ‘Nothing is impossible, just take a little longer, but do it’, or ‘When the going gets tough, 104 takes off’……things like that along with ‘jelebi’ drawings of previous day’s combat debriefs.

The GLO took over the boards with the 1” map and soon it was covered with oval drawings and drawing pins in blue and red, dotted lines indicating forward line of troops (FLOT), the usual symbols indicting deployment of army formations. The GLO was in constant touch with the umpires and kept updating the map with the flurry and zest of playing ‘dots and crosses’. The million map was for flying while the army used the 1” maps to crawl about here and there in the wilderness, including the ditches. 104 pilots had the onerous task of extracting the eight figure grid coordinates from 1” maps and transposing them on the million map if they had to go find and rendezvous with the army, mostly in prone position and under camouflage.

Cyclic went back to his office and called the GOC 14 Div. ‘Look here my friend’, GOC 14 Div said amicably. ‘I have allotted air effort to both the Red and Blue. You will be called by both, so do the best you can’. He put the phone down before Cyclic could superciliously ask how, when, where or what.

The first call came around 1700 hrs, to destroy a bridge that was being used by Blue land to send tanks and BMPs across the Ditch cum Bund, cum Canal, cum whatever, to threaten Red’s fortified node on the other side of the Bridge. ‘Hawks to also hover over target area and annihilate targets of opportunity’, commanded the GLO like ‘Centurion Pontious Witless Fuckusall’ of the Roman army.

‘Which side am I fighting for, Indians or Pakis ?’, Cyclic asked the GLO. The young Capt was perplexed with such deeply troublesome questions, he perhaps thought it was amoral to ask such questions, or to answer them. He only saw colours, Red and Blue, didn’t know which was who, or what.

‘Sir, target 3007N 7414E, about 3 km west of the village Kandhwala Amarkot, NE of Ganganagar, 260, 60 km from Bhatinda’, Flt Lt Wags, the adjutant, answered with earnest enthusiasm. ‘The bombs will take longer to fetch from the dump, while the RPs and Shtrum are quicker to load and arm, what would you like to carry ?’ he asked Cyclic breathlessly.

‘Jesus Christ, Wags, this is only an exercise. We don’t have to kill any one. Just the four under wing 57 mm rocket pods without rockets and two each empty Shtrum missile tubes on the outboard will do. We just need to impress the army, not kill them’, Cyclic was aghast at the enthusiasm of his boys to go to war. They were like well-bred Doberman Pinschers, rearing to go bite someone, even the Indian army !!

Within the next few minutes, by the time Cyclic could go take the mandatory piss, Wags was strapped up with the rotors churning ready to go to war. Cyclic meekly climbed into the front weapon operator’s cockpit and soon they were chugging along the beautiful Punjab countryside at 240 kmph, at 10 mtrs, in zig zag tactical routing to target area, with their wingman tucked in 50 mtrs in starboard echelon. Nobody let Cyclic fly, he had been relegated to a permanent ‘Co-Jo’ status ever since he became a qualified flying instructor (QFI) ten years earlier, though he always got to sign for the aircraft and take the blame if something went wrong, a rare privilege accorded to all QFIs, especially if he was the ‘Boss’.

As the Sun was preparing to go to America, Wags did a ‘lay down’ rocket attack 4 x 4 = 16 rockets at a time. The wing man did the same, on a stupid bridge over a piddly canal, with a more stupid tractor stuck on it pretending to be a tank and Wags pulled away without overflying it. Normally the weapons operator in the front cockpit would have used the Shtrum in a standoff attack from 3 km. But then Cyclic was the weapons operator and it was Wag’s day to prove his skills. Cyclic was the Boss and didn’t have to prove anything. Cyclic checked with the umpire on VHF army frequency. The umpire awarded Cyclic a neat surgical kill of a T-72 and destruction of the bridge. Cyclic in turn awarded Wags with a ‘Well Done Wags’, which entailed him to put a notch on his gun and wear a permanent grin.

   

Each 57 mm rocket pod carries 64 rockets. Four pods meant 256 of them. Between the wing man and Wags, with 8 x 64, they had fired only 32 rockets, so technically between the two aircraft there was still 480 rockets, 8 Shtrums, and the 2 x 750 rounds of 12.7 mm front gun ammo left to fight. So Cyclic told Wags, ‘Let’s go get them’.

For next hour or so Wags and the wing man went crawling ‘nap of the earth’ hither and thither at 180 to 240 kmph to find targets of opportunity, accelerating and decelerating very close to ground, turning with their rotor tips almost touching the shrubs, doing circular yo-yos between Wags and the wing man, popping up to 50 mtrs and then ducking, to try and spot targets.  They found plenty to shoot at, and did so, though the army was dug in and under camouflage. Even though Cyclic and his team were pretending to shoot them, the army was not pretending, they waved at Cyclic with genuine affection and warmth, knowing fully well that 104 was there to fight alongside them in war and peace. The  tanks and arty guns did phallic gestures, the middle finger salute, by raising and lowering their guns like a wagging finger.

 

Wags and his wing man flew and fought text book fashion which Cyclic could not fault. But Cyclic was not sure who they were killing, friend or foe. Once the ammo got technically over, and after Cyclic called off the attacks, the umpire concluded that ‘two Mi-35s in the tactical battle area were equivalent to a regiment of artillery and entire Corps assets of armour’ which upset many of the guys from the corps of arty and Armed Kaurs. To appease them the umpire mumbled that the Mi-35s were shot at by both Blue and Red land and killed several times, which made everyone happy, all except Cyclic. He had not told the army about Miss ‘Ispanka’, the hump back IR jammer and the flare dispensers that the Mi-35 carried to cater to such contingencies.

  

The sun was setting, it was time to go home.

‘Let us go home’, Cyclic instructed Wags.

So it was that Wags led Cyclic back to Bhatinda, in a bee line, right over the ploughed fields, when Titar struck. Miss Ispanka or the ruddy flares were of no use against the Titar.

While Wags flew and Cyclic was in idle mode in the front cockpit, chewing cud over the happy events of a successful strike and killing of the might of Blue as well as Red Land simultaneously while they were doing it in the Ditch and on the Bund, hundreds of Titar lay in ambush right on the flight path, with the express intent of retribution. When Cyclic was just two hundred meters away, covering 83.3 mtrs a second, Titar formation took off and climbed ten meters, right into Cyclic and the wing man. There were  hundreds of them, perhaps two hundred, just few inches from each other's wing tips.

  

In the fading light, the dark wall rose up in a jiffy in front of Cylic. The two Mi-35s hit the wall of Titars without any evasive action. The ground was just 10 mtrs below and it was too late to pull up.  There were too many hits to count, it was like flying into a fusillade of the legendary 4 barrelled ZSY 23-4 Shilka. As suddenly as it came, the wall disintegrated and the two Mi-35s continued flying. The windshield was splattered with flesh, blood and feathers. Cyclic put the windshield wipers on and the wiper arm went at super speed.  The wiper acted like a mixie, coating the paste on the windshield, making it red and opaque.

‘Red Eye Check in’, Cyclic called on the radio.

‘All systems OK, just blood on the windshield’, the wingman said reassuringly.

‘Wags, you OK ?’, Cyclic enquired.

‘Fine Sir, quite a fright’, he replied cryptically.

Titar formation perhaps did not know that the Mi-35 has 20 mm Titanium armour plating and bullet proof windshields. The cockpit is pressurised and air conditioned. The engine intakes have Ogives to prevent foreign object damage (FOD). The leading edges of the rotors are hardened steel to prevent FOD when landing or taking off from unprepared surfaces with stones and pebbles. The Titar picked the wrong guys to hit !

Wags brought us back home, just in time for routine night flying programmed earlier in the day. After the night flying, 104 had their usual exercise ‘elbow bending’ on top of the blast pen 19, without any pretence, genuine St OM. The NCE cooks served them a special dish that night on top of the blast pen. The snack was later nick named ‘500 kg Bomb’ perhaps by young Shuks. He had a very fertile imagination and was the one who went around giving everyone a sobriquet. Bomb was simply Titar Keema (or with mashed potato) wrapped in bread slices and deep fried to look like a 500 kg bomb. When you poked it with a fork, it burst spilling butter like Napalm. The Titar keema was perhaps scrapped off from the wind shields, Ogives, internals of empty rocket pods, and from inside of the undercarriage bay, even undamaged live Titar stuck inside the Shtrum tubes. There was always plenty of it to feed an army.

 

Afterwards the ‘Bomb’ became a routine victual in 104. Cyclic’s boss, the Air Force Station Commander Bhatinda, commented to SASO, who in turn complained to the C-in-C that Cyclic’s boys do intentional low flying at 10 mtrs early morning and at dusk just to collect Titar for the Bomb snack !! Quite frankly they did do low flying compulsively, but on explicit orders of Cyclic that all flying including ferry was to be done at 10 mtrs or below, because of the conviction that 'what you do in peace is the best that you can do in war', and our survival in war had best odds at full throttle at 10 mtrs during day and 50-100 mtrs at night. The C-in-C rightly awarded Cyclic his displeasure, though he too enjoyed the 104 Titar Bombs as well as Potat Bombs, which burst like Napalm !!

They were very happy days, the very best with mouth-watering 500 kg Bombs.

Cheers to Titar Strikes on the Mi-35.

Cyclic

‘The Garud Strikes’

Book Review

‘The Garud Strikes’ (By Mukul Deva)

I have just finished reading ‘The Garud Strikes’ by Mukul Deva.

 For those of you who like reading books, especially war stories, here is a book full of very scary arty fire on each page, blood, gore and testosterone. I strongly recommend that you read, and even make your grandchildren read this book. Afterwards sing ‘Laye Hain Toofan Se Kishti  Nikalke’. It is an ‘un-put-down-able’ story of 4 Guards, in 1971 liberation war, who inched their way nonstop from the mud and marsh beyond Agartala to Dacca in 16 days, fighting the Pakis at each step and each minute, in a full blooded war, often without food and water. Or taking a pee.

Mukul Deva is Ex NDA, Golf 59^th from 14 Sikh Li. The book is promoted by Jane Himmeth Singh, the ‘Grand Dame’ of the regiment of Guards.

In my humble opinion, books on military history are usually served on a platter like a week old Butter Chicken, unpalatable. But Mukul has invented a different style, he is not the one who is narrating the story, he is simply the typist. He makes the protagonists tell the story, as it was, when the falcon, 4 Guards (Garud), flew  from Agartala, Akhaura, Arahand, Ujjainisar, Sultanpur, Brahmanbaria, Ashuganj, Raipur, Methikanda, Narsingdi, bypassing all Paki defences, all the way to ‘Adamjee Mill Complex’ on the banks of the Lakhiya river, at Nagar Kachpur, within 3” mortar range of Dacca. Mukul has neither taken the lime light, nor distorted factual account of that war, has he left it to the protagonists to tell it as it was. He has not tried to create history, he has simply typed out a very exciting story of blood sweat and tears, fears and follies in war, just as it happened. So who are the protagonists from 4 Guards who narrates this story in a funny, sad, virile but very modest manner ?

The story is told first hand by effervescent ‘Paunchy’ (then 28 yrs old), A-Coy Cdr & 2 i/c of 4 Guards, ‘Grandhi’ (then 24) B-Coy Cdr,  ‘Tuffy’ (then 27) D-Coy Cdr, ‘Glucose‘ (then 23) the Adjutant, and a horde of other legends in this drama, right down to the junior most Lance Nks, and ‘Sahayaks’, war widows, even hordes of locals from Mukti Bahini whom Mukul interviewed over a period of two years to  put this book together, goaded by Jane Himmeth Singh, whose late husband was ‘Tiger’ 4 Guards in 71 and remained a Tiger till he retired as Cmdt NDC. Himmeth (then 43) looms as a man with long shadows, omni present and omni potent, during the 16 days that they took to change the course of war from limited offensive to liberation and creation of a new country, ‘Bangla Desh’.

The protagonists, as well as Mukul, modestly hasten to add that 4 Guards did not win the Liberation war singlehandedly, that it was a collective effort of the Army, Navy & IAF. At a macro level the nation too viewed it that way, reason why Himmeth himself got only a ‘Mention In Despatches’. Even more incredulous is that the Corps Cdr Gen Sagat Singh who made the Liberation happen, with utter disregard to Nelson like limited vison of his peers and superiors, Sagat simply got a ‘Wound Medal’ !! However, the young men under the watchful eye of the Garud and Himmeth, they won two VrCs, two SMs and 4 ‘Mention-In-Despatches’ for their significant role in the Liberation War which killed many guardsmen, wounded many of their officers and men. It is the story of their fight with incredible valour, pure guts, even when the Paki tanks charged them. 4 Guards cannot be denied their rightful place in in Valhalla, even if the country did not give Garud his due.

‘These were the men who, when caught up in extraordinary circumstances, displayed exemplary courage and unfaltering devotion to duty’, Mukul says in his author’s note. ‘When the push came to shove, they unfailingly rose to the occasion, with complete disregard for life and limb’. The incident of how Himmeth’s ‘Sahayak’ snatched Himmeth’s hand away from an arty shell, in turn severely wounding his own hand, makes me agree with Mukul whole heartedly. How Himmeth be mourns the incident for years, speaks volumes about the camaraderie that exist between Officers & Men in the Indian army. ‘It is hard for someone who has not been in battle, who has not seen blood and mangled bones, not been assaulted by the stench of death, who has not had a comrade die in their arms, to understand what wars can do to a man’, Mukul says rightly, a soldier speaking from his heart, reason enough for everyone to read this book. The book tells you more.

For those who were too young to know about this war, I quote London’s Sunday Times dtd 12 Dec 1971 (from the book), four days before Paki surrender, ‘It has taken only 12 days for the Indian army to smash its way to Dacca, an achievement reminiscent of the German blitzkrieg across France in 1940. The strategy was the same; speed, ferocity and flexibility’. 4 Guards story perhaps is an indicator of the speed, ferocity and flexibility’, there was no stopping them. The Garud story is funny and makes you laugh, it is also sad and makes you cry, but it tickles your cockles and fills your chest with incredible pride. Makes you want to feel young again, makes you want to go out there and to crawl through the mud, swim through a hundred water obstacles, be beaten to death by artillery, crushed and mauled by tanks, go without food and water, all of it just to say, ‘I was part of the finest bunch of guardsmen created by God and Garud’.

For the Air Force, this is a must read, especially the yeoman service rendered by the FAC, just 19 and still a ‘Pitot Tube’. It gives an in-depth understanding of the importance of close air support, why or how the ‘boots on ground’ needs the unstinting support of Air Power. Jane doesn’t like the expression ‘boots on ground’, she prefers to call it the ‘bayonet end’, I quite agree after reading the book !!

The highlight of this story is the Meghna air lift, the largest heli-borne operations ever undertaken in war. The basic Paki defensive strategy was based on the belief that a threat from 4 Corps in the east was limited, due to major water obstacles, especially the wide swath and oxbow lakes of Meghna river, which made Dacca unassailable and safe. That perhaps was the perception of Indian army too, reason why 4 Corps and Gen Sagat Singh was initially given only a limited offensive role in 71 war and the major Indian thrust was from the North and West. But Sagat had a visible character trait that perhaps was not understood either by Pakis or the Indian army. Much like Guderian, Rommel and Patton, he was a General who had a track record of jabbing at the juggler, he was a ‘rapid manoeuvre and vertical envelopment man’ from the Paras.  Besides he had an incredible game changer; ten Mi-4s of 110 Helicopter Unit, based in Kumbhigram (Silchar).

In those years, any helicopter unit could barely have 50% fully operational machines, or pilots, to field for any operation. Their motto was ‘Apatstu Mitram’ and hence, by doctrine or training they were really not men of war, and not too eager for eye ball contact with the enemy. But Sagat had another game changer right beside him, then Gp Capt Chandan Singh, a man with the same ‘do or die’ bent of mind as Sagat. Though the Air HQ and Eastern Air Command had decreed before the commencement of hostilities that the helicopters of 110 could at best be used for causality evacuation or barely heli-lift a company strength in or out of non-hostile area, both Sagat and Chandan had other plans. Chandan waved his magic wand. Sqn Ldr Sandhu and his boys of 110 turned from pupa to butterfly, did a ‘Bulbo’ (getting all their 10 machines airborne simultaneously, a unique feat), and moved into enemy territory right alongside Sagat, leading 4 Corps. Two more Mi-4s from 105 joined them.

Wave after wave, in a nonstop 24 hours operation, 12 Mi-4s flew to and fro between Brahmanbaria stadium in East Pak, right across the oxbow lakes of Meghna, deep into enemy held territory, to an open cultivated field in Raipur, right adjacent to the enemy deployments in Methikanda, first inducting A-Coy to hold ground and then the entire battalion of 4 Guards. As 4 Guards over-ran Methikanda and Narsingdi, the heli-borne operations became bolder and the landing sites went further forward, towards Narsingdi, airlifting an armada of almost a Division.  What is really amazing is that the entire heli-borne operation was an impromptu improvisation in the heat of the battle, and not a well thought out or rehearsed military manoeuvre. Not at that time.

The Meghna heli-lift is what changed the course of war, by 9 Dec 71, just 9 days from the time 4 Guards crossed the border.  Dacca now became an achievable objective. The initial Indian war plan of limited objectives now changed to the total capture of East Pakistan, surprising every one including the Pakis. At the vanguard of this heli-borne armada was A Coy of  4 Guards, led by Paunchy. And the day Paunchy went across and set up harbour for the heli-borne armada at Raipur, way behind the Paki 14 Inf Div at Bhairab Bazar and the formidable fortress at Ashugunj, Pakis as good as lost the war. Paunchy is a Rimcolian and from NDA (F/24^th). He won a VrC.

Rest is history, well told by the Guardsmen who fought that war.

I request that you don’t down load this story on Kindle, or buy the book online. Call, or write  a sweet note  to Jane  97998 26561 / garudstrikes@gmail.com,  and pay Rs 495 to ‘Lt Gen Himmeth Singh Trust, Acct No. 001201016930, ICICI Bank Ltd, Shreeji Towers, C-99, Subhash Marg, C-Scheme, Jaipur-302001, IFSC Code  :  ICIC0000012.

Why must you pay Jane Rs 495 when you could get this book cheaper on internet ? For that you have to read the heart wrenching stories of Kailashi who became a widow at 16, Pushpa Devi widowed at 13, a score of other such gallant guardswomen, at the end of  the book. The money will be benevolently spent by ‘Himmeth Singh Trust’ for the welfare of widows and those who need compassion and support. I bought not one, but five books, Rs 2475. I not only had the pleasure of reading an exciting war story, but also felt good that I did something for the disabled and war widows.  If we don’t look after our own kin, who do you think would ?

Cheers

Cyclic

 

Who Stole The Bengali Treasure ?

 I confess that this is an unsubstantiated story from the annals of the 1971 war, liberation of Bangla Desh. Perhaps it is just innuendo, an invitation for libel. I am just a silly story teller, more fiction than facts, but you perhaps may find it difficult to figure out where the facts end and the fiction begins !!

 After the surrender ceremony on 16 Dec 1971, in which Lt Gen Niazi unconditionally surrendered, Lt Gen Sagat Singh (4 Corps Cdr, who masterminded and facilitated the quick defeat of E Pak) was left behind in Dacca, as martial law administrator, with a few soldiers to manage on his own, surrounded by enemy still bristling with arms and heartfelt hate. All other ‘Brass’ who attended the surrender ceremony (including the 'Silver', Arora’s wife)  flew off to Agartala same evening on their way back to Calcutta. By and large the rest of 4 Corps and 101 Com Zone were deployed outside Dacca. Others were still on the move barely 100 km from their launching pads on the border. 2 &   33 Corps which were as to have been the spear heads were stuck in the mud.

Around 17 Dec evening, the B’Desh Govt in exile, with 4 or 5 IAS officers to assist them, flew into Dacca from Calcutta to take control and establish modicum of civilian command and control. Sagat Singh issued orders for de-induction of troops just after the ‘Guard Of Honour’ for Manekshaw, I think two or three days later. By then the Mukti Bahini and EBR had taken control of all treasuries in the new Bangla Desh and found the coffers empty. Led to a lot of heart burn and Indian Army was blamed for looting the treasury. Reason why Sagat ordered check posts and physical check of all officers and men returning to India, exemplary punishments for anyone found with any form of loot. Lot of honourable men including 3 of Sagat’s senior and illustrious commanders and friends were victims. Wait, let me tell you the story in proper sequence, as it evolved.

Sagat’s main concern at the time, when Maj Gen Jacob was twisting Niazi’s arm to sign on the dotted line for unconditional surrender vis-à-vis conditional surrender as Niazi wanted, his concerns were probably the mustering and safe transfer of 93,000 odd POWs to Indian territory before they were butchered by Mukti Bahini, to maintain law & order in East Pak, immediate withdrawal of Indian forces, and finally peaceful transfer of power to the civilian authority in Bangla Desh. Perhaps Sagat wanted to go home, his job well done, and not stay back in conquered territory like Mc Arthur or Eisenhower. So he hastened his pre-departure tasks with zestful efficiency and with great élan, to the full satisfaction of the hastily assembled provisional Govt Of B’Desh.  Everything went well in the 71 war, and after the war in B’Desh, as well as the subsequent transfer of power. All except one simple thing. The B’Desh treasury was empty. That offset the goodwill and bonhomie that Bangla Deshis had for Indians. The rumours spread far and wide with whispering rapidity, the Bengalis began to view Indians not as saviours, but as rapists and looters, as bad as the Paki army.

B’Desh accused Indian army of pillage and loot despite the fact that not a single case was filed or reported, and there were check posts at all exit points manned by Indian Military Police, accompanied by B’Deshi police, with explicit orders from Sagat to search and arrest all personnel who indulged in any form of repatriation of loot. To retain the honour of the Indian army, under the unwavering eye of Manekshaw, Sagat and the Mil Police perhaps became overzealous.  They did not spare even very senior and illustrious military officers returning to India. Even few bottles of Single Malt whisky, that were presented to Indian army officials by Paki army officers as well as EBR / Mukti Bahini, were confiscated as stolen contraband. There were exemplary court marshals and several senior officers, honourable men who had fought the war with distinction, they were asked to leave dishonourably, or were cashiered.

So if it were not the Indians, who looted and emptied the treasury in B’Desh, who did it ? I simply wish to clear the needle of suspicion and an unjust blemish on the Indian army as well as the man in charge, Sagat Singh, perhaps by connecting the dots of truth with a few lies, artistic licence of a fiction writer.

 It is truth that RAW had practically ceased to operate in B’Desh after the purge in Jun/Jul 1970, all our covert operatives in B’Desh were arrested, tortured and put to death.  Few intelligence operatives were inducted immediately after the surrender, and hence they would not have had the knowledge or wherewithal to run off with the treasure. So that makes me conclude that the ones who ran off with the Bengali treasure was none other than the ISI. And the man who can perhaps give a clue about the missing treasure is none other than Parvez Mushraff, who as a commando, special forces Major, was an ISI clandestine operative in East Pak in the closing stages of that war. Several Mukti Banhini and EBR veterans that I talked to recollect seeing Mushraff in Dacca in the closing stages of the war.  How was he inducted into Dacca despite the Naval and Air blockade by Indians, who knows ? Perhaps by submarine ?

 So how did the ISI do it and what happened to the treasure ? Perhaps few others who could explain, if they are so inclined to do it, is the crew of ‘SS Buckeye State’, a merchant ship owned and operated by the CIA that was used to ferret out the treasure along with CIA and ISI operatives out of the war zones, from Chittagong. It has a history of doing such things in WW-II, especially stealing the Japanese gold cashe from Philippines with the help of the infamous Ferdinand Marcos.  But let me not jump the gun. 

Hamoodar Rehman was an elderly, conscientious and sagacious Paki Supreme Court judge, empowered and appointed by Govt Of Pak, after the 71 war, to enquire into the follies that led them to lose half their country.  His ‘Report On Commission Of Inquiry Into 1971 War’ (Vanguard Books, Lahore), is perhaps the most officious book of guilt as it can get, castigating those Pakis who deserved blame, and praising those who fought with valour. To find the Bengali treasure, which was not one of his charter or brief, one has to read between the lines of his report.

After the death of Jinnah, soon after Paki independence, Paki politics and the military hierarchy veered, it became an all Punjabi show. The diaspora of Sindhies, the Baluch, the Kashmiris or the Bengalis were shunned, perhaps like the OBC mentality in India. The political parochialism and fratricide finally led to the Army under Ayub Khan to take over controls in 1958. After 12 yrs of ‘Martial Law’, sometime 1970, Gen Yahya Khan had enough and decided to revert Pak to democracy, perhaps with a revision of the Paki constitution to keep the military still in the decision making loop.  The precipitator of such a policy was Zulfakir Ali Bhuto, a dynamic, vitriolic and very ambitious Paki Punjabi political, who was expected to win the election.  To every one’s surprise, the Awami League in East Pak, with Mujibur Rehman in the lead, won a resounding victory, purely because of the political dynamics of vote bank, the voters in East Pak surpassed those in the west by 40%. Mujibur then caught a flight via Colombo and rushed to Islamabad to stake claim to form a Govt with himself as a Prime Minister of East and West Pak. Bhuto got Yahya Khan to put Mujibur in prison on charges of treason, it was unacceptable to the Punjabi mentality to have a Bengali rule Pak, West or East !! It sparked the civil war in East Pak.

 Yahya Khan then appointed the ‘Butcher Of Baluchistan’ Gen Tikka Khan as the martial law administrator in East Pak, inducted a large number of troops and started a crackdown. The crackdown soon turned into an enthusiastic ethnic cleansing which had only one historic parallel, the Jewish purge by Hitler, or in a smaller context Bosnia, with Bihari Muslims as collaborators to vanquish Bengalis Muslims of all kind.  The mass genocide, exodus, search and seizure, UNICIF, Red Cross and World Bank Aid, the CIA funding, all these enriched the coffers of East Paki treasury in bullion, US Dollars in cash, precious art and artefacts, all of them stored in safe houses, mostly in and around Dacca. Maj Parvez Mushraff from the crack special forces SSG seconded to ISI, assisted by few SSG and West Paki EBR personnel was in-charge of safekeeping of this treasure. You have to read between the lines of  Mushraff's autobiography to get the drift.

 None could be trusted in East Pak since Mar 1971. The Bengalis officials including EBR (East Paki Bengla Rifles, hard core military, mostly officered by west Pakis or a few Bengali officers whose wives and children were hostages in West Pak) began to desert or abscond, most of them heading for the Indian border. The brutal Paki Military police, Punjabis to the last man, took over policing and the ISI took over the clandestine activities, the encounters and the ‘Ab Tak Chappan’. Due to the naval blockade, and prevention of over flights, only a few could filter in or out via Colombo. The young Maj Parvez Mushraff, a dynamic zealot, was then an important functionary of the ISI in Dacca, though his exact role at that time, besides guarding the treasure, is not known.

 A few days after the official war was declared on 3/4 Dec 71, when Indian Kilo force (RAW Military Establishment 22 under Maj Gen Uban & BSF under Rustomji)  began to pose a threat to Laksham and the escape route to Chittagong, the ISI decided to move the Bengali treasure from Dacca to Chittagong by rail. The treasure was shifted, staging through Lalksham, by a special train travelling nonstop, mostly at night. At Lalksham, a very fortified staging post, Mushraff and his small contingent of ‘treasure guards’ were attacked by two hunters from IAF led by Wg Cdr Vinod Nebb VrC & Bar. Though Nebb managed to destroy most of the fortifications, Mushraff and the Bengali treasure were safe in deep underground bunkers. They moved again at night to Chittagong, unmolested by IAF.  At Chittagong they awaited the arrival of ‘SS Buckeye State’.

 In it’s chequered history of 35 yrs, till it sank, or was purposefully sunk off Panama in 1978 (perhaps due to US congressional investigation and hearings), SS Buckeye State had been registered and re-registered under 28 flags, under different names, mostly spurious offshore companies owned by the CIA. The superstructure had undergone frequent modifications to make its silhouette different around 32 times. It was a very powerful flat bottomed ship capable of sailing in shallow water and high speeds in open sea with retractable hydraulically operated stabilisers. It was retrofitted with every modern electronic gadgets that CIA could buy.  It had done everything from infiltration and exfiltration of CIA agents and worldwide political dissidents, gun running, opium smuggling, cash delivery and the most illustrious thing that it did in its lifetime was to run off with the  Japanese cache of bullion and treasure from Philippines after the Japanese surrender in 1945, with the assistance of Marcos, then a leader of the underground. The incredible Japanese treasure had helped CIA to grow to be the only intelligence agency, besides ISI, which does not need Govt funding to conduct its worldwide operations, they have enough money of their own in Swiss banks. Around first week Dec 1971, SS Buckeye State (a new name and a new silhouette) sailed from Taiwan, through the Malacca Straits into the Indian Ocean, ducked the Indian Navy blockade by skirting along the Malaysian and Burmese coasts and sailed into Chittagong around 8 or 9^th Dec 71.

 Due to dock worker’s strike, sabotage by Bengali frogmen led by an Indian Navy Officer Lt Cdr Akku Roy, strafing by a Sea Hawk ex Vikrant which destroyed some of its superstructure, the loading of the treasure on Buckeye was delayed and the ghost ship was caught up in Chittagong port when Niazi surrendered on 16 Dec 71.  Tremendous pressure was then put on GoI by the US Ambassador in Delhi to allow the ship to sail. No mention was made of its purpose of visit to Chittagong or cargo manifest.  None in India bothered to ask what was 'Buckeye' doing in Chittagong. It sailed on 18 Dec, two days after the war ended, with CIA deep cover operatives and Maj Mushraf with his escort guarding the Bengali treasure below deck. In the post war euphoria, the Indian Navy even offered a mine sweeper as escort. Off Trincomalee coast, the escort said good bye to Buckeye and returned to Vizag.

 It is said that a Paki Navy gun boat intercepted Buckeye off Makran coast when it was trying to duck and sail off to Dubai. Buckeye was then escorted to Karachi. Mushraff was given a gallantry award, and the treasure transferred to a vault in Karcahi. Buckeye was allowed to sail off into the yonder, ‘Pirates Of The Caribbean’ world of CIA.

 The subsequent Indo–Pak Shimla conference did not go as well as Bhutto desired. On the last day the politically shrewd Bhutto requested Mrs Gandhi for an hour long private tet-a-tet, all by themselves. After the tet-a-tet, despite having 93,000 prisoners and many thousand square miles of Paki territory in the Indian kitty, it was perceived afterwards that it was Bhutto who dictated the final Shimla agreement, not Indians.  India gave it all away, including the swaths of hard won, tactically most important real estate, stupefying the team of Indian interlocutors including those from Indian Army MO Directorate. The line of control (LOC), Indo-Pak border, it was incredibly reverted back to pre-war days despite the mournful yodelling from the petrified MO directorate. Perhaps the Bengali treasure was an incentive, deposited as Congress party funds in Swiss bank account ?  The ISI is very clever, they would not have given all of it away, perhaps just a part of the bullion.  

 Three decades later, at Agra after the Kargil war, Mushraff now Paki President asked our then PM Vajpai for a similar private tet-a-tet, all by themselves. Perhaps the sum offered, the balance of the Bengali Treasure that was not squandered by ISI, perhaps it was not enough to buy off Kashmir. In 1847, after the first Punjab War, when Gulab Singh bought Jammu & Kashmir from Henry Lawrence of East India Company, the price was just Rs 70 lks.  With inflation and compound interest, perhaps Vajpai deemed that the price for Kashmir was everything in Paki treasury + Paki GDP for next five years + the balance of Bengali treasure, all of it to be transferred into BJP’s Swiss bank account ? I have great regards for Vajpai, though slow witted, he was good at maths !! Part of the Bengali treasure is perhaps still safe in Switzerland, out of the reach of the politicals in B’Desh as well as India. It is being put to good use by the Pakis, to conduct the proxy war, ‘kill by thousand cuts, and the new found love Jihad’ in Kashmir, and elsewhere in India !!!

 God bless Lt Gen Sagat Singh. May he RIP. He neither stole anything, nor did he allow the Indian Army to steal anything, especially the Bengali treasure. A few woman did offer themselves to Sagat but I believe without any coercion. He was after all like Julius Caesar, irresistible to the Cleopatras of those days and we really cannot complain about that sort of privileges of a conquering hero who accepted affections of the gallant ladies like a true gentleman, with total discretion !!

 Cheers

CYCLIC

Memories Of Another Day

Stealing a Cycle in France

 I used to have a holier than apostle St OM’s attitude, that I did not steal anything while in uniformed service, I was wrong.  Court Marshall of a friend brought back forgotten memories of another day, of stealing a Cycle, that too in France !!

Sometime beginning Aug 1983, after I had turned from pupa to a Sqn Ldr, I was deputed to attend the experimental test pilot’s course in France, at a very charming village called ‘Istres’ (about 40 km north of Marseilles). The very modern and most impressive test pilot’s school (EPNER) was located on a nuclear air base, about 10 km from the village. Since the circumstances pertaining to my selection and despatch to France was rather strange, and in a matter of 24 hrs, I arrived  in Istres with just a pair of jeans, 2 T shirts, no extra underwear, a toilet kit and about 40 Francs in my pocket. I had no option but to skip wearing an underwear, a most useless piece of dress and no match for a ‘langot’.

The TP school was kind to house me in a guest house, much like a 5 star hotel, located 300 mtrs from the school (it had everything, including a washing machine and fully equipped kitchen, but no support staff and no food). Seeing the pathetic look on my face, they emphasised that it was gratis till I could make my own arrangements for stay. There were 3 other occupants of the guest house besides me, two Egyptians and an Iraqi. My batch of TP trainees, about 29 besides me, all of them engineers as well as pilots, had around 8 Frenchmen and the rest from all parts of the word including Americans, British, Germans, Dutch, Brazilians, etc, all of whom promptly hired castles and palatial houses all over south of France and drove around in brand new fancy cars, making me very jealous. They were paid incredible sums of money and lived it up. I was perhaps on parole from IAF jail !!!

The Egyptians and the Iraqi promptly bonded, had their own equally fancy cars and dined out in the village. It was too far for me to walk to the village and back. Hence, for couple of days I subsisted on bread, butter and jam that the Iraqi was kind to bring for me when he went to the village.  For lunch the entire staff and students of the school used to go across to the Marcel Dassault (Mirage) factory in another part of the air base where we got a sumptuous lunch. Before the course started in earnest, for about ten days, I had ample of spare time with nothing to do and did ‘time pass’ by walking / jogging around the nuclear base, morning and evening, even to some parts of the restricted area. That is when I discovered that just behind the main building of the TP school, there was a cycle stand with six brand new sports cycles with gears, a technology that was yet to come to India.

For a day or two, I ignored the cycles, presuming that it belonged to someone, or the other. After two days I noticed that they were unlocked and had not been moved. There was no body about, and no one watching. On the third day, curiosity got the better of me and I took one cycle and placed it at some distance away from the others. That evening I went to see whether the owner had parked it back to it’s original place. It was right there where I had left it. Curiosity got the better of me. I took each of the cycles and parked it randomly and haphazardly, even laying one cycle on it’s side. For two more days I waited to see if the owners had come by and sorted out the messy parking. The cycles lay as they were, just the way I had left them. On the fifth evening, NDA habits got the better of me and I decided to steal one of the cycles. ‘What the hell, if the owner comes to claim it, I could always say “Mercy Becoup” and return it to him’. What I did not know was that there were CCTVs all over the place and my strange behaviour with the cycles as well as walking / jogging around the base aimlessly had been noted by the security staff and it was reported that the Indian seemed a bit crazy. I pedalled about happily on the stolen cycle, even going to the village to explore and buy myself a few knick knacks including W-front underwear which I found was necessary to avoid embarrassment because of the 44” bust of the waitress who served us lunch and who was fond of thrusting it on my face when she came to clear the plates.

 Another week passed by. And then thunder struck.

 Around 3 O’Clock one afternoon, I was called to a room in which I found four Frenchmen TP colleagues in uniform, sitting around a table. I was made to stand at the foot of the table, there were no extra chairs. I realised that something was wrong, it looked like a ‘Court Of Enquiry’ back in India. I started to feel shitty, and the shit started travelling upwards towards my head (a phenomenon called ‘Hicum Foocum’, very common amongst combat pilots).

The inquisition was initiated by Capt Robert Abriba of l’Arme De Terre (French Army).

‘Dit Moi, S’il Vouz Palit’, he started the questioning in a very offensive manner, though polite. ‘What the f*** were you doing, roaming around our Nuclear base ?’, he asked in French.

‘I was bored, required some exercise, and so I was just doing sightseeing around the base’, I stuttered and stammered in broken French, with a vocabulary of a ten year old child.

‘You went around looking at our secrets’, Capt Patreek, on deputation to Air Bus Industries, interjected with undue hostility.

‘Did you steal any secrets?’, Capt Bernard Berthod of L‘Arrme De L’Air (Air Force), questioned with authority.

‘No, no, no,  s’il vouz plait, I only stole a cycle’, I stammered truthfully, looking miserable. I began to wonder whether they would march me up to the Commandant, blow the bugle and relegate me.

‘What cycle, the secret of fission or fusion ?’, Patreek asked with a straight face.

‘Mon Amis, I just stole one bicycle from behind the school’, I said dolefully, ‘I am very sorry, I will return it immediately’.

Everyone seemed quite stumped. They looked at each other for mutual support. My ‘Hicum Foocum’ was really beginning to bother me.

‘For your misconduct, there is only one punishment, the Poe’, Robert announced with finality, in a gravelly voice, like a Supreme Court Judge. I crapped, a wee bit, right into my brand new W-front underwear.

 All four of them pushed their chairs back and got up. Robert and Patreek grabbed my biceps and marched me through a side door.

The shit in my brain was beginning to ask what a ‘Poe’ was. I had no idea. I had visions of Count of Monte Cristo, of being marched away and incarcerated in a terrible underground jail in some far away island.

We entered the room next door and all hell broke loose.

 All my 29 TP course-mates, staff of the TP school began singing, ‘He is a jolly good fellow, so say all of us’. I suddenly remembered that it was my 33^rd  birthday.

Someone sprayed me with Champaign, like Michael Schumacher after the Formula – I race. The ladies including the 44” inch burst came and kissed me, ‘what a nice, simple man’, she said.

 It was the most elaborate prank ever played on me in my life.

‘Poe’ was a working day office party, on special occasions, usually after 1600 hrs, celebrated with Champaign.

The cycles behind the school were meant for entertainment and to break monotony, when someone was bored, overworked, or could not solve an engineering riddle, he could take a cycle and go around in the lovely sunshine for a while to clear his head, stop ‘Hicum Foocum’. The cycles belonged to the school, for use by one and all, free. In it’s history of three years, the cycles had never been used, I was the first one to use it (steal it !!!). ‘Hicum Foocum’ was generally resolved by everyone by driving upto Cote d’Azur nearby to see naked women sunbathing on the beach.

 After an hour of the Poe, when I was quite drunk with Champaign, Capt Bernard Berthod of L‘Arrme De L’Air caught my biceps and steered me out of the party, through the front door and out to the parking lot, to a new looking Duex Chevo (literally means two horses), a two cylinder Citroen car, much like the Tata Nano, but looked more like the Volkswagen Beatle. He gave me a Key ring. ‘All yours, have a ball’, he said to me in French.

‘But I cannot accept gifts’, I moaned, remembering the stern briefing in Air HQ before I left India.

‘You can’t go around riding a cycle, it is bad for the image of the test pilot’s school’, he reasoned.

‘Besides, it belongs to my wife who fell of a horse and broke both her legs, she will not be needing it for quite a while’, he said with finality. ‘You use it, as long as you want, and when you are finished with it, crash it so that I can claim insurance’, he said with finality.

I returned the cycle to the cycle stand. When I got ‘Hicum Foocum’, like everyone else, I drove the car to Cote d’Azur. During my time in EPNER I never saw any one using those cycles, ever.

At the end of my stay in France, I went to Bernad’s house to return the car.

‘Merde’, he told me. ‘I told you to crash the car and help me claim the insurance’.

 I looked around and saw a small mound of sand left over from some construction. So I reversed the car to about 200 feet, accelerated, and hit the mount at a top speed of about 65-70 kmph. The car climbed over the mount, rolled over, hit the ground in a 90 deg dive and finally fell on it’s back, completely crushing it. Bernard immediately rang for the police and an ambulance. While I was being removed from the scene on a stretcher, I heard Bernard telling the Cop, ‘These f***ing Indians, they are bloody crazy’.

 I got a cut lip and Bernard got his insurance.

I am told that all 29 of my Test Pilot friends worldwide, still narrate the story on weekends over beer, ending the joke with ‘‘These f***ing Indians, they are bloody crazy’.

Perhaps that was the last time I stole a cycle, or anything else.