Opinion How the retreat turned into a rout

Corps Commander Lieutenant-General Kaul,who had visited Walong on November 12 and 13 and authorised the attack on the Yellow Pimple,returned there on November 15 when the war situation was deteriorating fast. He left only on the afternoon of November 16 in the last-but-one helicopter to leave Walong after its defences had collapsed. Because of his prolonged absence from the IV Corps HQ,Kaul had remained broadly unaware of the much greater disaster,indeed catastrophe,unfolding in the main battleground in the Kameng division.

Before departing Walong,Kaul had sent the army headquarters in Delhi a signal that had triggered shockwaves through South Block. For,in this message,after giving the details of the Walong battle and warning the government of the “extreme gravity of the situation”,he had starkly asked for “foreign military intervention to save the situation.”

Director of Military Operations Palit commented: “Bijji (Kaul’s petname) sounds so desperate as to be almost demented”. “Bijji has finally lost his mind”,remarked Army Chief Thapar,“he expects us to invite the Americans to fight our battles. We’ll have to show this to the PM.” Nehru read Kaul’s signal grimly but said nothing.

Thapar then decided to go to Tezpur the next day in the hope that his presence might improve the morale of the corps commander,and told the Lucknow-based Eastern Army commander,Lieutenant-General Sen,to be there. On November 17,it was Sen who received the army chief and his DMO when they landed. Kaul was at Chabua to be with the troops withdrawing from Walong. Meanwhile,the atmosphere at the Corps HQ seemed be depressing,if also confused and confusing.

According to Lieutenant-General (retired) A. M. Vohra — who,in a junior rank,was then Kaul’s chief of operations — the GOC of the 4th Division,Major-General Anant Singh Pathania,had been pressing for permission to withdraw from Se-la,a formidable defensive position. In the corps commander’s absence,his staff sent a clear directive to Pathania that there was to be no withdrawal from the prepared positions at Se-la. Beyond that no other written directive went to the divisional commander,adds General Vohra.

Yet,this does not seem to have deterred Pathania. For,according to Palit and others present at the Corps HQ,as well as other accounts of the border war’s history,an obviously panicky divisional commander persisted in demanding sanction for withdrawal. Palit has lamented that neither Sen nor Thapar would accept his plea that they should instruct Pathania to give up any idea of withdrawing from Se-la. Neither wanted to interfere with Kaul’s command. Pathania spoke to Kaul more than once after his return to his HQ,and Kaul,as usual,gave ambiguous verbal instructions that could be interpreted either way.

To cut a long story short,at about 11 pm,when Thapar and Palit left for the circuit house where they were staying,they were convinced that Kaul’s instructions to Pathania were to defend Se-la all through the night and “discuss” the situation with him the next morning. However,when Palit arrived at Kaul’s residence early on November 18 morning he learnt how wrong he and the army chief were in their assumption.

For,Kaul stunned the DMO with the news that during the night,Pathania had withdrawn not one but two battalions defending Se-la,even though there was no engagement with the Chinese. Moreover,Pathania had also told the corps commander that because of the Chinese threat he was closing down the divisional headquarters at Dirang Dzong and shifting elsewhere. However,instead of going to Bomdila,the last remaining Indian stronghold in NEFA,he headed towards the Assam plains,asking the accompanying troops to do the same. No wonder,all attempts by Kaul to establish contact with Pathania failed.

Meanwhile,the strength of the 48 Brigade,defending Bomdila,had been reduced to just six companies in a perimeter threatened by double that number,and yet Kaul was insisting,over the protests of Brigadier Gurbax Singh,that some more platoons be sent to block the Chinese infiltration routes. These instructions were too late and pointless; the Chinese had used all routes on either side of the 90-km Se-la-Bomdila axis and were present even around Bomdila by then.

They were not only attacking the Indian positions frontally but were also engaged in wide enveloping movements,occupying bunkers vacated by Indian soldiers and ambushing the troops withdrawing from Se-la and Dirang Dzong in the most haphazard,indeed chaotic,manner. In one of the ambushes,Brigadier Hoshiar Singh,commander of 62 Brigade who withdrew from Se-la only when threatened with court-martial,was also killed. Under these circumstances,every Indian retreat was turning into a rout.

Thapar and Palit reached Delhi at night to be greeted with the news of the fall of Bomdila. The last hope of stemming the Chinese tide was finished. By then the famous fourth division had virtually disintegrated in its entirety. The Indian army had obviously reached its nadir. But who was to know that something far more mortifying would happen over the next two days!

The writer is a Delhi-based political commentator