AFOVA New Letter 2 of Year 2021

Section 7 – Panorama CV 2 No. 02 / 2021 Page 222 of 332 since the POW were paid a subsistence allowance for their needs as per the Geneva Conventions, Rs 50 per month, many were prepared to buy them. Naturally, there was a rush for more and more copies. The demand was conveyed and a few publishers arrived from Delhi with some copies and demands were placed. A few thousands of copies were printed in a hurry and supplied to us and these were distributed. Some copies were not up to standard, poorly printed, pages missing and so on. These were brought to me and I told the person who had brought them that he would have to take the defective copies back and replace them if he wanted his payment. Normally this worked, but one or two individuals hoping to browbeat me said that I was unnecessarily taking the POWs’ side and that they would report against me. I told them that they could do what they liked but we would not accept sub-standard material. All this became known to the POW and the sincere efforts of our army were driven home to them. A similar thing happened with the MES. The barracks had been lying unused since the time our troops had vacated them many months earlier and as a result, considerable repair and maintenance was required. As this was being done, the local MES junior officer in whose charge our camp buildings were, came up with a much-inflated barracks damages bill and it would have taken all of us, the POW as well as our staff, many years to pay. This caused a kerfuffle. Finally, good sense prevailed and this nonsense was waived. Once again, every Pakistani NCO in charge of his barrack, who was aware of the process, came to know how we had reacted and this added to our credibility. Another incident involved me personally. Our Camp area didn’t have any trees in 1972. The present awareness of improving the environment by tree planting was not yet in vogue. However, I decided that we needed to plant some trees and accordingly, went to the local government functionary and bought 250 saplings; these were Gulmohars and Laburnums. Pits were duly dug in front of barracks in orderly rows and one or two POW jawans was made in-charge of looking after them. On my morning rounds, I would take interest in how each sapling had caught on and its growth. Generally, they all prospered but in one case the plant just refused to grow. In my impatience, I vented my ire on the hapless individual in whose charge it was. At his wits’ end to deal with me, he suggested that he would try tying a taweez (amulet) to the sapling to revive it. Believe it or not, the sapling took root and started growing. After this incident, I said to the jawan that if something were to happen to me, he would have to tie a taweez on my arm! Fortunately, neither of us was put to that test, but small incidents like this helped to build bonds even though the Pakistani jawans were in confinement. No doubt it helped us in all our dealings. It so happened that in Gwalior, our station commander was a Lt Col Mansoor Yar Khan, who was a paratrooper and behaved like one. Five foot nothing in height, he was a bundle of energy. He belonged to a Nawab family of Hyderabad and took pride in his