In the army, a Commanding Officer (CO) is someone next to your father. He instructs you, motivates you, punishes you but in the end, he wishes to see you doing great service to the nation, wishes to see you excel.
Some COs are not as celebrated like others but those who are can bring down or hold a government to ransom on merely issuing a single order to their platoons.
One such Colonel of Bihar Regiment, Col Santosh Babu, was killed by deception when he went to a meeting that aimed to de-escalate the tension.
Around 60 soldiers of the Bihar regiment went on a rampage upon hearing their father figure-like CO was killed in such a manner. Despite strict orders issued from the command center, they intruded into the border and rained down one of the most wildly fearsome attacks of primitive fight methods, without guns blazing, you will ever witness in modern military history on the backtracking PLA platoon that couldn’t make out what hit their sorry souls.
At least 15 PLA soldiers were left with their necks snapped, dangling from their body, few had their vertebrae broken, indicating massive force being exerted on their bodies pointing to a gruesome frontal assault and few had their faces charred, probably stoned heavily.
Some of those PLA soldiers were thrown in the gorge nearby and in this melee, few of our soldiers went down as well. The Indian soldiers who came back and narrated this were excited to tell how they heard PLA soldiers screaming at high pitched girly voices.
Few Indian soldiers whose body were later returned had their guts spilling out while the lucky ones managed to escape in nearby mountains when PLA troops multiplied, after being informed from their squadron about the attack. They came back only to see a pool of bodies lying, and they relieved the lying Indian soldiers there of their pain.
A figure much bigger than reported 43, might easily be 100 if not 150. Some of the Biharis soldiers are believed to have been joined by Ghatak troops or Mountain Corps Strike (unconfirmed so far) because if you see the attack and injury style, it has Ghatak written all over it.
While some BRC boys managed to come back screaming in pain; at the same time, they were at peace and continuously chanting war cries to have avenged their fallen commander.
Now the silence is all over the camp but the next batch of soldiers is pumped up just in case the situation demands their deployment. Few soldiers were airlifted to army hospitals. While they have their morale high, they miss their commander and comrades.
The sentiment across PLA is furious and battalions are ready for a full-fledged war but top commanders aren’t willing upon seeing the ratio of damage in this botched up skirmish. They held another meeting after the attack in which some of our soldiers went secretly armed with khukuri and other objects but were glad that the meeting ended without a repeat of the last event.
The tone of PLA Colonel was sympathetic and he was willing to restore the status quo.
Few years down the line, when the history is being written I hope it will be actual and the writers will be kind to the tremendous and ferocious guts which Biharis showed that night of 15th Jun in 2020 in the icy cold plateau of Galwan that sent the imperialist Chinese army into a state of reconciliation, yeah the same army that captured and annexed Tibet/Xinjiang/Aksai Chin/Mongolian parts by force and blood; the very same army is compromising a position for safety and return of status quo.
Times we live in.
– An unknown soldier
