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Magazine
Celebrations
More than mere air warriors
PANKAJA SRINIVASAN
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For 75 years the wardens of the sky have faced the unexpected, the tragic and the miraculous with equanimity and courage. Recollecting acts of simple courage and humanity on the Platinum Jubilee of the IAF.
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Photo: The Hindu Photo Library
There when you need them: The IAF in action in the northern sector.
They say it is all in a day’s work. Fighting wars, saving lives, ferrying the dead, hobnobbing with Heads of State, jumping out of airplanes, delivering mail, and winning medals. In the Northeast, they have lived in “Bashas”, often
nothing more than makeshift bamboo structures put up on disused taxi tracks. In sub-zero temperatures of Ladakh when placing their un-gloved hands on metal, they have had their skin ripped off like Velcro (it is called “cold burn”). They have watched their buddies die.
Nostalgic moments
A chance encounter with some “old dogs” turns nostalgic as the Men in Blue raise a toast to the Indian Air Force in her 75th year and relive experiences, some goose-bump moments, some funny, others sad, all of them unforgettable.
Harry Ahluwalia says there are some that will haunt him forever. “It was December 15, 1971, the last day of the 1971 war and the ceasefire was to take effect at 1700 hours. In one of the three Canberra Bombers that took off for the last raid of the war in the East was my friend. I was on duty when the aircraft returned. There were only two. I desperately prayed things would turn out right. They did not. The third aircraft had been hit by ground fire and both the pilot and the navigator were killed.” Ahluwalia says, “We had been friends since we were knee high to a shot gun and I had followed him into the Air Force.”
Burnt into memory
Another incident that he cannot forget. “Mizo insurgency was at its peak and as I prepared to get back to my unit at Silchar from an outpost at Champai, somewhere in the eastern sector, 16 Gurkha jawans asked me for a lift. The Mi-4 helicopter could only take 12, and the rest had to undertake the trip on foot. I learnt subsequently that the road party was ambushed by the Mizos, and of the seven Gurkhas who lost their lives, four were those I had not allowed on board.”
Often the IAF has made the difference between life and death, like it did in the case of Subedar Gurung. It was a Sunday. Raju Srinivasan was planning to watch a movie with friends, when his flight commander summoned him and detailed him for a casualty evacuation at Tangdhar, in Kashmir. “There was bad weather over the Sadhana Pass. But we decided we were not going back till we finished the task. A little window in the clouds and we managed to get across”. As he approached the helipad, Raju could just make out a stretcher with a man bandaged from head to toe; he had stepped on a mine. Only his eyes were visible that followed Raju as he supervised the loading of the stretcher into the helicopter. “We wondered if he would be able to take the journey at 15,000 ft altitude. With some words of reassurance to the soldier, I took off and brought him back to Srinagar, where the Military Hospital was.”
A year later, Raju was sitting in an unreserved compartment of the Jhelum Express. Suddenly, a man grabbed him and gave him a bear hug and he heard a gruff voice enquiring, “Saab, are you the same helicopter pilot?” As Raju looked at him uncomprehendingly, the stranger introduced himself as Subedar Gurung — the man on the stretcher at Tangdhar. “I thought I would die, but you came up to me and told me I would be fine. And, here I am.” Saying that, Gurung bundled a protesting Raju, luggage and all onto his berth. “After that, at every station he bought me tea, lassi and milk in turn,” recalls Raju.
Role reversal
There have been times when the roles have been reversed. It was bad weather as usual and the roads had been blocked for more than a fortnight. The local army commander was to be flown to Darbuk, in Ladakh. After the chopper landed and the General had gone off to inspect his troops, a jawan approached the pilots and asked if they would take him with them to Leh. Of course, he was denied the lift as it was a VIP commitment. Wordlessly, the jawan showed them an invitation card. He was getting married the following day at a village near Jaipur and if he did not leave that day, he would miss his own wedding! The pilots hesitatingly asked the General if he would permit the jawan in the helicopter. He did, and squeezing himself next to the VIP, the prospective bridegroom reached Leh. There, he was bundled into the General’s car, rushed to the other end of the runway to an AN12 that was about to take off to Chandigarh, just a couple of hours from his village. He made it to his wedding.
Out of the air
Paratrooper Minoo Vania has frequently encountered the bizarre as he jumped out of airplanes. He tells of a jump at Gorakhpur. “After a night jump, we found we were one paratrooper short. We fanned out to look for the missing man. He had drifted off, and his parachute had snagged on a tree. His reserve parachute, instead of billowing out had somehow wrapped itself around him. In the dark, he did not dare jump, as he was unsure how far below the ground was. Vania and his men found him early next morning. He was just three feet off the ground, cocooned in the hammock created by his parachute, fast asleep!
Another wild encounter was when Vania found himself surrounded by fierce looking tribals wielding machetes. “Petrified, I started blabbering, ‘me Indian, Nehru, Air force…’ till I saw a lad with a La Martinere blazer. Though that was all he wore, I felt really foolish. Here I was with my own people and in my own country and I thought they were sizing me up for the pot. I splashed up to the fiercest looking gent and offered him a cigarette and soon we were friends. They had seen airplanes, but it was the first time they had seen someone come down the sky, the way I did.”
The stories never end. The Air Warriors continue to encounter the unexpected, the miraculous and the tragic with equanimity and laugh at themselves, pick up the pieces and move on. Like the valiant Sikh officer who, landing a fragile Gnat at dusk, hit a boar. The aircraft broke up on impact, but the pilot escaped. On picking himself up from the debris, he is supposed to have said, “Please, make sure I get my share of the boar meat.”
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