More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Shiv Aroor
Read between
August 5 - August 14, 2019
‘Lead me, follow me, Or get the hell out of my way.’
an act of selflessness so high that the most basic instinct—to survive—fades away and yields to the decision to fight to the death. American writer and mythologist Joseph Campbell once said, ‘A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself.’
‘Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers, but to be fearless in facing them. Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain, but for the heart to conquer it.’
Fearlessness is the first requisite of spirituality. Cowards can never be moral.
When we are not in operations, we are preparing for them. There’s a purpose behind everything we do,’
The SF are never deployed for defence. Their principal task is to attack and destroy.
In fact, the Army had decided to use soldiers from the units that had suffered losses in the Uri attack for the elaborate revenge mission.
A leader [Nawaz Sharif ] is reading the speech of a terrorist. I wish to speak to Pakistani citizens. Before 1947 your forefathers loved this entire land. India is ready to fight a war. A war against poverty. Let India and Pakistan fight a war to end social evils, illiteracy and unemployment. Let us see who wins.
‘We were very calm. Since we were so close to Pakistan Army posts, we had little or no movement. They may have suspected SF presence on the LoC, but being spotted was not an option,’ says Maj. Tango.
there is infinitely more disturbance in calm than in an actual firefight. Once ‘contact’ is made and bullets begin to fly, that’s when calm truly returns.
The hectic dash had deprived him of the precious seconds he would need to raise his M4A1 carbine and fire. So in the few seconds that he had before they could fire, he had whipped out his Beretta 9-mm semi-automatic pistol. With a series of shots just 5 feet away from the terrorists, Maj. Tango felled both the men.
‘At one point, the bullets were so close, they were whistling past our ears. There’s a familiar put-put sound when rounds fly very close to your head,’ Maj. Tango recalls. ‘If I were a foot taller, I would have been hit many times over.’
‘Bring the bottle,’ the General ordered the waiter, ‘these men eat glasses’—a fact Maj. Tango confirms as being true.
‘Koi khaana de do. Saare daaru pila rahe hain (Could we get some food too, please? Everyone’s giving us only alcohol).’
‘The attempt is to try and break you, to find your breaking point, to see where you give up. The point is of course not to. But everyone has a breaking point,’ says Maj. Tango.
‘You can’t freak out in a bad situation. No matter what happens, you have to deal with what’s in front of you. That’s what probation teaches you.’
A special memory remains of being dragged out of his bed at 0200 hours and being ordered to write a persuasive 1000-word essay on how the menstrual cycle of a former Pakistani leader affects the monsoon in West Bengal.
Mike’s CO stood there, grim, staring, silent. A perplexed Mike was ordered to do 50 push-ups right then and there. Furious and in disbelief, Mike knew he could not disobey a direct order, so he fell to the ground to do as he was commanded. But as he rose to his feet, Mike saw his CO holding a brand-new maroon beret in his hand. The young officer had just earned the most iconic symbol of the Special Forces.
‘I was beyond exhilarated. What followed was our traditional drink in the SF—every kind of alcohol mixed in a jug with our rank badges in there too. We drink it all in one go, and then the rank badges are pipped. I woke up two days later.’
‘By now they probably know who I am and where I am,’ says Maj. Tango, then adds: ‘But in the Special Forces, we don’t really know fear.’
He closed his eyes for a moment, collecting his thoughts. Three words repeated themselves over and over in his mind. 18 soldiers. Killed.
