When soldiers are guarding Indian posts at Siachen Glacier, survival is an everyday battle. The harsh conditions at the world’s highest battleground does not make it a combat ground in the real sense. Here is a retired colonel’s account of being at Siachen, as told to The Quint’s Kirti Pandey.
When a relieving team is posted at Siachen, their First Induction follows a reconciliation or recce of the place by a select few from the team. That is how I decided to first approach the post with my small recce team.
We reached Camp 4, only to be told that we should begin our recce the next day. Unfortunately, snow blizzards kicked in and the half link team could not come to us from the other side. Visibility was near zero and weather conditions were as harsh as ever.
So we reached stage one somehow and stopped for the night at about 11,500 feet. We were met there by the link team. The two teams together, we were eight people on the approach.
It Was Nearly Minus 50 Degrees
The post we were supposed to reach was at 17,400 feet – not even the absolute top of the glacier. I stirred out of my sleeping bag early in the morning and wanted to step out to go to the loo.
The guide told me to walk a little distance to the right tent housing the toilet, and that it would be three parachute tents opposite the temple. The toilet tent was the fifth one.
It was nearly minus 50 degrees, and I lazily slipped my feet into the outer, hard plastic boots that we wear over the inner velcro-strapped shoes.
As I stepped out, the blizzard was still strong and soft snow had piled up waist deep. The slope I had to walk on was slippery.
I Lost Both My Shoes
Nevertheless, I continued. Just a few steps away from the tent that I hoped to reach, I realised my right shoe was stuck in the snow.
Shocked, I stepped back to put my foot into the shoe, only to realise that my other shoe was also lost.
The slopes were slippery as the snow had hardened into ice. I could barely keep my balance. I was stuck in a blizzard, without shoes, with my team completely unaware of the mess I had gotten myself into.
When I used my hands to dig out the shoes, snow got into my gloves and I started freezing. By the time I could retrieve my shoes, I forgot that I had to go to the toilet.
I Crawled My Way Back to the Tent
My hands refused to work, and my limbs hurt as I crawled my
way back to the tent. The sound of the wind drowned my calls for help.
I somehow crawled into the tent and woke up a sleeping team member.
None of us had any clue about what to do; we were all there for the first time. But we had been briefed on what not to do. Do not sit before a fire, that was the first and most important of instruction.
So I instructed my junior officer to first help me get into the sleeping bags. He rubbed my hands and feet to warm them. He lit the stove far away from me. It took two to three hours for me to feel normal again.
But this wasn’t the hardest thing I had to do in Siachen. It was when I went to the post for the third time to pull out the dead bodies of our soldiers from beneath the snow.
The retired colonel is proud to have been posted at the Siachen post when he was a Major and Commanding Officer. He wishes to be not named for security reasons.
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