The Brave: Param Vir Chakra Stories by Rachna Bisht Rawat Page B
Authors: Rachna Bisht Rawat
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in Congo. The orders came suddenly and the soldiers were shifted from peacetime duties in India to a warlike situation in Congo.
After three injections, for yellow fever, cholera and tetanus, the Gorkhas left in US Air Force Globemasters that took off from Palam Airport. Major Gurbachan Salaria reached Leopoldville on 16 March 1961. On 5 December, under orders to clear a roadblock established by the gendarmerie at a strategic roundabout at Elizabethville, Katanga, Gurbachan and two sections of brave Gorkha soldiers attacked the position frontally, and in the daring assault Captain Gurbachan Singh Salaria was killed inflicting a cutting defeat on the enemy.
The UN mission was a very complex one but it is regarded as one of the most successful even though there were many casualties on both sides. For his leadership, courage, unflinching devotion to duty and complete disregard for personal safety, Captain Gurbachan Singh Salaria was posthumously awarded the Param Vir Chakra.
Gurbachan Singh Salaria
Elizabethville, Katanga
5 December 1961, 1.12p.m.
Sixteen small, slim Gorkha soldiers stand quietly in the shrubbery, their olive green combats blending in. In their hands they hold their. 303 rifles and between their teeth, their khukris, blades glinting dangerously in the afternoon sun.
The soldiers are still1500 yards from Roundabout, the location they have been ordered to close in on. They were to approach from the airport side, along with a troop ofSwedish armoured personnel carriers, and block the gendarmerie’s withdrawal route. However, they had run into an ambush and now have enemy fire coming at them from a subsidiary location. Just a little way ahead stand the hutments that have been deserted by the locals and converted into bunkers by the revolting gendarmerie of Katanga. The enemy has two armoured cars and 90 men holed up in trenches and on rooftops, equipped with semi-automatic guns, far superior to the obsolete. 303 rifles that the Gorkhas are using, the pre-World War II rifles painfully tedious to handle. After every round is fired, the bolt has to be pulled up and brought back to eject the cartridges and then moved forward to load fresh ones. Khukris, their traditional Nepali knives, are much, much faster. That is why the Gorkhas have unsheathed them and are now waiting for orders to attack.
‘We will storm their location,’ orders their company commander, Captain Gurbachan Singh Salaria, his cool, no- nonsense voice cutting through the moist heat of the afternoon.
The men get into position. They steel their hearts against all fear of death and when Salaria yells out their war cry, ‘Jai Mahakali, Aayo Gorkhali’, breaking into a sprint towards the enemy location, they follow.
Salaria is the first to charge. He runs across with his gun blazing, bared khukri clasped in his mouth, flashing in the sunlight. Taking on the first trench, he shoots dead the big gendarmerie on the left. From the corner of his eye he catches movement to his right, turns around and, gripping the khukri with his right hand, whips it fiercely through the air, slicing the man’s horrified face. It rips off an eye and runs down his nose, slicing it into two bloody halves that bare the cartilage. Salaria’s trained hand followed the standard slashing drill of right to left, left to right and, blood spraying from his lacerated face, the man falls into the trench, his intact eye still open in shock and terror.
With a snarl, Salaria turns to the next man, the blood-soaked blade glinting. He leaps into the trench and cuts the throat of the enemy soldier, who hasn’t even had time to cock his rifle. A warm spray of red splashes across Salaria’s sweat-soaked face. He wipes it with the sleeve of his shirt and turns to the next trench.
2 December 1961
Capt. Salaria, with one platoon of Alpha Company, is ordered to take over the protection duty of a refugee camp in Elizabethville. Around the same time, there is a skirmish between two
After three injections, for yellow fever, cholera and tetanus, the Gorkhas left in US Air Force Globemasters that took off from Palam Airport. Major Gurbachan Salaria reached Leopoldville on 16 March 1961. On 5 December, under orders to clear a roadblock established by the gendarmerie at a strategic roundabout at Elizabethville, Katanga, Gurbachan and two sections of brave Gorkha soldiers attacked the position frontally, and in the daring assault Captain Gurbachan Singh Salaria was killed inflicting a cutting defeat on the enemy.
The UN mission was a very complex one but it is regarded as one of the most successful even though there were many casualties on both sides. For his leadership, courage, unflinching devotion to duty and complete disregard for personal safety, Captain Gurbachan Singh Salaria was posthumously awarded the Param Vir Chakra.
Gurbachan Singh Salaria
Elizabethville, Katanga
5 December 1961, 1.12p.m.
Sixteen small, slim Gorkha soldiers stand quietly in the shrubbery, their olive green combats blending in. In their hands they hold their. 303 rifles and between their teeth, their khukris, blades glinting dangerously in the afternoon sun.
The soldiers are still1500 yards from Roundabout, the location they have been ordered to close in on. They were to approach from the airport side, along with a troop ofSwedish armoured personnel carriers, and block the gendarmerie’s withdrawal route. However, they had run into an ambush and now have enemy fire coming at them from a subsidiary location. Just a little way ahead stand the hutments that have been deserted by the locals and converted into bunkers by the revolting gendarmerie of Katanga. The enemy has two armoured cars and 90 men holed up in trenches and on rooftops, equipped with semi-automatic guns, far superior to the obsolete. 303 rifles that the Gorkhas are using, the pre-World War II rifles painfully tedious to handle. After every round is fired, the bolt has to be pulled up and brought back to eject the cartridges and then moved forward to load fresh ones. Khukris, their traditional Nepali knives, are much, much faster. That is why the Gorkhas have unsheathed them and are now waiting for orders to attack.
‘We will storm their location,’ orders their company commander, Captain Gurbachan Singh Salaria, his cool, no- nonsense voice cutting through the moist heat of the afternoon.
The men get into position. They steel their hearts against all fear of death and when Salaria yells out their war cry, ‘Jai Mahakali, Aayo Gorkhali’, breaking into a sprint towards the enemy location, they follow.
Salaria is the first to charge. He runs across with his gun blazing, bared khukri clasped in his mouth, flashing in the sunlight. Taking on the first trench, he shoots dead the big gendarmerie on the left. From the corner of his eye he catches movement to his right, turns around and, gripping the khukri with his right hand, whips it fiercely through the air, slicing the man’s horrified face. It rips off an eye and runs down his nose, slicing it into two bloody halves that bare the cartilage. Salaria’s trained hand followed the standard slashing drill of right to left, left to right and, blood spraying from his lacerated face, the man falls into the trench, his intact eye still open in shock and terror.
With a snarl, Salaria turns to the next man, the blood-soaked blade glinting. He leaps into the trench and cuts the throat of the enemy soldier, who hasn’t even had time to cock his rifle. A warm spray of red splashes across Salaria’s sweat-soaked face. He wipes it with the sleeve of his shirt and turns to the next trench.
2 December 1961
Capt. Salaria, with one platoon of Alpha Company, is ordered to take over the protection duty of a refugee camp in Elizabethville. Around the same time, there is a skirmish between two
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