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The graveyard of Pakistani Patton tanks and India's War Hero 'Abdul Hamid'

Author: TNN
Publication: Defence News
Date: August 30, 2015
URL: http://www.defencenews.in/defence-news-internal.aspx?id=Dzjx6fA60E8=

The brave men who had demolished Pakistan’s feared Patton tanks in 1965 are a part of village lore in Asal Uttar, Punjab. The landscape surrounding the memorial of Abdul Hamid is pretty as a picture postcard.

The brave men who had demolished Pakistan’s feared Patton tanks in 1965 are a part of village lore in Asal Uttar, Punjab. The landscape surrounding the memorial of Abdul Hamid is pretty as a picture postcard. Paddy fields sway in the easy breeze and ashen clouds play hide and seek with the sun. It’s impossible to imagine that 50 years ago the region was the theatre of one of the most intense and decisive tank battles in history.

Asal Uttar and neighbouring villages — Bhura Kuhna, Chima, Amar Kot, Valtoha and Bhura Karimpur — had turned into a battleground for four days. The desperate, do-or-die battle between Pakistan and India began on September 7, 1965.

By the time it was over, Pakistan’s General Ayub Khan’s dream of capturing Amritsar had turned into a nightmare. The combat zone had also become a graveyard for the feared Patton tanks. Pakistan lost 97 tanks in all, including 72 Pattons. Enough to create, for a brief while, an open-air showroom called Patton Nagar in nearby Bhikkiwind.

The drama that led to the demolition of Pakistan’s 1 Armoured Division and 11 Infantry Division starred all of these — 3 Cavalry, 8 Cavalry, 4 Grenadiers, 7 Grenadiers, 18 Rajputana Rifles (now 11th Mechanized Infantry), 62 Mountain Brigade, 9 Deccan Horse, 1/9 Gorkha Rifles and 9 Jammu and Kashmir Rifles.

Of the many supermen who engineered this triumph, one of the most audacious was company quarter master havildar Abdul Hamid of 4 Grenadiers, who displaying total contempt for personal safety, destroyed three Patton Tanks with his recoilless gun and was killed going for the fourth. He was posthumously decorated with Param Vir Chakra, the nation’s highest gallantry award.

At Asal Uttar, even 50 years later, he’s an idol and a legend.

Spread over an area roughly one-third the size of a football field, Hamid’s memorial is filled with a variety of trees — eucalyptus, bottlebrush, teak, jamun, peepul and neem. A bunch of jawans are cleaning the place and the boundary walls look freshly painted for the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the 1965 war. “Here on this sacred soil rests this brave son of India,” reads a part of the commemoration.

Like almost everybody here, Pyaara Singh, the 35-year-old memorial’s caretaker, speaks of Hamid with reverence. “I love looking after his memorial. It is a form of seva,” he says. Visitors come from faraway places to pay their respects. “They take photographs, make films,” he says.

Mukhtar Singh, sarpanch, Asal Uttar, says Hamid’s daredevilry blocked the march of the Pakistani fauj to Amritsar. “Unki bahut izzaat hai. For many years now, we have been celebrating his heroism with a three-day festival, from September 7 to 9. Nearby villages compete in volleyball, kabaddi, football, tug-of-war and other games,” says Mukhtar, who also claims that the village was earlier only known as Asal but got its name Asal Uttar (fitting reply) after the battle.

In general, border villages seldom romance war because it means damage to life and property and massive disruptions. In times of conflict, villagers are asked to shift women and children to safer places. During the 1971 war and the Kargil War too, they were asked to repeat the drill. “In 1971, we were asked to assemble at the gurdwara where an army officer asked all of us to leave our kids and women 50 miles away,” says Joginder, a 65-year-old labourer.

But in Asal Uttar, there’s a sense of pride at having answered the call of duty. Often, the village was an observer as well as a participant in the war. Joginder, who was 15 at the time of the 1965 war, remembers the Indian Army asking for local guides to help them with the area’s topography. He says that the young men in the village helped the army in many ways, often bringing food for its men and loading arms and ammunition in the truck.

Less than a kilometre from the memorial, the body of a soldier slain in the 1965 war was discovered in a farm some months ago. The body, locals say, was identified by the service number embossed on a badge on his belt. He was yet another hero of the 1965 war.

The reconnaissance fighter aircraft came first, recalls Gill, who was then 22. “We rushed to the roof. Later the war started. In our lifetime, we had seen fights with kripan. For the first time, people were fighting with guns and tanks. We took a train from Khemkaran railway station. And went away to Amritsar.” After the war was over, Gill returned with the other families. One wall of a home, he says, had some lines scrawled in Urdu. These said something to the effect, “I used to live here before 1947 and had stashed some of my family jewels and other stuff in a wall. We had no time to take it away when we hurriedly left. Now I am taking back what was mine. And thanks a lot for not tampering with it and taking care of it.”

Time is a thief of memory, wrote novelist Stephen King. But Iqbal Singh may not agree. For him, time is more like a rubber band. It snaps back in a flash to 1965. He remembers the hard days and nights spent in a Pakistan prison in Lyallpur (now Faisalabad) and the fearful prospect of never returning home. And even 50 years later, he remains a prisoner of memories.

Iqbal, 65, is a marginal farmer but also works as a sevadar in the government hospital at Khemkaran kasbah, barely two kilometres from the barbed wires that divide India and Pakistan. When he speaks, words spill out in a torrent. He was just 15 during the war. About 30 men and women from Khemkaran had stayed back to supply food for the army. When the place was overrun, they were all rounded up. “Anyone who resisted was shot,” he recalls.

The farmer remembers being taken to Lahore first and then sent to Lyallpur. There were villagers from other nearby areas too. All were dumped in a prison. They got salwar-kameez to wear, and torn blankets as cover during the winter. “We spread old sheets and slept on the ground. Our main job was to make pathways inside the prison. We were not mistreated or anything like that. We received rations for two meals a day. The women cooked our meals,” he recalls.

“Some Pakistani villagers, I was told later, had also been captured by the Indian army. They used to tell us, we will release you when our men are freed. We were exchanged. I came back home on Feb 18, 1966 via Ferozepur. The exchange took place on the Hussainiwala border,” he says.

During the exchange, Iqbal remembers, the Pakistanis going back home mistook us for their countrymen because of our clothes. “They wished us salaam alaikum. We wished them back, walaikum salaam and sat sri akaal. After the exchange, the Punjab government gave us new clothes: kurta-pyjama. We also got about 20-30 kgs of wheat and some money for the ride back home,” Iqbal says.
 
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