Written by ; Col Jagdip Singh Sawhney
Born in Rawalpindi, now in Pakistan, we grew up hearing his tales of survival struggles during the partition mayhem. Separation of the family with whereabouts of father unknown, mother with five children surviving the train to India, refuge in a Jalandhar Gurudwara, selling bananas for survival, sleeping under a tarpaulin during monsoon and so many others. These were ordeals the enormity of which is difficult to comprehend in the comfort zones we live in today.
When Kuldip Singh Sawhney came of age, he joined the Army, and opted to be a pilot in the ‘Air OP’, the predecessor of Indian Army Aviation Corps. His war stories were even more encapsulating. When the 1971 war broke out, he was commanding a flight. His flight was tasked for an aerial reconnaissance of a water headworks in enemy territory which was to be targeted to stall enemy’s advance. “We didn’t have the luxury of drones or satellites those days”, he would say. Following the motto of Air Op– “Unarmed in the Battle”, he took-off in single engine Auster Mark IV fixed wing monoplane.
Approaching his target, he spotted two enemy fighters, which whizzed past and turned reciprocal after noticing him. It was time to make a dash landing in the open patch along the banks of Chenab river with a steep precipice. The enemy jets strafed the area in two rounds before flying away. Perhaps the boulders in vicinity saved him and his plane. The ground troops wouldn’t have been very far, was his military appreciation.
Gathering all his strength and determination, he carried out his “Fauri Ilaaz” – The immediate treatment on his aircraft and decided to attempt a take-off. He was clear in his mind- either he takes-off in the short run available or find his watery grave in the Chenab; it was better to die than be a prisoner of the savage Pakistanis. “Jako Rakhe Saiyaan, Maar Sake Na Koi.” As luck would have it, his wings caught the wind before it could hit the water and the limping air horse got airborne once again.
Instead of returning to base, he went ahead and completed his mission. On his return, the ATC (Air Traffic Controller) asked him to fly past as they observed something unusual about the plane; one of the three wheels was missing. He was instructed to burn fuel before attempting to land. ‘There was no system of jettisoning those days’, he would recall. He circled around the airfield till the fuel was low enough not to explode on landing. ‘I braced up for a hard landing, it must have been okay for I learnt of it only when I woke up in the hospital hours later’, he continued.
This feat made him the first Army officer to be awarded the Vayu Sena Medal for gallantry, by the sister service, the Indian Air Force. With every anecdote of life narrated, I was awe struck. Soldiers never die, they just fade away. This soldier too faded away into memory last year. Colonel Kuldip Singh Sawhney*, in addition to being a role model, was also my father.