AFOVA New Letter 2 of Year 2021

Section 5 – War Diary CV 2 No. 02 / 2021 Page 54 of 332 3 The Ghost Regiment of the Bangladesh War Capt D P Ramachandran Genre: War Diary raditionally battles hailed the most by armies are often the ones they win at great loss of lives, evidently for sentimental reasons. Consequently, many a battle won with minimum casualties due to professional excellence of planning and execution earns far less renown. Nothing demonstrates this in the history of warfare than the fixation of the British with the ‘Charge of the Light Brigade’, wherein 600 of their cavalrymen rode to their death against Russian cannons in Crimea in a classic instance of foolhardiness, while many a brilliant feat of British arms are largely forgotten. In India’s own recent military history, our spectacular victory in 1971 War is a case in point. While the liberation of Bangladesh in that war is much hailed as India’s grand military achievement and a certain amount of credit given to Indian Army’s Eastern Command for the successful strategy employed, no proper recognition has ever been accorded to the contribution of individual soldiers and units that took part in Operation Cactus Lily and their professionalism that made the victory possible. May be the toll of casualties, 1500 killed and 4000 wounded, considerable though, was not considered large enough for the effort to be lauded any more than perfunctorily. It seems to have somehow been overlooked that it was an incredible feat of arms wherein we subdued an enemy well-entrenched in a defender-friendly terrain of rivers and marshes by the sheer boldness of our blitzkrieg, with no great superiority in number of troops to what the enemy had, thereby defying the thumb rule of 3:1 superiority required for an offensive to succeed; notwithstanding the overwhelming support we had of the entire population of the country and their freedom fighters. No wonder then, the singular contribution of one of India’s finest armoured regiments, 63 Cavalry, to our victory in Bangladesh is far less known than it ought to have been. This regiment, Tresath as it proudly calls itself, which celebrated the diamond jubilee of its raising in 2016, was the most powerful unit T