CHANDIGARH: Wounded mortally, the last words of soldiers call out to their mother, family deity, the gods, their children.
But Lance Naik Kripal Singh of the 17 Garhwal Rifles, with one eye blasted out and his stomach spilling open due to huge, jagged Pakistani artillery splinters, displayed a different character. As his stretcher party, draped in his oozing blood, speedily descended the Batalik slopes to the waiting casualty evacuation helicopter, Singh sensed he would not make it.
He requested his comrades to halt, open his breast pocket and take out a small pocket diary which listed the debts he owed to fellow soldiers. Singh asked the stretcher bearers to ensure the debts were repaid from the salary due to him at the end of July 1999. He did not want to leave this world with debts pending from this life.
"The pocket diary, when examined later, rightly had the details of a few of his fellow soldiers from whom he had borrowed amounts ranging from Rs 30-75, totaling to some 400 odd rupees," recounts Panchkula-based Lt Col Prahlad K Jetley (retd) of the 17 Garhwal Rifles, who was himself wounded with three bullets through his thighs while assaulting Kalapathar-Saddle during the moonlit night of June 29, 1999.
Jetley still carries splinters of bullets and rocks from those bullets that missed him, had struck the rocks where he was taking cover, broken up, and then ricocheted onto his lower legs. It took Jetley four days to literally crawl back to the base from Kalapathar after which he was airlifted to Kargil's 2121 Field Ambulance and subsequently to Command Hospital, Chandimandir.
Singh had suffered a stroke of sheer bad luck. The Kargil war was drawing to an end on July 26, when an artillery shell burst on the administrative base of the 17 Garhwal Rifles on July 24, literally shredding the quiet, unassuming Singh. Unknown to them and pining for his safe return in Pajyana village tucked away in the Chamoli mountains of Uttarakhand were his wife, Vimla Devi, and sons, Amit (3) and Prakash (1). She had married the doughty soldier when 17 and was widowed after seven years of conjugal bliss. The remorseless artillery shell ensured Singh would be forever 29.
"He was a simple man from a family of farmers. Scrupulous about his obligations. How can I describe a life without him? Life is very long without him, I can only say this: that when the time will come for me to journey to the cremation ghat, only then will his memories be extinguished within me," Vimla Devi told TOI. Her elder son, Amit, chokes with emotion to voice a life without father.
Children of soldiers gone feel the pain most acutely when they see other children joyous with their fathers at school functions whereas when they look back into the audience, they only glimpse their widowed mother with silent tears streaming down in loneliness, helpless to get the father back for her kids. "I have no memories of my father as I was too young. The only memories I have of him are those that mother narrated to us brothers after he died," Amit told TOI. The brothers run the petrol pump granted to Kargil martyrs' families.
Apart from a few very popular names from the Kargil war which are repeated ad nauseum every Vijay Divas, the vast majority of soldiers died unsung. Their stories of valour and sacrifice - as also the long battles waged by their families to date - remain unknown, especially from the Batalik war zone where no TV crew could venture to beam the battles live into Indian homes.
In fact, Singh's story of relieving himself of the "debt unto death" lay buried and came to light only in 2019 when one of his stretcher bearers, Rifleman Ram Singh, happened to narrate the incident at a function organised by the Pune-based Lakshya Foundation in Kargil town. Lt Col Jetley then penned down the last hours of Singh, while also underlining the difficulties in evacuating the wounded from far-fetched Batalik battle zones which were 1-3 days' march from roadheads.
Jetley told TOI, “After administering first aid to Singh, a stretcher bearer party was hurriedly dispatched to take the injured to the makeshift helipad reached by six hours of walk. Despite the best efforts of the RMO, Singh’s bleeding could not be arrested because of the extent of damage to his abdomen.
The sole foot track that existed in that high-altitude, boulder-strewn, barren terrain was difficult to traverse even for a single person and one can only imagine the plight of the stretcher bearer party negotiating the arduous journey while delicately carrying a fully-grown injured male with intravenous tubes sticking out from his four limbs. None of the four stretcher bearers could actually make use of the track, instead they had to walk on either side because of protruding rocks and boulders.”
“The blood, which had been oozing out of Singh’s wounds slowly drenched the canvas stretcher and subsequently started to drip onto the hands and shoulders of the stretcher bearers. The numbing effect of morphine administered at the start of the long journey must have started to wear off after five odd hours of this grueling journey and despite all the words of comfort and encouragement from the stretcher bearers, the brave-heart had started making low gasping sounds due to excruciating pain.
Somewhere just short of reaching the helipad, Singh had asked the stretcher bearers to halt. Beckoning them to listen to him carefully, Singh, in a very feeble voice told them that in his breast pocket was a small pocket diary in which he had written the names of all those soldiers from whom he had borrowed money prior to the sudden move of the battalion from the peace location of Pithoragarh to the Kargil front.
The last one hour of the journey was a race against time with the helipad clearly visible from high mountain slopes. The Army Aviation Corps’ casualtyevacuation Cheetah helicopter was waiting with the engine running. Singh had lost consciousness. He was hastily loaded onto the helicopter but as soon as the ‘big bird’ took to the sky so did the spirit of the brave soldier. He was declared dead on landing at Kargil helipad,” added Jetley