Honoring our Martyrs

[S-2]

My condolences to his family and friends and those of all the other men who die defending your country. God bless him and the others and may they rest in peace. Present Arms!

 

[EyelessInGaza]

I was an army brat, I know the sounds and sights and the smells that make for an armyman's world, the smell of blanco and a uniform, the thud (as I also read here a few days ago) of boots on a polished floor, the cold touch of a weapon handled on the sly, waking up to sounds of PT in the morning, the bungalow at the edge of nowhere, and the days and nights of worry, just constant, unspoken, worry.

For the men of PA who have made the ultimate sacrifice, and their loved ones, I offer this beautiful, beautiful poem by Vikram Seth.

All you who sleep tonight
Far from the ones you love,
No hand to left or right
And emptiness above -

Know that you aren't alone
The whole world shares your tears,
Some for two nights or one,
And some for all their years.

Go with God, warriors.

 

[z9-ec]

Another brave son of Pakistan.

 

[brilTek]

Captain Umar Zaib Afzal (shaheed)
​

Note: Its a sticky hence duplicating some pics here. A separate thread exists for more info & pics. Please click here...


Quran verse: Think not of those, who are slain in the way of Allah, as dead. Nay, they are living. With their Lord they have provision.
(Surah 3 verse 169)


Captain Umar Zaib Afzal (Shaheed) who embraced Shahadat during the operation Rah-e-Rast at Tamergara on Thursday May 21, 2009.

The funeral was held at Rawalpindi Race Course Ground on Friday May 22, 2009. A smartly turned out contingent of Pakistan Army presented the Guard of Honour to the Shaheed.

Lieutenant General Javed Zia, Adjutenent General, and number of senior serving and retired Officers, Junior Commissioned Officers, Jawans, relatives of Shaheed and people from all walks of life attended the Namaz-e-Jinaza.

May ALLAH shower his blessings on his soul & fmaily.......And all other shaheeds who sacrificed their lives for PAKISTAN.

Courtesy: APP




























Please spare some moment now to pray for all shaheeds now.....who gave theirlives without thinking of a second of themselves & their family.

Pak Army Zindabaad
Pakistan Paindaaabad.

 

[Zob]

MAJOR ABID.....SHAHEED


Ye Dil Bana Hai Is Miti Ke Liye Ab Dharke Ga Sirf Is Ke Liye Jahan Hoti Hai Emaan Ki Pasbani Jidher Rahe Ga Khuda Ka Saya Hamesha Ke Liye Dedicated To All Pakistanis Long Live Pakistan

HUM DALEIN HAATH SITAROUN PAAR...HUM RAKKS KAREIN TALWAROUN PAAR!!

 

[ajpirzada]

 

[brilTek]

Captain Najam (shaheed) Last Meeting With His Mother


Courtesy: Jang Newspaper
Date: May 24, 2009


For those who can read urdu. This article written by same journalist Rauf Klasra who surfaced this story in media. He describes Captain Najam (Shaheed) last meeting full of emotions with his family particularly mother. May Allah bless him and all shaheeds....ameen. Skip the next paragraph


For all those who can't read Urdu.
While answering to question, prime minister informed the writer that high level of inquiry is underway against former Swat commissioner Javed Shah for his alleged involvement in execution of SSG commandos. Then the writer talks about last meeting of Captain Najam (shaheed) with his family and mother. Captain Najam (shaheed) said to his mother & family that upon return of my body, No one at house shall weep or cry. Further tells that how her mother went to rooftop to say last goodbye to her son while watching him driving away from home. After receiving the tragic news, the mother very much kept her "last wish" till a federal minister visited their house. The mother further said with tears in her eyes that she not regretted, and if she had ten sons, she is ready to sacrifice all those as well on this country. May Allah bless him and all shaheeds......ameen.

 

[ajpirzada]

 

[brilTek]

Captain Umar Zaib Afzal (shaheed)
​

The following pics have been provided by wall-e, a dear friend of Capt. Umar

 

[Xeric]

If stories like these don’t force us to rethink the cynicism we seem to have adopted as a nation, then nothing will

He did not return.
The nurse had found him
crying at night
not because of the pain
or because he was dying

He felt he had let his country down.

At home, I could only think of
his blood shot eyes.

Who would tell his family?

I wrote another letter

and posted it in the same letter box.

— Shafaq Husain

My mother is no poet. But volunteering to work in an army hospital after the 1965 war, she was so moved by what she saw that she found her voice. She still talks about the lines of volunteers outside the hospitals, the blood donors who gave so much blood that the hospitals ran out of bottles.

And she still talks about this young soldier, lying on a metal bed with a hole in his abdomen, crying because he could not go back and fight.

If stories like these don’t force us to rethink the cynicism we seem to have adopted as a nation — the world-weary “no one deserves our compassion” attitude that continues to plague us — then nothing will.

Yes, many institutions in our country have earned the reputations they carry today. But projecting the scorn onto the young men laying down their lives for us is not just misdirected cynicism, it is treason. Ask anyone who has ever had a loved one serve in the army.

A friend of mine has been an army wife for more than twenty years. Her husband is often posted in such remote areas that he comes home for three days after every four months. She describes the scene as he prepares to leave.

“Your heart is in your throat,” she says, “but you can’t show it. He needs to know that we are all fine. When he sits in that jeep, he can’t look back. Looking back can cost him his life. So I watch him quietly as he puts on his uniform, his belt. Sometimes there is a gun attached. I pray extra hard those days.”

“The house is extra quiet that morning,” she continues. “Even the girls are quiet. I know they are thinking, ‘Is this the last time we will ever see our Baba smile again?’ The youngest one always finds a reason to cry that night.”

A soldier who served in the army for 14 years wrote to me after my last article (“Where is our yellow ribbon?”, May 5). He described the toll army life had taken on his family and him: he suffered from Chronic Mountain Sickness, high blood pressure and loss of memory for years after being stationed at high altitudes. His daughter’s studies suffered from having to move so often. And his wife lost a child because she was unable to get the little girl to the hospital in time.

These are the stories of our soldiers, men who have picked this path not because they have to but because they choose to. Some of these accounts leave images in our minds that are often difficult to get rid of, like the soldier who recovered the dead body of his friend, killed in winter, after the snow had melted. The corpse was lifeless, but the watch on the wrist was still ticking.

Another army wife describes how her husband returned after months from a hard area posting. He was quieter than usual. At night, he would twitch in his sleep. He would jump at the slightest sound. She learned later that he had discovered the body of one of his closest comrades, skinned by the Taliban and left at the barracks.

Last month, a 23-year-old soldier in Swat was shot through the head by the Taliban. He survived but is permanently paralysed. He has a young wife and an 18-month-old daughter. He says that he would give his life for his country. But when he turns on his television set at night and sees the negative, cynical coverage, he wonders whether his sacrifice was worth it.

I ask my friend whether giving her life to the army — she was 18 when she got married — has been worth it. She is quiet. “Yes,” she says softly. “I would do it all over again.”

“But there are some things that get to you,” she says. “Like the sound of the army boots, the sound of them thumping on the cement floor. It is difficult to describe it to someone who has never heard it but the boots, they have a certain heartbeat in them.”

When you are stationed in remote places, alone for so long, she explains, you become aware of every sound around you. And at the end it are these sounds that have the power to break you. She describes the loud, metallic thud of the gates as her husband leaves. “I can’t explain the ghabrahat I feel when I hear this sound,” she says.

And yet the slamming shut of the gates has been a part of her life for 22 years. It is always followed by a long period of waiting.

I think of the soldier my mother nursed more than forty years ago. Did his family ever receive the letter she posted? Who was waiting for him? These are the stories that we never hear.

Ayeda Naqvi is a journalist who lives and works in Lahore. She can be contacted at ayedanaqvi@yahoo.com
Daily Times - Leading News Resource of Pakistan

Pirzada thnx for the heart warmer!

This are the facts that every single family of a soldier has to bear through.

Fighting it out or sitting thousands of feet above sea level is not the only sacrifice these soldiers give, the inherent difficulties of soldiering also takes away the toll equally!

Let's just keep the well maintained messes, glittering pips, satiny jeeps, smart saluting etc etc out of it for some time!

 

[ajpirzada]

Tale of a martyred Army officer

Taliban using jagged knives to slash throats

Monday, June 01, 2009
By Umer Bhatti

LAHORE: Dying for the country is any soldier’s wish and Major Abid turned it into a reality while fighting against the terrorists at a bridge near the Nazarabad village of the Swat valley.

This was stated by Major Khalid, the elder brother of Major Abid, while talking to The News at the Combined Military Hospital where he was recovering from an injury. He said both of them were fighting in the same encounter when he sustained a bullet injury to his forearm and collapsed due to excessive bleeding.

He said he belonged to the third generation of soldiers, as his father and grandfather had also served in different capacities. Portraying the scene of his younger brother’s martyrdom, Khalid said Major Abid was fighting against the insurgents in the Nazarabad village of Swat when he learnt that two of his company soldiers were wounded.

When he learnt that his soldiers had consumed all the water and other stuff they had, he rushed to help them and gave them his water and bandaged them, Khalid said, adding that Abid received first bullet to his right shoulder, but he kept on fighting.

He received four more bullets afterwards to his lower abdomen and legs at intervals and he embraced martyrdom at 6:30 pm, Khalid said.He said that after receiving the news that his brother had been hit, he ran to his rescue, but he sustained a bullet injury and collapsed.

When he came to his senses, he learnt that his brother had embraced martyrdom.Talking about the character of Major Abid, Khalid said his brother used to run several kilometres while carrying a soldier on his shoulders.

He was friendly with his unit and famous due to his sympathetic nature, Khalid added. He said he and his brother belonged to the same unit — the 19 Punjab.He said they had also served at Kargil where Major Abid bravely established a post at an altitude higher than that of an Indian post by climbing a hard mountain with a rope.

He said there was also a very clear involvement of India in Swat and the Pakistan Army often recovered Afghan, Indian and American currency from the dead miscreants. Some of the miscreants were not even circumcised, he added. He said the Taliban were very brutal with the civilians in general and the Army in particular.

He added that they used to have jagged knives, so that they could get more pleasure while cutting the throat of the Army men. Talking to this scribe, the widow of Major Abid said she was satisfied as her husband had got what he always craved for.

She said God had granted her unusual courage to face such a setback. The mother of the martyr said her son always wanted her to see his body in a flag-draped coffin and his wish came true.

Tale of a martyred Army officer

 

[Bill Longley]

Today I came to know a hero who full fills every standerd of heroism.
SHO Hussain Badshah was SHO (station head officer ) of A police station in Mingora. After the collapse of Peace agreement Taliban surrounded is Police station and Gave warning to beseiged Police men that they have two options
1. to surrender their weapons and their lives will be spared
2. to fight, and get beheaded because 40 policemen have no chance to fight hundreds of talibs who have surrounded them

out of 40, 35 police men opted to desert. Inspector Hussain Badshah and his five men decided to fight till their last breath.
He along with his 4 men repulsed many Talibs attacks for two days. then he along with his 4 men took all the weapons to Mingora grid station and helped FC defend it until army rescued them

for his extreme demonstration of bravery he was promoted DSP Both DG ISPR and Operation cammander swat Genral Ijaz changed his Ranks .

Pakistan is proud of His sons like Hussain Badshah . People like Hussain Badshah are real power of Pakistan

 

[ahmed_naj]

No 185/2009-ISPR
Rawalpindi - June 8, 2009:

Honouring the Valour

Major General Athar Abbas DG ISPR and Major General Ijaz Awan, GOC, Swat Operation, pinning the badges of DSP on the shoulders of Inspector Hussain Badshah, who displayed exceptional act of valour when he alongwith his men was surrounded by terrorists in Rahimabad Police Station Swat. His 35 policemen out of 40, surrendered to terrorists but he refused to do so. He alongwith 5 policemen fought with great courage for 3 days and later stipped out and joined FC men, alongwith all weapons in the nearby Grid Station that was also under siege. He did not allow these weapons to fall in the hands of terrorists and to be used against own Security Forces.

source: ISPR (couldn't post the link because I dont have 15 posts yet).

 

[ahmed_naj]

Honouring the Valour

Subedar Fazal Ahmed, Frontier Constabulary speaking to media during the visit to Swat. Subedar Fazal alongwith his platoon was assigned to defend the Grid Station of Mingora. His platoon was surrounded by terrorists on 3 May 2009. He and his men remained under siege for 21 days. He and his men courageously fought and defended the Grid Station. His two men were martyred during this period and were buried inside the Grid Station. His platoon was joined by Inspector Hussain Badshah and his 5 policemen on 4 May 2009. The supply line was completely secured by the terrorists. The platoon was being supplied from the helicopter.

source: ISPR

 

[Kamakazi 69]

Hussain Badshah, Pakistan is proud of you.