Joe Shearer
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In the winter of 1981, a stewardess walked up to my seat in the Indian Airlines flight from Bombay to Bhuj, to tell me, after she confirmed I was R**** T****, that the Captain requested my presence on the flight deck. I was returning from Pune after leave, my wife, interning at the Cantonment Hospital in Pune, after completing her MBBS from the Byramjee Jeejeebhoy Medical College.
Intrigued at the most unusual request, I unstrapped and walked to the cockpit. After a round of handshakes around the cockpit, the Captain pressed the radio telephone press-to-talk button and called out into the microphone of his headset, "Bhuj control, standby for contact" and handed over his headset to me, pointing to the press-to-talk button. I donned the headset, pressed the PTT and forgetting I was on an international frequency, called Bhuj using its Air Force callsign.
At Bhuj control's response, I immediately recognized my room mate Ram M********'s voice, instructing me to exit the aircraft first and to look out for a Corporal on a motorbike, who would be at the stairs to pick me up to be dropped to the Railway Station for onward journey to Jodhpur, Headquarters of the Air Force's No. 1 Operational Group. I asked Mandy to hand over my flying overalls and a uniform to the Corporal.
Sure enough, as I exited the aircraft first, there was the Corporal on a motorbike, engine idling and another standing beside him with a plastic bag, asking for my luggage ticket. I handed over the ticket, took charge of the plastic bag containing my uniform and sped away to the Railway Station. Just as I climbed on to my rail coach, I saw the other Corporal run in, huffing and puffing with my red VIP suitcase on his head. I thanked both of them just as the train chugged out of Bhuj station, leaving me out of breath and wondering what I was in for, for my query on radio telephone yielded the response, "I don't know. A temporary duty for a week or so..."
Early next morning we were in Jodhpur and spying an Air Force vehicle at the station, I asked if it was waiting for me. Which indeed it was. A short drive later, we were in a briefing room with a lot of Army and Air Force blokes, being briefed for an Army exercise in the Rajasthan Desert. During operations, a fighter pilot, called a Forward Air Controller (FAC), is attached to every Army brigade, his job being to advise the Army on what weapons load to request air cover with, depending on target, for example, soft skin vehicles and troops in a forested area, or armoured and soft skin vehicles in an open area and to thereafter guide the ground attack fighters to their targets from the ground, after making visual contact with the target. This is necessary because only a fighter pilot can know what will be visible from the attack altitude he will be running in from and how to describe the target.
The FAC is allotted a 4WD Jeep and is accompanied by an Army Ground Liaison Officer (GLO), a driver and a VHF radio operator, half the rear portion of the Jeep being occupied with radio gear. There is also a UHF radio set to connect with the fighter aircraft providing close air support. My GLO, an infantry Major, told me at the outset that he knew nothing about the job he had been tasked with and that I would have to handle stuff myself. He was also very fond of sleeping and would drift off as soon as our vehicle began moving.
A bumpy ride from Jodhpur brought us to the environs of the Thar Desert, after which we were almost permanently travelling in 4L setting on the transfer case, on special balloon tyres that accorded better traction and weight distribution on sand but yielding a top speed of not more than 3-5 kilometres an hour. Our first stop by late afternoon was a Brigade HQ which was so well dug-in into the sand that it was not visible till we were absolutely upon it. Not having ever carried out an FAC role in the desert before, I suddenly realized the enormous challenges I had to look out for.
A quick introduction to the Brig Cdr and his principal staff of our Blue Army, was followed by a briefing on the first target next morning, a Red Army (our 'enemy') concentration of armour, some 10 km from our location. After composing the signal to be sent to the Air Force, I retired to a camouflaged tent, with a co-located Gorkha battalion. My helper, an Army jawan, had already dug a luxurious, personal 5-star toilet for me and kindly explained its function. It consisted of a four foot deep pit with a diameter of about 6 feet, with a hole dug at the periphery of the pit. After doing my job, I was to cover that hole with sand, whereupon he would dig another small hole next to it along the circumference. An added luxury was a small flag that I could raise outside the pit while I was occupying it, so that the casual stroller could be informed that an officer of the Indian Armed Forces was shitting within! The men had no such luxury however, their toilet being rows of perches perched precariously over a DTL (Deep Trench Latrine).
After setting up my tent with camp-cot and bukhari, my helper suggested I meet saab-log in the ops room and promptly led me to a hole in the sand that revealed a staircase leading down into an underground ops room dug out of the sand and reinforced with corrugated steel sheets. And suddenly in the dimness I recognized my coursemate R*** L***. What a big deal, meeting a friend in the bowels of the earth after such a long time. After exchanging hugs and handshakes all around and reminding ourselves it was New Year eve, R*** asked me to carry on to the Mess tent, as he would follow with the others soon. My helper guided me to the camouflaged overground Mess tent and I walked in to occupy a chair at the far end, calling out a "koi hai?" to attract attention. The Mess Hawaldar walked in, I asked for a rum paani and settled down to wait for the rest.
A half hour later the entire complement of Gorkha officers walked in, led by the CO. I stood up, to see R*** slink in rapidly along the side of the tent towards me, to whisper urgently in my ear in a whisper so loud it could be heard across the border, "Bugger, you're sitting in the CO's chair!" As I made to move away, the CO was upon us, asking me to sit right there, while he occupied the 2i/c's chair next to me. I winked at Ryan and filed away this cultural difference between Army and Air Force for future reference.
After drinks and dinner, we regaled each other with jokes you can only recount in a Mess tent in the desert, waiting for 12 AM. After which everyone wished each other a Happy New Year and retired for the night.
I had to wake up at 0400, to make it to the target area by first light and rendezvous with a battalion there. Complete radio silence and celestial navigation, brought us to the RV point before first light. At daybreak I received a call "Tango control, this is Mayfair1 and 2". Two fighters were heading for us, flying 50m above the ground at 900 kph. Then followed rapid-fire communication as I gave them the track to follow, described the target and told them how many seconds later they were to pull up for an attack and described what they would see on pulling up. A few seconds later, when the fighters pulled up exactly where I predicted they would, my army friends watched what they called the most fearsome sight in a battlefield - when you realize a fighter has seen you and you know you have nowhere to run. The repeated Armour Piercing Incendiary rocket passes over the target, with gunsight cameras switched on, could be readily imagined with real ammunition.
Armies move in the deserts only at night, without lights, it being impossible to find cover during the day. That night, the brigade was supposed to move to a new location. I obtained the coordinates of the location from the brigade and left well before them, knowing I would be eating sand in a convoy otherwise. I diligently practiced celestial navigation, astronomy and star gazing having been a hobby, and we reached our target location in a few hours, travelling without lights, with me hanging out of the jeep, trying to guide the driver with whatever illumination the moon provided. A man came running out of his mud hut, hearing the screaming Jeep engine and confirmed that we were indeed where we wanted to be, about a hundred metres out. After that we waited for hours for our brigade to catch up, to no avail. The entire desert resonated with the sound of thousands of engines straining in the sand, when we decided to move in the direction of the sound, to find our parent brigade. Hanging out of the Jeep, guiding the driver, occasionally asking him to idle, so I could take a fix with my ears, we steadily travelled towards the sound. Suddenly, I heard a huge rumbling sound to our left and saw an enormous Vijayant Tank bearing down on us, its huge infra red lamp emitting a dull red glow. In a split second I realized the tank driver had not seen us and quickly slipped into the Jeep, as close as possible to the driver, awaiting the inevitable crunch of steel eating steel, when the tank driver saw us and swerved sharply to his left, throwing what seemed to be a ton of sand, into our Jeep. Every pore and opening of our bodies was full of sand - ears, nose, mouth, hair, eyes... The tank came to a stop. The commander, a Captain, emerged from the turret, jumped down, asked us if we were OK, gave us some water to wash ourselves of the sand and told us he had got separated from his squadron. So were we. Which called for uproarious laughter in the middle of the Thar Desert in the middle of the night.
We went on our way till we could see a convoy of vehicles in the moonlight. We parked the Jeep behind a sand dune and the radio operator and I walked towards the convoy, having taken a back bearing from a star, to enable us to return to our Jeep. We hid behind some desert shrubs, to determine whether the convoy was Blue Army or Red and to our amusement and horror, realized that friend and foe were in the same convoy, with neither knowing who was in the wrong one! We followed the convoy to a road, where we saw Blue Army turning left and Red Army turning right... So we ran back to our Jeep and got into the convoy, till my GLO told us, reading the tactical signs on the vehicles, that this convoy was not our brigade's.
Completely lost and forsaken, with a raid coming in an hour after first light and complete radio silence being maintained, I had by now lost all hope of finding my brigade. Day was breaking and through my binoculars I saw a bunch of people on a high sand knuckle off the road. I spied one of them wearing a white arm band, signifying an umpire. I told the driver to race towards the knuckle with lights on. As we covered half a kilometre, we were accosted by flashing lights coming from the opposite direction. We switched off our lights and saw a single star plate stopped in front of us. The staff officer got off, walked towards us and looked in. "Hey A*******, I greeted A******* G***, another course mate from the NDA, staff officer to a Brigadier of the Red Army. "Abe saale hamare ilaake mein kya kar raha hai?", he said to me, but turned towards the other Jeep to call out "Our FAC, Sir". "Tell the fellow to switch off his lights, dammit". "Yes, Sir" and we were on our way towards the umpires...
It was well into daylight when we reached the umpires, one Colonel breaking away from the rest to greet me. I told him my tale of woe and he laughed a grim laugh, muttering "BC saari fauj khoi hui hai registaan mein" and kindly pointed out the target of my raid and the location of my brigade. I got the distinct impression the umpires wanted to fix the chessboard so that the game could come back to even keel and continue... I finally caught up and executed the air support perfectly.
The rest of the exercise followed without crazy incidents, but this was one of the most salutary lessons of life I learned - SNAFU (Situation Normal, All Fucked Up) is for real.
Of course, those were the days before navigation aids like GPS, But now when I hear of war exercises and war games being simulated on computers, I laugh out loud. How can you simulate human error and human caprice in a war game?
Intrigued at the most unusual request, I unstrapped and walked to the cockpit. After a round of handshakes around the cockpit, the Captain pressed the radio telephone press-to-talk button and called out into the microphone of his headset, "Bhuj control, standby for contact" and handed over his headset to me, pointing to the press-to-talk button. I donned the headset, pressed the PTT and forgetting I was on an international frequency, called Bhuj using its Air Force callsign.
At Bhuj control's response, I immediately recognized my room mate Ram M********'s voice, instructing me to exit the aircraft first and to look out for a Corporal on a motorbike, who would be at the stairs to pick me up to be dropped to the Railway Station for onward journey to Jodhpur, Headquarters of the Air Force's No. 1 Operational Group. I asked Mandy to hand over my flying overalls and a uniform to the Corporal.
Sure enough, as I exited the aircraft first, there was the Corporal on a motorbike, engine idling and another standing beside him with a plastic bag, asking for my luggage ticket. I handed over the ticket, took charge of the plastic bag containing my uniform and sped away to the Railway Station. Just as I climbed on to my rail coach, I saw the other Corporal run in, huffing and puffing with my red VIP suitcase on his head. I thanked both of them just as the train chugged out of Bhuj station, leaving me out of breath and wondering what I was in for, for my query on radio telephone yielded the response, "I don't know. A temporary duty for a week or so..."
Early next morning we were in Jodhpur and spying an Air Force vehicle at the station, I asked if it was waiting for me. Which indeed it was. A short drive later, we were in a briefing room with a lot of Army and Air Force blokes, being briefed for an Army exercise in the Rajasthan Desert. During operations, a fighter pilot, called a Forward Air Controller (FAC), is attached to every Army brigade, his job being to advise the Army on what weapons load to request air cover with, depending on target, for example, soft skin vehicles and troops in a forested area, or armoured and soft skin vehicles in an open area and to thereafter guide the ground attack fighters to their targets from the ground, after making visual contact with the target. This is necessary because only a fighter pilot can know what will be visible from the attack altitude he will be running in from and how to describe the target.
The FAC is allotted a 4WD Jeep and is accompanied by an Army Ground Liaison Officer (GLO), a driver and a VHF radio operator, half the rear portion of the Jeep being occupied with radio gear. There is also a UHF radio set to connect with the fighter aircraft providing close air support. My GLO, an infantry Major, told me at the outset that he knew nothing about the job he had been tasked with and that I would have to handle stuff myself. He was also very fond of sleeping and would drift off as soon as our vehicle began moving.
A bumpy ride from Jodhpur brought us to the environs of the Thar Desert, after which we were almost permanently travelling in 4L setting on the transfer case, on special balloon tyres that accorded better traction and weight distribution on sand but yielding a top speed of not more than 3-5 kilometres an hour. Our first stop by late afternoon was a Brigade HQ which was so well dug-in into the sand that it was not visible till we were absolutely upon it. Not having ever carried out an FAC role in the desert before, I suddenly realized the enormous challenges I had to look out for.
A quick introduction to the Brig Cdr and his principal staff of our Blue Army, was followed by a briefing on the first target next morning, a Red Army (our 'enemy') concentration of armour, some 10 km from our location. After composing the signal to be sent to the Air Force, I retired to a camouflaged tent, with a co-located Gorkha battalion. My helper, an Army jawan, had already dug a luxurious, personal 5-star toilet for me and kindly explained its function. It consisted of a four foot deep pit with a diameter of about 6 feet, with a hole dug at the periphery of the pit. After doing my job, I was to cover that hole with sand, whereupon he would dig another small hole next to it along the circumference. An added luxury was a small flag that I could raise outside the pit while I was occupying it, so that the casual stroller could be informed that an officer of the Indian Armed Forces was shitting within! The men had no such luxury however, their toilet being rows of perches perched precariously over a DTL (Deep Trench Latrine).
After setting up my tent with camp-cot and bukhari, my helper suggested I meet saab-log in the ops room and promptly led me to a hole in the sand that revealed a staircase leading down into an underground ops room dug out of the sand and reinforced with corrugated steel sheets. And suddenly in the dimness I recognized my coursemate R*** L***. What a big deal, meeting a friend in the bowels of the earth after such a long time. After exchanging hugs and handshakes all around and reminding ourselves it was New Year eve, R*** asked me to carry on to the Mess tent, as he would follow with the others soon. My helper guided me to the camouflaged overground Mess tent and I walked in to occupy a chair at the far end, calling out a "koi hai?" to attract attention. The Mess Hawaldar walked in, I asked for a rum paani and settled down to wait for the rest.
A half hour later the entire complement of Gorkha officers walked in, led by the CO. I stood up, to see R*** slink in rapidly along the side of the tent towards me, to whisper urgently in my ear in a whisper so loud it could be heard across the border, "Bugger, you're sitting in the CO's chair!" As I made to move away, the CO was upon us, asking me to sit right there, while he occupied the 2i/c's chair next to me. I winked at Ryan and filed away this cultural difference between Army and Air Force for future reference.
After drinks and dinner, we regaled each other with jokes you can only recount in a Mess tent in the desert, waiting for 12 AM. After which everyone wished each other a Happy New Year and retired for the night.
I had to wake up at 0400, to make it to the target area by first light and rendezvous with a battalion there. Complete radio silence and celestial navigation, brought us to the RV point before first light. At daybreak I received a call "Tango control, this is Mayfair1 and 2". Two fighters were heading for us, flying 50m above the ground at 900 kph. Then followed rapid-fire communication as I gave them the track to follow, described the target and told them how many seconds later they were to pull up for an attack and described what they would see on pulling up. A few seconds later, when the fighters pulled up exactly where I predicted they would, my army friends watched what they called the most fearsome sight in a battlefield - when you realize a fighter has seen you and you know you have nowhere to run. The repeated Armour Piercing Incendiary rocket passes over the target, with gunsight cameras switched on, could be readily imagined with real ammunition.
Armies move in the deserts only at night, without lights, it being impossible to find cover during the day. That night, the brigade was supposed to move to a new location. I obtained the coordinates of the location from the brigade and left well before them, knowing I would be eating sand in a convoy otherwise. I diligently practiced celestial navigation, astronomy and star gazing having been a hobby, and we reached our target location in a few hours, travelling without lights, with me hanging out of the jeep, trying to guide the driver with whatever illumination the moon provided. A man came running out of his mud hut, hearing the screaming Jeep engine and confirmed that we were indeed where we wanted to be, about a hundred metres out. After that we waited for hours for our brigade to catch up, to no avail. The entire desert resonated with the sound of thousands of engines straining in the sand, when we decided to move in the direction of the sound, to find our parent brigade. Hanging out of the Jeep, guiding the driver, occasionally asking him to idle, so I could take a fix with my ears, we steadily travelled towards the sound. Suddenly, I heard a huge rumbling sound to our left and saw an enormous Vijayant Tank bearing down on us, its huge infra red lamp emitting a dull red glow. In a split second I realized the tank driver had not seen us and quickly slipped into the Jeep, as close as possible to the driver, awaiting the inevitable crunch of steel eating steel, when the tank driver saw us and swerved sharply to his left, throwing what seemed to be a ton of sand, into our Jeep. Every pore and opening of our bodies was full of sand - ears, nose, mouth, hair, eyes... The tank came to a stop. The commander, a Captain, emerged from the turret, jumped down, asked us if we were OK, gave us some water to wash ourselves of the sand and told us he had got separated from his squadron. So were we. Which called for uproarious laughter in the middle of the Thar Desert in the middle of the night.
We went on our way till we could see a convoy of vehicles in the moonlight. We parked the Jeep behind a sand dune and the radio operator and I walked towards the convoy, having taken a back bearing from a star, to enable us to return to our Jeep. We hid behind some desert shrubs, to determine whether the convoy was Blue Army or Red and to our amusement and horror, realized that friend and foe were in the same convoy, with neither knowing who was in the wrong one! We followed the convoy to a road, where we saw Blue Army turning left and Red Army turning right... So we ran back to our Jeep and got into the convoy, till my GLO told us, reading the tactical signs on the vehicles, that this convoy was not our brigade's.
Completely lost and forsaken, with a raid coming in an hour after first light and complete radio silence being maintained, I had by now lost all hope of finding my brigade. Day was breaking and through my binoculars I saw a bunch of people on a high sand knuckle off the road. I spied one of them wearing a white arm band, signifying an umpire. I told the driver to race towards the knuckle with lights on. As we covered half a kilometre, we were accosted by flashing lights coming from the opposite direction. We switched off our lights and saw a single star plate stopped in front of us. The staff officer got off, walked towards us and looked in. "Hey A*******, I greeted A******* G***, another course mate from the NDA, staff officer to a Brigadier of the Red Army. "Abe saale hamare ilaake mein kya kar raha hai?", he said to me, but turned towards the other Jeep to call out "Our FAC, Sir". "Tell the fellow to switch off his lights, dammit". "Yes, Sir" and we were on our way towards the umpires...
It was well into daylight when we reached the umpires, one Colonel breaking away from the rest to greet me. I told him my tale of woe and he laughed a grim laugh, muttering "BC saari fauj khoi hui hai registaan mein" and kindly pointed out the target of my raid and the location of my brigade. I got the distinct impression the umpires wanted to fix the chessboard so that the game could come back to even keel and continue... I finally caught up and executed the air support perfectly.
The rest of the exercise followed without crazy incidents, but this was one of the most salutary lessons of life I learned - SNAFU (Situation Normal, All Fucked Up) is for real.
Of course, those were the days before navigation aids like GPS, But now when I hear of war exercises and war games being simulated on computers, I laugh out loud. How can you simulate human error and human caprice in a war game?
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