Hail the Siachen Veteran

"Quartered in snow, silent to remain. When the bugle calls, they shall rise and march again."
-Inscribed at the War Memorial at Siachen Base Camp.

Lofty words. We no doubt have gone where no army has gone before. Living at altitudes where commercial airliners fly and in temperatures where chocolate bars freeze and crack is unprecedented in the history of warfare. What the Indian Army has done there is magnificent. After all, the Pakistanis have never been able to even look at Siachen Glacier. But for the individual who has experienced Siachen, it is all beyond politics. It is an education in survival, fear and gratitude for small things that the layman takes for granted. A tenure that leaves one with memories those stay forever. The privations underwent together binds officers and men beyond ties of background, Regiment or whatever. For us who were (un)fortunate to induct during the pre ceasefire phase, it meant being able to identify Pakistani Artillery calibres by incoming sound and impact noise as well as reorienting body clocks to “SST”- Siachen Standard time-to sleep, rest and maintain by day and work by night. After 123 days of that, morning PT and evening games was even tougher to get accustomed back to! If that was not enough, you contend with helicopter drops landing off course and therefore lugging stores across merciless glaciated serrations. The altitude, usually exceeding 18000 feet, is such that even a supremely fit athlete would be gasping for breath at the slightest exertion. The heart warming fact is that every man, regardless of his Specialisation, rank or detailment does his best. If his best is not enough, he will exceed his own capabilities, but deliver he will.
........It is the Infantryman who actually eyeballs the enemy 24X7, 365 days a year. Snipers wait hours for that one shot. Sentries run the gauntlet of being shot if they move and freeze if they don’t.
.......Deployed in ones or two’s, Sappers, or combat engineers, at any post are veritable Man-Fridays. They secure crossings over yawning crevasses, do the “cliffhanger” act to lay cableways and pipelines. They are roped in to fix snow scooters, check telephone/ generator lines, aid the Post Nursing Assistant, muster porters, open routes or trigger avalanches after snowfall, install Dish TVs etc.
.......The Gunner is the one who sticks his head out when shells rain down. He calls in our own fire while everyone else takes cover in ice caves. How right Napoleon was when he called Artillery the “God of War”.
Despite the best precautions, the unforgiving terrain and weather take far more lives than enemy action. In a matter of hours, healthy bodies may succumb to the effect of the super high altitude. In seconds, crevasses under the ice may swallow a whole roped up team. There is always the threat of avalanches wiping out entire posts. No surprise thus that the greatest decoration and achievement is taking back “down” all those that you climbed “up” with. Do that, you’ve done your bit. There is just nothing heroic or soul stirring about dying in action. It is painful, scary and to see that happen to the men that you live and fight alongside with, numbs you for years to come. We all still put up brave faces and boisterous high fives, but fear remains. Fear of not being able to see those loved ones ever agin, of what would happen to them if you don't get back. Fear of losing a limb or life to a bullet, shrapnel or frostbite. But most of all, the fear that overcomes all these fears is the fear of letting down the man next to you. And it is that, and that alone , which helps you calm a pounding heart as you attend to a wounded buddy under fire or venture out into the dark on a patrol...
Frostbite and HAPO scar men for lives. The shriek of 60 kmph wind, the chill in your bones when the thermometer stops at minus 42 Celcius and the constant fear of dying inside a crevasse scares one even years after walking the gauntlet. The cold at nights penetrated anything you could put on. The smallest cut would burn, hurt and go black. One smells of kerosene, (among other odours), all the while. A first bath, maybe after four weeks and never after that. Answering nature’s call at a forward post is the worst daily recurring nightmare- worse than the shelling and cold. Arrangements vary from a ladder sticking out over an abyss and camouflaged with a white parachute or to a rope dangling into a crevasse to which one hangs on for dear life.
A wonderful thing is the simple faith which every man there reposes on “OP Baba”- the spirit of a JCO (who died on the glacier in the 80’s) which supposedly has remained on that deep freezer of a battlefield to watch for the safety of the men there. Stories abound of dozing sentries being slapped awake, of lost patrols miraculously finding their way through “whiteouts” or of severely wounded casualties still making it. For a fact, every unit inducting and de inducting from the theatre formally reports to his shrine (with a parade state submitted by the OIC!) at Base Camp and seeks his blessings or thanks him for a safe tour of duty. Then there are those real life angels in the form of the IAF or the Army Aviation helicopters. When a man goes down, you can count on them to fly in and get him out, no matter what. To hear the clatter of the choppers and see them coming in with ammunition, fresh rations and that golden commodity- letters from home, is pure happiness indeed.
And so does life go on there. A life of daily struggle, which goes on relentlessly even as we lie cozily tucked in bed. Even as you read this, the Siachen saga continues. They are out there, and will remain, come what may. So remember them every now and then. And hail them, when you see that grey and white medal ribbon; hail the Siachen veteran, for he has been there and done things.