Tuesday 15 January 2019

Somewhere on the Western Front


It was in the dark of a cold night in December that the enemy attacked. They came over the sand dunes in large numbers and were supported by several tanks. The defending troops were small in number and the weapons they had were no match for the strength of the attack. Reinforcements and air support were not forthcoming – at least till the morning*. They were given the option of strategic withdrawal, but the CO decided to stay put. His men too welcomed his decision and hoped they would last the night. It turned out to be a long, long night.

It was nothing like the Battle of Thermopylae, where a force of a few thousand, facing a much larger attacking army, defended a narrow pass. Here the canvass was much wider than a narrow pass; the sands stretched in every direction. There was no bottleneck to hold the invaders and the invaders were in armoured vehicles.

Subedar Major Janjua was mortally wounded in the first few minutes of the attack on their outpost, and fell into a shell crater. Though he was old, weary and injured,  he was determined to do his best. He slowly dragged himself over the edge of the crater and crawled to his billet. He pulled out his PIAT** and three  expired bombs. He planned to outflank the tanks and get behind them. He skirted to the right where a jeep mounted RCL*** had got stuck and its crew were struggling to move it. He lent a shoulder and helped to move it out of a crater in the sand.

He then crawled slowly and painfully between a couple of approaching tanks, dragging his PIAT. Once he was past them, he turned around till he faced the rear of the tank. He loaded a bomb into his PIAT, took careful aim and shot at a tank. His aim was as true as ever despite his age and injury. He was taking a chance as both the weapon and the ammo were decades old.The expired bomb worked as if it was new. It easily penetrated the tank's armour. The tank burst into flames, further fuelled by the extra fuel and explosives it was carrying.

The tank's crew did not know what hit them or from which direction they were shot at as they did not survive the attack. Neither was he noticed by other tanks which were facing to their front and engaging his unit. Even if they had, he was too low on the ground to be hit by their main gun even at its lowest position. The RCL crew aiming for an adjacent tank were surprised as they seemed to have got two tanks with one shot. They presumed that a mortar shell had destroyed the other tank.

He changed his angle of shot to the right and got one more tank in a similar manner. He then turned left and repeated the process. He had ensured that the three tanks had turned into blazing infernos.

He had no more ammo for the PIAT and was fully drained of energy. His role in the battle was over.


* The planes did arrive the next morning and destroyed the tanks still functional at that time in what the pilots called 'a turkey shoot', resulting in victory in the battle, but if the army had withdrawn in the face of the enemy, the tanks would not be sitting ducks. They would have advanced and dispersed, making it more difficult.

** Projector, Infantry, Anti Tank: A portable anti-tank weapon of WW2 vintage, forerunner of the bazooka. More details here

*** Recoilless rifle. More details here

 ** 

The Subedar Major had joined the British Indian Army as a rookie a year before the second World War had ended. He had been underage and, like many others, had reported his year of birth wrongly by a couple of years to circumvent that. His large build strengthened the illusion of being of recruitable age. Adding to his credentials as a potential soldier was the fact that his community, the Janjuas had been designated as a 'martial race' by the British. Janjuas were Muslims, Hindus or Sikhs by religion and soldiers by profession. There were no birth certificates in those days and the recruiting officers, tasked to enlist large numbers, were only too keen to get sturdy and willing men. They did not mind overlooking some minor details, which anyhow were not verifiable. They took him on and after a short training course, sent him to the front.

In that one year during WW2, Janjua had been trained and assigned to use a PIAT.  Most PIATs were operated by a team of two soldiers, one assisting the other in loading the gun. Lot of men shorter than him had difficulty in cocking the gun. But the tall and well built young man was quite comfortable handling it alone. He had a reputation of deftly loading, cocking and firing with an unerring aim. Each platoon had one PIAT and Janjua was fondly called the Paltan ka PIAT* by the other men.

In due time the war ended and the British Indian army was partitioned. PIATs went out of service, but Janjua retained his trusty weapon as a souvenir. He also had a few rounds of the HEAT** for it, well past their official expiry date. He had risen through the ranks, become a Junior Commissioned Officer – a Naib Subedar at first and finally, a Subedar Major.

* Platoon's PIAT

* High Explosive Anti-Tank warhead. More details here
** 

The defenders held through till the reinforcements arrived. When the battle was over and a quick count taken, the 2-IC noticed that the armour of three tanks had been penetrated from the rear side. He was sure that none of his men had got to the rear of the tanks. At the most, they had got to their flanks. And then, his driver pointed out that the size of the hole in the armour was inconsistent with the ammunition used by the mortars of the RCL.

When he reported this to his CO, the superior officer was puzzled. The CO was also informed by the RCL crew that Janjua had helped them to move their jeep and that it seemed more than once that they had destroyed two targets by firing just one round.

The CO said, "Soon after the tanks attacked, I saw Janjua being mortally hit and fall into a crater. I jumped in and checked his pulse. He was dead and there was nothing I could do for him. His body must still be in there How could he have assisted you, when he was beyond all help himself? It must have been someone else."

Janjua's body was found in one of the nearby craters, as described by the CO. Adding to the puzzle was the fact that neither the PIAT nor his three souvenir shells were found among his personal effects when they were being packed to be despatched to his family. However, when the area was being cleared later, the weapon was found a few hundred yards away from crater that his body was found in. How it had moved to that location was a matter of conjecture and discussion at the mess.

Though he was listed in the casualties of the battle, Janjua's post-mortem activities remain unacknowledged till date, except in the whispered lore of his unit. It was clear that both expired bombs and expired soldiers sometimes worked after their official expiry dates. It was probably how he would have wanted it to be. He wasn't after medals and citations. He was the quintessential unknown and un-thanked soldier who did his best for his unit, army and country. Nothing else mattered to him.

Subedar Major Janjua had never read the poem; but it was clear from his actions that he had endorsed these words from Thomas Babbington Macaulay's poem Horatius:

"To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers,
And the temples of his gods."


He had only taken them several steps beyond death. He had followed the thought in letter and in spirit.


***


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