Note:
Today, 28 years ago, brave Indian soldiers climbed the icy heights of Siachen and established Indian Army’s ascendancy on the strategically important glacier.
As the clamour for “demilitarisation” of Siachen gets shriller, its important to understand what it takes to be deployed on what is clearly the world’s most inhospitable and highest battlefield 365 days a year.
I was lucky to get a glimpse of the tough life on the Siachen base camp and the Herculean efforts that the armed forces put in to retain an upper hand against Pakistan.
Strategic reasons apart, India should not even think of withdrawing from the glacier if only to honour the sacrifices made by our valiant soldiers over the past 28 years.
Here’s a link to the film I made in 2007 and below it is the script for the film.
http://www.ndtv.com/video/player/ndtv-special-ndtv-24×7/soldiers-battle-hostile-weather-at-siachen/16426
The Script:
Hello and and a very warm welcome to this special programme coming to you from the world’s highest and coldest battlefield, Siachen. The guns may have fallen silent on the 76-km long glacier but the battle against the elements is unending. We travelled to what is clearly the world’s most inhospitable battlefield to bring you a first hand account of how our brave soldiers continue to guard the icy frontiers against all odds. I am Nitin Gokhale.
Early morning at the Siachen base camp…newly inducted troops trying to come to grips with the skills of mountain climbing…
Each soldier who comes here… to be eventually deployed at heights in excess of 20,000 feet… HAS to start from scratch…
First… do this drill of climbing steep snow walls…. rising straight up with the help of crampons attached to snow boots…. ice axe in hand…
And then graduate to more difficult manoeuvres….
Over the next three weeks… these soldiers will train in various techniques needed to battle the treacherous terrain and harsh weather… where temperatures dip to as low as minus 60 degrees centigrade…
Although the new snow clothing and other vital equipment provide good protection… the army says there is no substitute for rigorous scientific training…
Says Maj Joginder Singh, Instructor, Siachen Battle School: ” Every soldier who comes here, no matter how well trained, has to go through this specialised training since the survival techniques needed on the Siachen glacier are completely different from conventional needs.”
Training is a sacred ritual… as the lack of it… can often mean death…
It has brought down weather-related casualties drastically… Consider the figures…
Between 1984 and 1994, 378 soldiers died in weather-related accidents
From 1995 to date (2007)… the number is less than half of that… at 179
In the current year (2007), there have been just two accidental deaths
A remarkable improvement… thanks to better medical facilities…. and use of state-of-the-art snow clothing…and equipment to overcome illness
Dr. Sarvananda: “We train everyone who comes here in the basics of surviving the high altitude deployment and the ways to avoid mountain sickness.”
But as battalion commanders point out… it takes an Herculean effort by everyone… from doctors… trainers… and the soldiers themselves… to keep the momentum going… Little wonder then… that the bonding between officers and jawans on the Siachen glacier… is closer than anywhere else…
The guns may have fallen silent on the world’s highest battlefield in the past four years… but the icy weather remains a constant enemy… and an enduring challenge…
And helping the army meet this challenge is the Field Research laboratory of the DRDO…Located at Leh, the FRL has deviced ways to make life comfortable for soldiers’ deployed in these difficult conditions…
One of the oldest labs in the country, the FRL has developed techniques that allow a variety of non-indegenous crops to grow in the barren landscape of ladakh…this allows soldiers to get fresh vegetables locally instead of depending on supplies from the plains of punjab..it also helps the local economy…
Dr. Zaman, director, FRL, Leh says: “We first experiment new techniques on our farms and then pass the technique onto the local farmers..this has helped us to reduce the length of the supply chain.”
But agriculture is not the only field that the FRL deals in..after the kargil war, it found the mules were not able to withstand the harsh weather..so now it has developed this new breed.
Synergy between the FRL and the army deployed in Ladakh has ensured that there is a constant upgrade in the life of the soldiers deployed in these adverse conditions.
It of course takes a combination of scientific training, able leadership, appropriate equipment and the determination of our brave soldiers to ensure a near zero casualty at what is inarguably the world’s most inhospitable battle terrain…
And then of course there’s faith…
As Naik Subedar Narendra Singh, at the head of his platoon trudging back to the Siachen base camp would testify.
Tired to the bone… unshaven and unwashed for over 100 days…. after being deployed at a forward post… at altitudes over 18,000 feet… a hot bath and rest would normally seem top priority…for these jawans
But in Siachen… there is one ritual the soldiers perform before anything else… a visit to this temple… in many ways the presiding deity of the glacier…
Normally, such a group of soldiers returning from an assignment gives its final report to the commanding officer… informing him about the outcome of the mission….
But here… the final word remains with a soldier-turned-deity…. simply
known as OP baba…
Says Col Bapat:”Here the only religion is soldiering and no matter what faith all us belong to, we all come here pray and report to this mandir..faith in a common diety is what binds us all together.”
Says Capt Tarun Tiwari: “We even did a havan at 19,000 feet, perhaps the highest havan in the world, to pray to OP baba.”
Apparently some years ago…. a soldier named Om Prakash was deployed on the glacier…one night he suddenly vanished… Since then…. every soldier…. be it officer or jawan… makes it a point to come to this place and draw solace…
Faith in this mythical OP Baba who may or may not exist is what sustains the Indian army on the Siachen glacier. Rightly or wrongly the simple soldier believes that the presiding diety of the glacier protects him from any adversity…
But to sustain deployment on the glacier, there is much more to do.
It’s not yet 6 in the morning… but Lt Col RS Chauhan and his co-pilot are already into their second sortie…
Chauhan is the leader of the Army aviation team operating the fleet of Cheetah helicopters from the Siachen base camp…
Soldiers load vegetables, medicines, parachutes and clothes… The Cheetah is off to drop the supplies to one of the 100-odd camps…
Casualty evacuation is also a major task …
The Mi-17 is the lifeline for the Siachen glacier..all the forward posts are maintained by these choppers–rations, protective clothing, medicines, tents–everything has to be ferried by these helicopters
The load is calculated with precision… since at altitudes above 20,000 feet… the lifting power of even these powerful Russian-made helicopters gets diminished…
Officers like Maj Dinesh Raja… in-charge of supplies to the forward posts… prioritise what item goes to which post… and how much…
Raja is as much an essential part of the Siachen deployment as the average infantryman posted here… as without an uninterrupted and well-oiled supply chain… keeping vigil in Siachen is impossible…
Helicopters get into action only at the final stage of a long and arduous journey… that begins from Chandigarh… and passes through Leh… and the 18,000-feet Khardungla pass… the highest motorable road in the world… before it comes close to the Siachen base camp.
No wonder it costs over 4 crore rupees a day to sustain Indian troops on the glacier… but given the strategic importance of Siachen… no one grudges the expenditure.
There is another aspect that is little known.
Army Aviation’s Cheetah helicopter returning from one of its numerous sorties to the forward posts on the Siachen glacier…as it lands at the base camp helipad, a group of soldiers rush towards the chopper..no, not to evacuate a weather casualty but to empty the trash sent back by the troops deployed at heights in excess of 20,000 feet…
Like every other aspect of the deployment on the glacier, the Indian army takes this relatively new scheme to clean up the glacier very seriously…so all non-bio-degradable waste is ferried down to the base camp whenever possible and then disposed of …and there’s plenty of it on the forward posts since most of the food stuff is tinned and nearly 50,000 litres of kerosene oil is shipped to the forward posts every month…
But waste disposal apart, the Army’s 14 corps has also undertaken a massive Clean Siachen, Green Siachen campaign that seeks to have more trees and plants around the usually stark landscape
Despite the campaign, army officers say it is not easy to plant trees in a rain-deficient terrain…yet, the effort has won the army formation a Green governance award from the Bombay natural history society for conservation of fauna…
The relentless battle at Siachen–against weather, against environmental degradation against loneliness–continues 23 years after Indian troops first captured it on 13 April 1984.