Lieutenant Colonel Desmond Hayde was
awarded the Mahavir Chakra, the second highest honour in battle, for winning
one of the toughest battle battles ever fought by the Indian Army.
In a brilliant and gruesome assault, what
he and his men achieved that September 50 years ago had never been seen before.
IMAGE: Prime Minister Lal Bahadur
Shastri greets
Lieutenant Colonel Desmond Hayde in Dograi.
Photograph: Kind
courtesy Indian Army Facebook Page
In a cemetery in Bareilly, Uttar
Pradesh, quietly rests a war hero that many may not know of -- a man born in
Ireland, who led India in its bloodiest, yet finest, infantry battle in the
1965 Indo-Pak War.
It was an epic battle where 86 Indian
soldiers died fighting a better fortified Pakistan army before the Indian flag
could be raised in Dograi, on the outskirts of Lahore.
Led by Lieutenant Colonel Desmond E
Hayde, whose Haryanavi was better than his clipped Hindi, the 3 Jat battalion
of 550 men defeated an enemy which had double the number of soldiers.
They fought with guns, grenades,
bayonets and bare hands, clearing every gulley, street, house and pill box (a
concrete above-the-ground bunker) in an assault so courageous that it found its
way into Haryanvi folklore.
For his personal courage and
exemplary leadership, Lieutenant Colonel Hayde was awarded the Mahavir Chakra,
the second highest honour in battle.
IMAGE: Lieutenant Colonel Hayde, who
retired as a brigadier, painted by M F Husain. Photograph: Kind courtesy Indian
Army Facebook Page
He is also perhaps the only soldier
to be painted by the famed M F Husain on the battlefield. And it was during an
address to his battalion, that Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri, gave India
one of its best known slogans ';Jai Jawan! Jai Kisan!
The colonel, who retired as a
brigadier after 30 years serving the Indian Army, bequeathed the Husain
painting, along with his medal, citation and typewriter to the Jat Regiment
that he loved so dearly.
When he died two years ago at 87, he
was buried in a cemetery near the regiment';s headquarters in Bareilly.
Alongside him rests his wife Sheela, a Garhwali girl he had met in Bareilly as
a young officer.
"He got a hero';s farewell with
full military honours. His regiment worshipped him," says Colonel Kunwar
Ajay Singh, who knew him for more than thirty years.
"He was a maverick. One of those
old style army officers who was in a different league. He felt that he had to
work with his men and be with his men to be a leader of men."
On the night of September 21, 1965
before his small battalion marched 8 kilometres from their trenches to Dograi,
where the Pakistan army had entrenched itself, Lieutenant Colonel Hayde made
only two demands of his men.
'Ek bhi aadmi pichhe nahin hatega!
(Not a single man will turn back!)';
The second: 'Zinda ya murda,
Dograi mein milna hai! (Dead or alive, we have to meet in Dograi!)
He warned his men against retreating.
';Even if all of you run away, I shall continue to stand on the battlefield
alone,'; Rachna Bisht Rawat writes in her must read book on the men and battles of the war -- 1965, Stories from
the Second Indo-Pak War.
IMAGE: Lieutenant Colonel Hayde was the commanding officer of 3 Jat, one
of the highest decorated regiments of the 1965 War. Photograph: Kind courtesy
Indian Army Facebook Page
With just a single battalion, the
daring commanding officer defeated the enemy battalion, which was supported by
a tank squadron and one more battalion.
For what they accomplished that
night, 3 Jat received three Mahavir Chakras, four Vir Chakras and seven Sena
Medals.
"Brigadier Hayde never spoke
about the Maha Vir Chakra or the Battle of Dograi. He thought of it as a job he
had to do and he did it," says Colonel Singh, the managing director of a
school which is run on the property bequeathed for the purpose by the brigadier
in Kotdwar, Uttarakhand.
"He never even travelled on a
free ticket that the government grants (for winners of gallantry
medals). He was a rough, rugged, tough, guy for whom every day of life was
the Indian Army."
Later this week, the school will be
renamed Hayde Heritage. His three sons, one of whom retired as a lieutenant
colonel from the Indian Army, will arrive from the UK and Canada to attend the
ceremony.
The son of Anglo Indian parents whose
father worked for the Railways, Brigadier Hayde';s rules in life were very
simple, and embibed from the motto the Indian Military Academy had sent him out
with:
The country comes first, your men
come second and self comes last.
"I have seen senior officers -- almost
all have goals of self career progression -- but here was a man who had no iota
of self," says Colonel Singh, who was encouraged and coached by Brigadier
Hayde to join the Indian Army.
"That is the reason that even
after he passed away in 2013, men from his regiment still call. He always
thought of how the army and the lives of jawans could be improved, writing
letters to the officials, the army chief, his own regiment etc."
Even in his 80s, if he was invited
for an army function, he would call his gaadiwala (a hired
car that he often used for outside travel) and set course.
Brigadier Hayde was no ordinary
soldier, like so many other extraordinary men who fought so bravely in that month
of September, 50 years ago.
Heroes like Havildar Abdul Hamid,
Colonel A B Tarapore, Major Ranjit Dayal, Colonel Salim Caleb, Squadron Leader
A B Devaiyya and many others -- men who need to be remembered but rarely are.
Ordered to breach the Ichogil canal,
a deep and wide reservoir in Pakistan that ran parallel to the boundary,
Colonel Hayde';s battalion first took Dograi on the night of September 6-7.
It was for this action that he won
the Mahavir Chakra, announced on the battlefield itself.
But 3 Jat had to fall back because
rest of the units detailed to support them in the offensive, could not reach in
time because of lack of information. Colonel Hayde and his men stood their
ground alone till ordered by the brigade headquarters to retreat.
The miscommunication resulted in the
removal of a major general, while 3 Jat had to wait in bunkers 8 kilometres
behind enemy lines till they got the next orders for launching an assault on
Dograi.
The wait was almost two weeks. By
then Pakistan had converted Dograi into a fortress.
IMAGE: Lieutenant Colonel Hayde is awarded the Mahavir Chakra from
President Dr S Radhakrishnan. Photographs: Kind courtesy Indian Army Facebook
Page
It was in this scarred backdrop, that
Colonel Hayde and his troops were given the task of re-taking Dograi. And they
did -- company by company, combat by combat, inch by inch -- in a gruesome
battle in which one fifth of the battalion was killed.
The death count on the opposite side
was nearly 300.
In a blog post, many years later, an
army officer referred to what Colonel Hayde had told a correspondent when asked
what makes soldiers fight such gruesome wars.
';The colonel pointed to his second
in command, Major Shekhawat and said: "Major Shekhawat fights because he
holds nothing dearer than the respect and standing he enjoys in the eyes of his
men, family, and community back home. His fear of losing that standing
overcomes his fear of death."
"The men, of course, fight
because Major Shekhawat fights."
Major Shekhawat retired as a colonel.
He lost four of his fellow officers in Dograi that night.
IMAGE:
Brigadier Hayde (wearing a hat) with children at the Heritage Academy, Kotdwar,
the school that was established on land he donated. Photograph: Kind
courtesy, 1965: Stories from Second Indo-Pak War by Rachna
Bisht Rawat. Penguin-Random House.
After his retirement in 1978,
Brigadier Hayde moved to Kotdwar in the Garhwal hills, his wife';s hometown.
Till the end, he followed a very
precise schedule. Having breakfast at 7 am, thereafter walking up to his study
-- researching the history of the Jats, the 1965 and 1971 wars etc -- and
eating supper by 7.30 pm.
"Our offices were
adjacent," recalls Colonel Singh. "If I had to meet Brigadier Hayde,
I had to take an appointment and I';ll be damned if I was late even by a
minute."
"He was a man who sought no
popularity. He could be blunt and at times was not taken well. For him, there
was no grey. Only black or white."
The brigadier set up the
ex-servicemen league in Kotdwar and readily helped people from hispaltan.
He wrote a book on the Battle of Dograi and completed his memoirs, which is yet
to be published.
"He used to come across as
someone who was not too fond of kids or company, but started enjoying their
presence on campus," says Colonel Singh.
"His other passion was stray
dogs. He adopted so many of them. In fact 2, 3 of them would be in his
bed."
The war hero remained a soldier right
till his end, and battled skin cancer, like only a gallantfauji could.
Sometimes, even surprising doctors with the way he went about life in spite of
the virulent disease that was eating him away.
Exactly a month before he died, he
circled September 25 on a calendar and hung it on the wall.
"He said, look September 25th
will be my last day and I told him, ';Sir, what nonsense are you
speaking';," Colonel Singh recalls.
"But he was absolutely
right."
Two days after after winning one of
the Indian Army';s toughest battles on September 23, 1965, the hero of Dograi
passed away 48 years later.
There will be a ceremony to
commemorate Brigadier Desmond Hayde and the golden jubilee of the 1965 war in
Kotdwar this week. It will be worth our while that we salute this authentic
Indian hero and the brave Indian soldiers who fought the Battle of Dograi,
wherever we are.
