AFVOA Newletters of Year 2004

Page 64 of 153 owners. He then crept to the next bunker where he accounted for three Pak soldiers. Inspired by his dare devilry, the rest of the platoon charged and assaulted the features capturing area flat top. We were able to silence their guns and kill all of them one by one’ Rifleman Sanjay Kumar, 13 JAK Rifles: Param Vir Chakra winner 113. Far from winning the Param Vir Chakra, Rifleman Sanjay Kumar says he did not even think he would fight a war one day. He joined the Indian army in July 26, 1996 and has become one of its most highly decorated soldiers within three years. 114. Soft-spoken Sanjay hails from the Bilaspur district of Himachal Pradesh. A resident of village Klol Bukiana, Sanjay did his schooling in the village school. But whenever he saw someone wearing an army uniform his eyes would light up. 115. “My Chacha was in the army. I would hear stories of how he fought the Pakistanis in the 1965 war and how the enemy was defeated. Other villagers, who had been in the army some time or the other, also told the young boys about their heroic deeds. I would often wonder if I could join the Indian army and be somewhat like them. After I passed my matriculation exam, I started making inquiries about how I could become a soldier. With my kind of qualification, this is the best I could do under the circumstances. 116. “Eventually I joined the army but I had never ever dreamt that in such a short span of time I would get the highest award for gallantry. 117. We had been given the task of clearing the enemy from peak 4875 in the Mushokh valley. Major Gurpreet was leading our company. We were supposed to assault the peak on July 4, 1999. But the enemy fire was so heavy that we decided to wait for a day. Next day too the situation was no different. But we had orders to carry out the task. The fire was still very heavy. So our commander asked for a support fire. When the support fire forced them to withdraw for sometime, we could take advantage of the time gap and move forward. 118. “After sometime we reached a stage where support fire could kill all of us. So we had to move on our own. One Ghatak squad led by a JCO moved ahead. Others had to wait till the way was cleared. We were somewhere between 18,000 to 20,000 feet high. The trouble was that if we moved they would fire at us. We decided to crawl. It was difficult, but we had to do it.