Rude awakening for Pakistan

The second failure of both the army and the IB was more serious, and it came to light most embarrassingly. To compel the Pakistan forces still struggling to occupy Chamb-Jaurian to return hastily to defend their motherland, the Indian army opened a second front in the Sialkot sector. An important calculation behind this action was that Pakistan, like India, had only one armoured division that was frantically trying to defend Lahore. But, totally unknown to India, Pakistan had raised a second armoured division that met the Indian attack in and around Sialkot.

The third unfortunate feature of the Indian situation was that cooperation between the air force and the army left a lot to be desired. The IAF seemed to be concentrating on establishing air superiority rather than providing ground support to the troops.

Meanwhile, Pakistan had managed to establish a bridgehead to the small Indian town of Khem Karan across the border. They were convinced that, thanks to the US-supplied, state-of-the-art Patton tanks, their counter-offensive would make a breakthrough all the way across the Punjab plains to Delhi. This was, as future developments were to demonstrate, pure hubris on their part. But the Pakistani arrival beyond Khem Karan, combined with the discovery of a second Pakistani armoured division, caused grave anxiety at the army headquarters.

Presumably to err on the side of caution, the army chief, General J.N. Chaudhuri, ordered the GOC-in-C of the Western Command and overall commander of the battlefield, Lieutenant General Harbaksh Singh, to withdraw his forces to the east of the Beas river. To his credit, Harbaksh flatly refused. Had he carried out the directive, it would have been the greatest folly of the war, and perhaps an invitation to disaster. Some doubts have been expressed about this episode, but Captain (retd) Amarinder Singh, now a Punjab Congress leader and a former chief minister of the state, was in 1965 the ADC to Harbaksh Singh, and a witness to the telephonic exchange.

... contd.

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