India’s Bravehearts: Why life at the borders is out of control
The book is a soldier’s tale that wraps of the stories of all bravehearts guarding the border.
When the ‘boys’ returned after successfully completing the 2016 ‘surgical strike’ across the LoC, on a tray for tea, bottles of Johnnie Walker Black Label arrived. No glasses were used, Lt Gen Satish Dua (retd) – then Corps Commander - poured decent slugs straight into the mouths of the ‘boys’ because the ‘SF [Special Forces] guys are in a habit of eating whisky glasses’.
India’s Bravehearts: Untold Stories from the Indian Army will warm your heart to many such stories but will also break it to the many stories of limbs amputated, lives lost, children orphaned, and women widowed.
The stories are Lt Gen Dua’s personal accounts, sometimes in action, sometimes overseeing action, escaping enemy fire, saving his team from the enemy and also being saved by his team. You can’t help but smile through the accounts. Even as you are smiling, he throws in a story of a soldier losing his life in the middle of action and valour. As a reader you may feel being cheated as parts suddenly turn tragic and then you think of how the soldier out there is cheated by life planning a marriage one day, returning in a coffin to his family the other.
Despite the sacrifices it describes, India’s Bravehearts is not a story of pathos. It is a warm book, as warm as a soldier’s handshake. Lt Gen Dua introduces the readers to some ‘operational secrets’ like how assigning secret code names to operations can give away the details to the enemy. It is for this reason that the ‘surgical strike’ after Uri was never codenamed. It came to be called ‘surgical strike’ because the media called it so.
Then there are instances of soldiers firing at soldiers because with terrorists wearing combat jackets, or with terrorists taking cover in dense forests and firing coming from all sides, it is difficult to guess who is who. You can’t call out to your men to tell ‘you is you’ lest you give away your position. You have to devise tricks to mark the difference then and there.
The author also introduces his readers to the finer details of what is a battalion and what is a brigade, who exactly is Subedar Major and what does he do apart from fighting wars. What happens when soldiers show indiscipline in an institution where discipline is paramount.
India’s Bravehearts allows its readers a sneak peek into the training of a soldier and dedicates a whole chapter to ‘catching a snake’ because snakes, the readers are told, are easier to catch in comparison to other wild animals, and are good to eat. It makes clear the difference between bravery and bravado and how soldiers are trained to always be aware of the difference in the line of action.
This is no literary account of Indian Army. But account is of an officer who oversaw the elimination of 106 terrorists/enemies during the three years that he served as Commanding Officer of his battalion. He tells it like he saw it. A soldier returning to the base after hunting for elusive terrorists, struggling to take off his drenched boots and just when he has changed into a dry pair, about to take a sip of a warm cup of tea, returning to hunt down the enemy again.
There are also stories of the LoC from the times when things were not as hostile and soldiers could exchange sewaiyan and goodies across the border. Each tale has a personal touch. Like you are hearing it straight – not reading - from a person who has been there, done that. There is no ornamentation of language or literary writing. This is a soldier’s tale that wraps up the stories of all bravehearts guarding the border.
India’s Bravehearts is, perhaps, an overnight read. But its stories are treasures to be preserved forever.