Our Heroes need their identity back
December 28, 2019 ·
Captain Akhtar recalls those days:
One day, I received three eid greeting cards, addressing me as "پیارے چچا جان". I thought for a moment that I don't have any nephew or niece, who sent me these cards? Suddenly it reminded me of an old incident.
It was November and a cold and brutal night of Siachen. At about 10:00 PM, I received a message from the Headquarters that five men were sent to my post fifteen hours ago, confirm that they have reached your post. The distance between my post and the HQ was only of five hours. Still after fifteen hours, their absence was evident that they have lost their way. We were three officers on the post. I thought for a moment that the rest of two are married and have families, I am single so I should go and look for the missing men myself. It was heavy snow fall outside. I asked my HQ for permission to go for search. Request was denied, but when I insisted, I was allowed to go and look for them at 05:00 AM in the morning if the storm stops. On the devised time, me with twenty five other men went for the search. After a full day search, we reached a point at about 04:00 PM. Suddenly I spotted three men. Holding each other’s hands tightly, they were walking. We rushed towards them. Their uniforms and gloves were torn and the snow burnt their faces.
It was clear that they were not in their senses. I reached near them, to raise their morale, I asked, "Jawans what's going on?" Their leader replied, “Sir today at 05:00 AM, we set out from headquarters to reach your post. But I am unable to understand that what is going on, we were unable to find it."
In Siachen, deficiency of oxygen causes hallucination and high altitude sickness, which often causes a person to misjudge direction, time, vision and even audible sounds. These jawans were also a victim of the same as they didn’t remembered that they set out yesterday not today. "Don't worry jawan, we'll take you there", I said. Hearing this, they all fell down and fainted. We took them to the post and gave them treatment. When they came to their senses, I asked their leader that what happened.
He told me that they set out for the post, On their way, the snow storm got worse. The two persons walking ahead disappeared in the snow, but the remaining three kept on walking. They lost their way to the post, in the darkness of night and intensity of storm. They had nothing but a cotton bed sheet. They made a tent with I and sat close to each other in that tent. One of them was "Hafiz e Quran". He started reciting Kalam e Pak. For the whole night, neither the storm nor the recitation stopped. When the sun came out in the morning, it was welcomed by the recitation of Surah e Falak.
They started their journey again which was supposed to be of five hours, but it prolonged to 27 hours. They lost their senses and kept on moving on circular paths, which led them to nowhere, until we found them. The dead bodies other two missing persons were found buried under fifteen feet thick layer of snow. The only reason for the survival of my three jawans I consider is the recitation of Holy Quran by one of them, which kept them alive in a snow storm even after 27 hours.
The eid greeting cards I received were sent to me by their children. I still receive them as most anticipated eid gift.
P.S : The men in the photograph are not the ones mentioned in the story. It is just used to Aid the article.