Daily Times

Our Brigade Commander, Brigadier ‘Makhmad’ Hayat, was a noble exception like quite a few others and what a battle commander he was. He never wore a steel helmet and never carried a weapon. Always wore his peculiar discoloured blue beret and knotted Malacca cane in hand. This officer was completely fearless. His standing orders were that there would be no armed escort when he moves out of the headquarters even when he fully knew that behind every bush and tree there was a Mukti sniper or an Indian infiltrator. I had to match his nerve with a reluctant valour of my own. But as a precaution I would also conceal a sten gun under my seat in the jeep. He was a proud Pashtun from Swabi and an extremely determined fighter. This valiant officer died last year.

The Jessore airport was located between the cantonment and the border and was mined for demolition if needed. A railway line and a road led from Jessore to Khulna and the other over the river to Magura and on to Dacca. Kushtia was to the north and Bongaon to the south, which was an important city on the road and railway line coming in from Calcutta. Next to Bongaon on our side of the border was the town of Satkhira from where a road led straight to Khulna. This is why Jessore was so important a military objective.

It was probably December 6 or 7. Indian attacks on Satkhira and around Jessore had become intense over the last few days. In Headquarters Eastern Command Dacca, they were busy ridiculing our battle reports. They would try invariably to water down the count of thousands of Indian artillery shells and dozens of air strikes on us daily to a hundred and a few sorties. Reported tank movements into the noise of farm tractors ploughing fields and all the dirty tricks of a staff befitting a venal commander like General Niazi, who preferred to hold formal official dinners and booze parties when troops in forward trenches were dying of lack of medicines and inability to evacuate. That fateful night the Indians were shelling our defensive positions heavily. Bongaon and Satkhira sectors were also under intense shelling. It appeared that the Indians were preparing for a major assault in our sector. As the dawn broke they launched powerful multiple tank and infantry attacks closely supported by artillery and their ever-menacing air force. By mid day the Indian armour and infantry broke through one of our forward battalions defending Jessore perimeter.

The cross-country travel time to our command post by jeep from the reported breach was not more than 20 minutes. The brigade commander ordered me to take out his jeep, hopped in beside me and we drove off in the direction of the battalion where the enemy had finally broken through. I did not quite understand what was in the commander’s mind but to me it looked as if he wanted to fight the enemy tanks barehanded as he was looking for them everywhere. He had ordered the brigade to occupy a defensive position in the rear astride the road leading to Khulna from Jessore and the units were slowly moving into their new locations. Darkness was falling and it was nearly a half moon in the black starry sky. Indian shelling had stopped and the battlefield had fallen silent after the day’s pitched battles. The brigade had just escaped being surrounded thanks mainly to overcautious Indian field commanders and their faulty assessment that we would withdraw to Magura rather than Khulna. This tactical error would cost them part of the glory of eventual victory latter. There was a Y-junction immediately behind Jessore where the road coming in from Bongaon-Satkhira joined the road to Khulna. The brigade commander ordered me to set up a blocking position at that point with whatever weapons and troops I could muster to prevent the Indians from hot pursuit, which could jeopardise our new defences.

A roadblock was set up with the help of an anti tank gun, a light machine gun and few stray soldiers. A terrible drama of human suffering, pain and panic was unfolding right before my eyes. It was an unusually cold night and Jessore was being emptied. There was an immense flood of humanity fleeing Jessore and its surrounding villages for their dear lives. An endless crowd loaded on cars, buses, trucks, horse and bullock carts, rickshaws, wheelbarrows, cycles and on foot was racing madly towards Khulna. There were heartrending wailing, piercing screams and extremely painful calls for help from everywhere. The road was narrow and slippery and there were ditches on the sides. People were running and driving in a frenzied panic. Those who fell were crushed and the ones who could not keep up were lost forever. Sick, elderly, children and women were in pitiable condition. Fear, selfishness and helplessness diluted all care for blood relations; each one was on his own. That night how many were crushed to death or killed, no one knows. Which grand and honourable families lost generations of respect and ancestral properties, nobody can guess. What horrible tragedies and grief were inflicted cannot be imagined. But one thing was sure: that fateful night, the Pakistan for which Muslims of the subcontinent struggled for hundreds of years, died on the road to Khulna, unlamented. That night a thousand years of our romance with history finally and decisively soured. What a colossal tragedy indeed. It was a massive and unforgivable let down by those in West Pakistan of their countrymen in East Pakistan.

On an impulse I decided to go see for myself where the enemy was as a lot of time had passed without making contact. I had to pass through Jessore. It was quite close to the false dawn and the moon still shone feebly. Jessore was an incredible sight. It looked like a ghost town, not a soul stirred anywhere. Bazaars were completely empty. Tables and chairs in the restaurants were toppled over, doors to homes wide open and things littered around, as if people left in a hurry. There were cooking pans still on the burners in some kitchens with food badly burnt and abandoned. One could also see an odd dead body lying around badly mutilated. I thought I heard a baby crying somewhere maybe due to the cold or hunger and no one to feed or cover him, possibly. There was an old and very frail woman sobbing uncontrollably while sitting on her doorstep. Perhaps missing her family who had fled. A few goldsmith shops were broken into and looted either by Mukti Bahini or by the citizens themselves, I was not sure. There were a few dead bodies stuffed into city gutters. Not even dogs and cats could be seen. I have never seen a more dreadful sight than that ever before. A whole living city utterly abandoned and literally extinguished. Jessore was inevitably pillaged, whoever was left behind ravaged and the city torched, burning for many days. Dense clouds of smoke and blaze were visible for many days.

(Concluded)

The writer is a retired brigadier of the Pakistan Army. He can be reached at clay.potter@hotmail.com