The Untold Story of Kargil
cheap Canada Goose One evening, I was standing by a mountainside in the frigid heights of Kargil. Restless soldiers paced up and down. Their comrades had been killed and bodies were being brought down from the unsparing heights. It would soon be dusk and the waiting soldiers knew they had a long night ahead: bodies to canada goose factory sale take care haof; paperwork to be completed; families to be informed and coffins to uk canada goose outlet be airlifted to Srinagar for the final journey home. cheap Canada Goose
canada goose clearance sale Against the fading light, the Canada Goose online silhouette of the stretcher bearers can finally be seen. Eight bodies come back, faces blown, uniforms blood soaked. The soldiers take a deep breath and start the process of identification, but wait, one body is beyond recognition. Who is this? Who is this? canada goose clearance sale
Canada Goose Outlet An army battalion is like canada goose one big family. Not being able to identify one of your own brings immeasurable pain. He is finally identified by the service number on his belt. The rest of the evening is spent in silence. I retire to the tent, where a unit has buy canada goose jacket agreed to let me stay, in defiance of orders from the canada goose uk black friday Brigade headquarters to not allow journalists entry after sunset. Canada Goose Outlet
canada goose clearance Kargil was the first televised war, broadcast live into drawing uk canada goose rooms, but up in the frozen heights, the picture was very different from what army Canada Goose Parka commanders and canada goose coats on sale politicians wanted us to believe. Patriotic frenzy was being whipped up with the arrival of each body bag, dutifully saluted by ministers in Delhi and chief ministers in states. canada goose clearance
Canada Goose sale One question kept troubling me: what was happening in the heights? Why were soldiers dying such brutal deaths? Canada Goose sale
canada goose black friday sale Harinder Baweja, then Associate Editor https://www.pick-canadagoose.com of India Today, in a picture from the November 1999 issue of Cosmopolitan Magazine. canada goose black friday sale
canada goose (File Photo) canada goose
Canada Goose Jackets One afternoon, I made my way to the Brigade headquarters in Drass. The questions were the same. An army colonel asked me if I wanted to see something that wouldn let canada goose uk outlet me eat for the next three days. Before I made my way to Kargil, I had stomped around in the conflict zones canada goose black friday sale of Punjab and Kashmir and had seen enough blood and gore. What did the colonel want t show me? Canada Goose Jackets
canada goose deals photographs, please, he said as he led me out of his office into a courtyard. He called a jawan and canada goose coats asked him to remove a sack hanging on a tree trunk. The head of a Pakistani soldier had been pinned to the tree. None of the Pakistani intruders had been captured alive but this, according to the canada goose clearance colonel, was proof that it was only a matter of time. canada goose deals
Canada Goose online The enemy head, a grisly trophy, became an exhibition piece. Canada Goose Outlet It was there, pinned on the tree, for anyone who could bear to look at it. The sight of the pinched face, hair intact, served the macabre canada goose clearance sale purpose of motivating the troops. Or at least, that what some Brigade officers believed. It had been a few weeks since the war had begun in May 1999, and this was the first sign that the enemy was now neither invisible, nor invincible. Canada Goose online
canada goose store The fact that an enemy head was needed to motivate troops, led to more disturbing questions. Why was the morale so low? Artillery fell like metallic rain. The number of wounded and dead kept increasing. canada Canada Goose Jackets goose store
canadian goose jacket Long after the guns fell silent and I returned to Delhi after a ceasefire mediated by then US President, Bill Clinton the questions started to haunt me. I would wake up at night to the sound of gunfire in my head. The faceless canadian goose jacket body of the unidentified soldier kept me up for hours every night. canadian goose jacket
canada goose coats on sale The only way to deal with the emotional baggage was to return to Kargil. The Canada Goose Online battalions involved with the sharp but short war were in wind down mode and had the time for long conversations. They had also put down their experiences in what the army calls, taken reports. canada goose coats on canada goose store sale
Canada Goose Parka The answers to all the troubling questions lay in those cheap Canada Goose files and long conversations that continued through the night. The hair raising conversations explained the shattered limbs, the faceless bodies, the screams of agony, and unending, nerve numbing explosions of artillery. rats have come in, was what canada goose uk shop the commanding officers had been told cheap canada goose uk and the then defence minister George Fernandes had claimed that the intruders would be thrown out in 48 hours. Canada Goose Parka
canada goose coats The 48 hours stretched to three long months. Units were sent in to fight a high altitude war without acclimatization, without winter clothing, with inadequate weapons and no intelligence. The maps they were given were completely Canada Goose sale outdated. Soldiers spent hours looking for geographical features that did not exist because the soil had eroded over the years. Soldiers carried missiles 17,000 ft high but they did not fire. The body bags served the politicians well canada goose outlet but Kargil was about the young infantry officers who saved the day for the country. India fought in fatal terrain but it won because of the unusual men canada goose coats.
You must be logged in to post a comment Login