AFVOA Newletters of Year 2004

Page 65 of 153 119. “Inch by inch we moved on. The fire from the enemy continued to be heavy. We too fired back and engaged them in a ding-dong battle. It was a battle of nerves. We were moving up and our casualties were high. But they were also losing their men. We had to surprise them. Once we were on top we were able to silence their guns and kill all of them one by one. The grenades that we threw played havoc in the enemy camp. 120. “After we managed to capture one of their bunkers, things became a bit easy. But we had lost far too many men. Some of them were on the injured list. Two would give a support fire while the other two would move to the next bunker. Two bullets hit me. One hit me on my knee and the other hit me on the hip. We were just two, when we captured the last bunker. 121. “After we had killed all the enemy soldiers, we counted all the bodies. They were twelve in all. Lot of their arms and ammunition was lying around. They had lot of other things as well which clearly showed that they had been there for sometime.” 122. Colonel Jabir Singh, commanding officer of the unit mentioned: “I give full credit for the Kargil heroics to my officers and jawans who fought valiantly and drove the enemy out of the Indian Territory. Capturing the two bunkers was very important for the Indian army because it was from this vantage point that the Pakistani soldiers kept an eye on the Srinagar-Leh highway. This had made the movement of the Indian army columns very difficult. In fact anything that moved on the road was badly hit by the enemy. 123. “Sanjay Kumar had earlier proved his worth when his regiment was deployed in Sopore in Jammu and Kashmir. He took part in the anti insurgency operations and had taken the militants head on.” Sources: http://haynese.winthrop.edu/india/medals/pvc/skumar.html; http://wvw.rediff.com/republic/2000/jan/25param3.htm) For Your Palate 124. You may try out the following dishes and tell us whether we could have Maharaj serve these during our next meeting. 125. Aam ki Chutney (Mango Chutney) Ingredients: 1 kg raw mangoes-peeled and grated 4 cups sugar 3/4 cup salt 1/4 cup chilli powder 1 tbsp peppercorns For the Powder 2 bay leaves 1 tsp asafoetida 1 tbsp clove an airtight sterilised jar Method In a steel or a glass bowl, mix in the grated mango and sugar. Tie with a piece of muslin and keep in the sun, stirring twice a day for about 4 days. Mix in the salt, chilli powder, peppercorns and powdered garam masala and continue sunning till the sugar dissolves. Transfer into a sterilised jar and store. (Source: http://www.ndtvcooks.com/recipes/grannyrecipe.asp?id=10; Recipe by: Niru Gupta)