Jaggi Brar, stay strong, miss you

Brig Surjit Singh Brar (Retd)

My 22-year-old brother Jaggi (Flying Officer Jagdev Singh Brar) flew over Sargodha (Pakistan) on September 7, 1965, in a sortie that took off from Halwara (near Ludhiana). He, along with four other Hunter pilots, successfully bombed the target. On their way back, Jaggi (nicknamed Small Ben in the squadron) along with Squadron Leader Bhagwati peeled off from the formation to engage the pursuing enemy fighter aircraft. 

Unconfirmed news reports said that Jaggi’s aircraft was probably hit in a midair dogfight with a Pakistani fighter aircraft. There were also unconfirmed reports of his bailout. He was then officially declared as “Missing in Action”. He never came back.

In September, 1965, my eldest brother was the Superintendent of Police at Amritsar. Another brother was serving as Captain in 1 Dogra in the thick of battle somewhere between Amritsar and Lahore. My brother-in-law was serving as a Major and I was a Captain at that time. My father (Ajaib Singh Brar) and mother (Balwant Kaur) were having a tough time with four sons and the son-in-law in uniform on national duty. 

In mid-1965, while on leave, I rode my elder brother’s Royal Enfield Bullet from Jalandhar to Halwara to meet Jaggi. I waited for almost half an hour before I saw Jaggi, fully drenched in sweat with a badminton racket in hand. He was a good badminton player. He also liked tennis and table tennis. He was beaming from ear to ear when we embraced. We exchanged family news and chatted while taking tea. I left after this brief meeting, least realising that this would be the last time we were meeting.

Our family took the loss of Jaggi in its stride without asking the government for any special compensation or favours, though it was not difficult to do so at that time.

We still remember Jaggi fondly. Well-behaved and pleasant, he was the darling of the Brar clan and popular among his colleagues in the Air Force too. Air Marshal Inamdar (his course-mate of 1963) is still in touch with the family and misses him as a dear friend, like many others. Perhaps people like Jaggi are also in great demand in heaven! 

Fifty years after that fateful day of September 7, we miss Jaggi dearly and wonder if he straightaway bailed out to heaven from his Hunter aircraft that day. 

We lost Jaggi in 1965, but he lives on in our hearts. There are many other Jaggis who are lost by the country while serving  with dedication, but their dying wish and message to the nation would be: “Look after my family after me.”

We miss you, Jaggi — your brothers Surinder, Amarjit, Surjit, Sukhdev, Harpal and sister Davinder. Stay strong, man, wherever you are. 

(Commissioned in EME, the writer retired in 1994) 

19 then, a real honour to serve 

Capt Vinod Chaudhri (Retd)

I joined the Army at the young age of 19. I was just F.Sc pass (I got a law degree after my Army career).

Second Lt Vinod Chaudhri at the warfront. His brothers, Capt DL Chaudhri and Lt RL Chaudhri, too were deployed in the Akhnoor sector in 1965.

After initial training for a few months, I was straightaway inducted in the warfront of Chhamb-Jaurian-Akhnoor. It was the hottest warfront till September 6, 1965 — when the Lahore and Sialkot sectors were opened and the major component of enemy forces was withdrawn from Akhnoor sector and redeployed there.

The Pakistani troops outnumbered us by four times in the Akhnoor sector and I consider myself lucky to have fought against the enemy in my AMX light tank of 20 Lancers. 

On August 31-September 1, when our three tanks were on way to Chhamb-Jaurian, we had to face heavy air-straffing and the camouflage net of the tank caught fire. My possessions got burnt. In spite of heavy fire, we moved on and reached the destination with the tanks intact.

Capt Shankar Roychowdhury (later to become Army Chief) and Maj Bhaskar Roy were leading the squadron. It steadfastly held the positions and that is how we earned the nickname: “Saviours of Akhnoor.”

Incidentally, I and my two brothers  were deployed in the same front. I was in Armoured, while my brothers were in Artillery and Ordnance. 

After September 6, I was ordered to move as a troop commander to Samba sector under the command of Col Hussain of 9 Grenadiers. I stepped out of the tank and injured my knee but that didn’t stop me from staying on in the battlefront. On September 23, the ceasefire was ordered. 

I hung up my uniform in 1974, resumed my studies and now practise in the Punjab and Haryana High Court. Serving the nation remains the most abiding memory. It was an honour to have been given the chance.

Pak paratroopers, Halwara, blackout 
Covering war: Recalling events that stood out

KS Chawla

On September 4, 1965, I accompanied a wedding party of a dear friend to Kotkapura in Faridkot district and the next day, while returning to Ludhiana, we saw military convoys moving towards the Ferozepur side. As we reached Ludhiana in the evening, there was a blackout. Pakistani bombers had made their first sorties over the Halwara airport. 

The Pakistani planes dropped some paratroopers near the Halwara Air Force station, but they missed the intended landing target. They fell in the sugarcane fields and a teenager who was grazing cattle immediately pounced upon one of them and hit him with a bucket. He eventually died.

A media team from Ludhiana left for the villages around the Halwara Air Force station and had to take shelter in trenches dug up along the road, when the air raid sirens would go off,  before reaching Rajoana village, whose residents had nabbed the paratroopers.

In all, 18 paratroopers were caught by the villagers and the police, on patrol duty in the area under the supervision of Harjeet Singh Ahluwalia, the district police chief of Ludhiana. All the paratroopers were taken to the Jagraon police station and we met some of them in the lock-up. They had brand new parachutes and weapons with the marking of “made in USA”.

The target of the paratroopers was the Indian Oil Corporation depot from where the Halwara station planes were getting fuel. This oil depot was later targeted during militancy and the IOC had to shut it.

Pakistani bombers made a number of sorties over the Halwara air base but could not cause any harm because of the alertness of the Indian Air Force. The Pakistanis even dropped napalm bombs which fell in the periphery of the air base. At Sudhar village, a huge crater was caused by one such bomb. 

Ludhiana had an ammunition depot of the Army then, but there was no air defence. Col Sewa Ram, who was from the air defence unit, was deputed to install anti-aircraft guns near Sherpur Chowk. A trial was conducted one night and as the guns went off, panic spread in Ludhiana that the town had been attacked. The police had to work very hard to convince the residents to return home and sleep.

The Halwara air base was fully strengthened when the 1971 war broke out. 

During both the wars, there was a lot of enthusiasm among the residents to serve the Army personnel passing through special trains at the Ludhiana railway station. Huge canteens were set up at the railway station to serve the Armymen.

The writer is a veteran journalist