BANGLA WAR
Leg end of Sylhet
By Mandira Nayar
Story Dated: Monday, November 28, 2011 16:0 hrs IST
Every war has its heroes. 1971 is no different.
Every war has its heroes. 1971 is no different. In the war that saw Captain Mullah go down with his ship, drinking his favourite whiskey, and Lance Naik Albert Ekka facing certain death to lob a grenade to save his men in the face of enemy fire, Major General Ian Cardozo, the second-in-command of the 4th Battalion of 5th Gurkha Rifles Frontier Force, cut off his own leg.
Cardozo's battalion, which had suffered many casualties, was sent for India's first heli-born mission into Sylhet to capture the airfield, the control tower and a bridge.
“I reached the airfield at 3 a.m.,'' Cardozo remembers. “The moon was setting. It was December and the rice had been cut. Choppers were ready to take off. But they had to wait for the first wave to come back. They needed to be briefed to know where the fire was coming from. The choppers were not armour-protected. So if any of the bullets had hit a fuel pipe it would have caught fire.”
Loaded on they landed in Sylhet. The seventh second-in-command for the battalion—all the others had died in bizarre incidents, making everyone believe that the position was cursed—Cardozo had luck against him. “The JCO told the commanding officer, 'We were very happy to have Cartosa sahib. They can never pronounce his name, but can we call him something else?' He asked them, 'What?' He suggested Wazir. I was called Wazir from then on. But the CO had a mental block. He asked me one day whether he could call me 2 IC, I said, 'fine.' The next day I stepped on to a mine and my leg blew up,'' he laughs.
A born storyteller, Cardozo narrates his battle tales with relish. Unlike most Army officers, who talk about operations in dry military terms, Cardozo brings it alive in vivid detail. “I met a JCO who I had known when I joined. He was very badly injured and was going to die. He didn't want to go alone so he begged me to stay. I was there till 3 a.m. and then I went off promising to return,'' he says.
When Cardozo returned, he could hear the Pakistani artillery. “When you hear the round leaving the gun and you count, you can hear where the shell is going to land. If you hear the whistle then you know you are safe. It will fly overhead. If you don't hear it, you know it is going to land on your head. I couldn't hear the whistle and it landed in the medical room bunker. The medicines were destroyed. So when I stepped on a mine on the last day, there were no instruments, no antibiotics, no morphine,'' says Cardozo.
This attack cost the brigade eight boys and Cardozo, then a major, his leg. Ask him whether he believes in the jinx now, he smiles and says, “No.”
On December 15 the Pakistanis came with white flags to surrender. “We knew they were in strength and we were 486 only. They were a brigade and we were only half a battalion. They said, 'Please call your brigade commander, we want to surrender to him.'”
As they were only half a battalion, they couldn't fulfil this request. Terrified that they would be found out, they simulated a brigade defensive position. “We were running out of ammunition,'' he says. In heli-born operation, the idea is that the land link up has to take place in 48 hours. Otherwise the whole unit will be wiped out. “As it was only 48 hours, we thought less food and more ammunition. Each man had 100 rounds and instead of two grenades we had four. We had only one water bottle.”
So, they sent a message in Tamil asking the brigade commander, who was far away, to come immediately. “We told the Pakistanis that he couldn't accept the surrender that day because he didn't have the permission. The next day when he arrived in a chopper they [the Pakistanis] were shocked. But so were we. What we thought was a brigade was two brigades, four full colonels, 209 JCOs and officers. 7,000 troops surrendered to us. They couldn't believe it,'' he smiles.
However, soon after the mine explosion, the doctor was helpless. “He went to look for something, probably a kitchen knife,'' Cardozo says with a laugh. "I asked my batman, 'Where is my khukri?' He said, 'Here it is.' I told him, 'Cut it off.' He said, 'I can't do it.' So I said 'Okay' and cut it off.
His leg was buried in Sylhet. “So, I own land, one foot by one foot, there,'' he guffaws. Ask him how he could bear to do it, and he'll smile: “I think that I reached that level of pain that I don't think that it mattered. To tell you the truth I was very embarrassed. My leg was messed up and I didn't know what to do.”
It was the last day of the war, December 16, when Dhaka fell, and Cardozo couldn't be evacuated. “We had captured some Pakistanis and an ambulance. I was operated upon by a Major Mohammad Bashir. He did a very good job. I have never been able to thank him.”
