Getting even with Chief

Lt Gen Harwant Singh (retd)

I had hardly settled down in War College, Mhow, when my posting to 1 Armoured Division, as GSO-1 came through. Maj Gen Sundarji, the General Officer Commanding of the division, was considered to be the brightest mind in the Army and that filled me with apprehensions about my ability to keep pace with his speed and span of thinking and my capacity to measure up to his expectations.

He must have asked for me, else my posting could not have come through so soon after my arrival at Mhow. Later, he told me that on his asking, Brig Hanut Singh, MVC (later Lt Gen), had recommended my name. Back in Ambala when I met him, we appeared to instantly take to each other. His simple and easy manner made working with him great fun and a fulfilling experience. He would leave us to our own devices and when he was not around or on leave (even though in the station), he expected us to take decisions, no matter how important these may have been. He could not suffer fools and was impatient with sloth and inefficiency.

He read extensively and had a penchant for technical matters and modern equipment. He was handsome of aspect and wore his hat at a rakish angle. Though an infantryman, he had the swagger and dash of a cavalry officer and of course that mobility of mind.

When the higher command course was to visit us, I presented to him the exercise I wrote for them. My views on the employment of the armoured division in the setting of the exercise were at variance from his and we argued for a long time. When he failed to demolish my point of view and convince me to his line of thinking, he threw in his trump card. He said, “If your viewpoint is to prevail, then you conduct the discussion with the higher command course”, but if he was to conduct it, then it will be the way he thought best. That put an end to the otherwise useful and informed discussion, which I thought was a bit unfair way to end it.

It was many years later during exercise Brass Tacks (some six months earlier, he had told me that he would be fielding me in this exercise), where I was commanding the re-organised infantry division (RAPID) to test its efficacy in an operational setting and he was the Chief of Army Staff that I managed to take it back on him and even the score. The point of discussion was the employment of the reorganised division where the corps commander, the chief umpire and myself were of one view while he held the opposite.

What started as an animated discussion got somewhat over-heated and slowly both the corps commander and the chief umpire (later to become the COAS) withdrew from the field, leaving me alone to slog it out with Sundarji. When nothing availed, I threw in my trump card. I told him that he had made a serious mistake in selecting me to organise, train and field the reorganised division in this big exercise. He burst out laughing and with that characteristic twinkle in his eye told me to employ the division the way I wanted. So I did, accomplishing all the assigned tasks and more.