MY DAYS IN THE
PAKISTAN ARMY 1965-1981

Maj (Retd) Saeed Z JANJUAH writes about
his years as an officer soldiering in the Army

I had just cleared my Intermediate science examinations in 1965 when war between Pakistan and India broke out in September of the same year. I was then only nineteen years old. Although this war was very short in its duration, the country became engulfed into a massive propaganda campaign whereby heroic deeds and actions of our valiant armed forces against heavy enemy odds was spread to such an extent that victory against India was declared on all fronts. The morale of the people of Pakistan was at its peak. To fight against the enemy and become a martyr by attaining shahadat' was the cry on everybody's lips.

It was in 1965 that men like Major Aziz Bhatti, Sawar Muhammad Hussain, Major Shabbir, Pilot Officer Rashid Minhas and many others by their sheer courage, convictions and sacrifice attained shahadat and were later on the recipients of the biggest gallantry awards of Nishan-e-Haider. It was because of them and many thousand unsung soldiers who laid down their lives so that the country may be saved from the treacherous enemy.

It was David against Goliath the father of the nation, Muhammad Ali Jinnah must also have made him proud in his grave. He had said of the armed forces, Everyone of you has an important role to play in strengthening the defence of the country and your watch words should be unity, faith, discipline. You will have to make up for the smallness of your size by your courage and selfless devotion to duty for it is not life that matters but the courage, fortitude and determination you bring to it.'

At the end of September war the soldier became a symbol of the hero, the valiant, the idol and the country was in the grip of a victory mania from Karachi to Khyber Pass. Petals were showered on them, song were sung in their praise. Patriotic and martial songs sung by Madam Noor Jahan and many other were enough to drive any indifferent person to commit his property, his savings, in fact his life for the defence of Pakistan. The people were full of confidence and high spirits and morale knew no bounds. The war which lasted for a few days only was full of sudden impact and aggressiveness. Pakistan Army had at places captured a lot of Indian territory and prisoners of war. At some fronts it was able to repulse Indian attacks at least three times its size. Our Air Force had virtually crippled the Indian Air Force and shot down a large number of their aircraft. It destroyed the Indian airfields deep into their territory and many people in Lahore witnessed the aerial dogfights from their roof tops and the Indian aircraft being shot out of the sky.

Our navy notwithstanding its small size also played its part by keeping our sea lanes of trade open, bombarding the enemy's coastal fortifications and stopping the enemy from coming anywhere near our coastline. The war however ended as soon as it had started and cease-fire was declared on 23 September. Victory of the 1965 war was attributed to Pakistan because it was able to stop the advance of an army three times its size and fire power, inflicting a large number of Indian casualties and capturing a large area of Indian territory. The claim of the Indian Army Chief that he was going to have a drink in Lahore Gymkhana could never materialize and he had to eat up his words in humiliation.

I had always wanted to become a doctor but in those days of September war it seemed that nothing else mattered but the armed forces. It was in this highly motivated state of mind that I suddenly decided to join the army and one day I found myself standing in the queue in front of the Army Recruiting Office at Karachi, along with a very large number of potential candidates for selection as a gentleman cadet in the Pakistan Military Academy (PMA). Getting qualified as a cadet for PMA was not an easy affair and I got the first taste of the gruesome test I had to undergo. First there was the interview test, then the physical test, the written test, the medical test, the intelligence test and so on. There were perhaps about more than 80 boys in my batch from Karachi who had applied for the commission. I think only about six of us could make it and when one day I got my call on a winter morning to report to PMA Kakul by 1st December 1965, I had at that time thought I had conquered the world.

The day arrived when I bade farewell to my family. It was the first time someone from the family was getting separated and as the train moved out of the station for the onward journey, I saw tears in my mother's eyes while my father tried to conceal his and a strange feeling of emptiness and sorrow filled my heart. The journey by train from Karachi to Rawalpindi was most uneventful but very wet and cold. From Rawalpindi to Abbottabad it was not only raining all the way but followed by very cold winds which made the journey all the more uncomfortable.

The action however started when I found myself being bundled along with other candidates who had also travelled with me on the same train into a number of army trucks waiting outside the railway station. There was lots of movement, lots of shouting, soldiers running to and fro, luggage and suitcases being loaded, orders being shouted. A uniformed tall soldier sporting big heavy mustaches and a stick in his hand seemed to be in command and his heavy booming voice through the rainy dark night was sharp and cracked like a whip. It looked as if some emergency was on and within a matter of about half an hour, the trucks were already moving towards the Military Academy few miles away.

On reaching the academy we were off loaded and directed to a barrack which had A' Mess written at the gate and although it had yet not snowed, the air was freezing cold outside. Like sheep being shepereded we were lined up inside. The mess hall however was quite warm and cosy and we had not yet got used to our bearings when all hell broke loose. Here we suddenly came face to face with the senior cadets. They seemed to be waiting for the kill or the slaughter and with their blue coloured blazers and PMA insignia on the pocket, the army style hair cut they descended on us like a pack of wolves on the innocent lost sheep. They were shouting, bullshitting, bragging and ragging of which the academy was famous for .

Which place do you disgrace from, was first question shouted at me by a tall lanky youth who was breathing down my neck with a face so full of anger and sadism, as if he was going to beat the heck out of me. Somehow the whole atmosphere inside the mess was so full of charged authority and command that everyone of us poor victims were doing exactly what the senior cadets was ordering us to do. Some of us were seen front rolling, some behaving like a cock imitiating crackling sounds, some were singing songs on top of their voices, some others were seen jumping like a frog, some were being asked to recite the national anthem and still others were rubbing their noses on the floor. In the midst of all this confusion, instructions, timetable, location of our rooms, platoon numbers etc etc and filling of a number of forms was going on. No one exactly knew what was happening and very few of us including myself could have ever dreamed of such a reception. But somehow we soon got over the first initial reaction and took it all in good spirit as part of the academy training. It is not a question of why but to do and survive seemed to be the message.

I still remember the PMA number allotted to me, Gentlemen Cadet 4490 and Salahuddin Company, platoon number 4 . As luck would have it my platoon commander was then Capt. Hakeem Arshad Qureshi from the SSG, the toughest platoon commander in PMA, who later went on to become a General. He trained us as if we were a platoon of SSG men and not gentlemen cadets.

The words inscribed in INGLE. Hall It is not what happens to you that really matters but how you behave while it is happening,' left a lasting impression that still haunts me. The academy itself was very beautiful with the mountains in the background, tall pine trees lined on both sides of the road, clean, neat and tidy barracks of old British type and big ever green sports grounds.

The weather was cold and unfriendly at times but the air was fresh and the environment was very healthy. At times when I recollect the things that we had to endure as a cadet like jumping into the freezing swimming pool fully clothed or standing in our undergarment outside in the snow with a tub full of water over the head or climbing on the cupboard and pretending to be a cock, front rolling on the main PMA road dressed in our best clothes after witnessing a movie in the in-house cinema hall and such other acrobatic antics, I have a good laugh at myself. This ragging was a part of PMA training. The privilege was given to the senior cadets and it was taken in good spirit and fun. But when the course was over and the passing out parade day came, we had all forgotten the rough and tough time we had spent in the academy and proudly stood in our smartly pressed cadet uniforms awaiting for the ceremony to be over and looking forward to joining our units of the Pakistan Army, commissioned as Second Lieutenants.

I was commissioned and posted to a medium artillery unit located at Lahore. Jokingly courses commissioned soon after the 1965 war were known as Noor Jahan commission and my course was one of them. Before I joined the academy at Kakul, I had never set foot outside Karachi and now Lahore would become one of the many places I would have seen during my army service of sixteen years. My first few years in the army were really very tough. I had to undergo one training course after another in a very short period under very demanding circumstances. In Artillery, one was expected to be right all the time, to have knowledge of everything at all times, to be alert and be quick to respond at all times. The reputation of Gunners in the army was that they were KLM men. That is K for Keen as far as profession is concerned, L for Lean a regards to fitness and M for Mean to the point of sadism! Because of this atmosphere life was not a bed of roses.

During my initial six years of service I was posted three times from one artillery unit to another and in the process served at places like Azad Kashmir and Sialkot. I had the opportunity of traveling in Azad Kashmir from one end to the other and there were places so beautiful, so breathtaking that to write about these would require a whole book. Suffice to say that I enjoyed my stay in these parts and the many photographs that I have with me brings back memories of the time I spent there.