Nehru-jacket General

In 1960, to my great surprise I was posted to the Quarter Master General’s Branch at Army HQ. I was not happy about this but had no option. The all-powerful QMG, Lt. Gen. B.M. Kaul, desired that I report immediately.

When I did, he told me he had specially selected me to work as his personal staff officer as also with the new operational logistics cell of three officers, including me. This cell is now a large Directorate of Logistics under a general officer.
One day, when I was in his room, he received a telephone call about an Air Force Dakota on a supply mission in Nagaland being shot down and the pilots taken prisoner by Naga insurgents. He rang up Nehru and said he was immediately going there. He asked for an IAF plane to be positioned at Palam at once and told me to inform the Chief’s Secretariat that the QMG was going to Nagaland to conduct operations! The QMG deals with administration and does not conduct operations which is the responsibility of the General Staff. Everyone acquiesced. I watched Kaul at work from close quarters. He was a workaholic and had tremendous drive, achieving much in organising logistics support. He was ambitious but lacked strategic vision. After becoming Chief he wanted to be Prime Minister thereafter. The book After Nehru Who?, published then, mentioned him as a possible successor. More than half his time he devoted to work not connected with his duties as QMG. Yet he did not neglect his duties. He laid the foundation for the Directorate of Logistics. For the first time administrative instructions for the three operational commands spelt out logistical plans.
In the East, Kaul worked on improving administrative infrastructure to support large-scale operations. There was no bridge over the Brahmaputra. He wanted the Army to hold stocks north of the river. A vast jungle area of 1,000 acres was acquired at Narangi, north of Guwahati, and cleared. Work on miles of internal roads started. Several thousand tons of materiel were earmarked for this maintenance area. The 200-mile road from the foothills to Tawang via Bomdila had to be improved. There was no road for the 100 miles from Tawang to the border. Work started in 1960 but was suspended in the monsoon. Although much progress was made, when the shooting war started in 1962, it was incomplete.
Gen. Thimayya was approaching retirement in late 1961. He recommended Lt. Gen. Thorat to succeed him and Lt. Gen. Verma appointed CGS. Kaul ensured this was not accepted. Thapar became the Army Chief and Kaul took over as CGS. Kaul lacked strategic and tactical ability. He was a poor commander in battle. He promoted factionalism to further personal ambition and projected himself as a nationalist, taking to wearing buttoned-up coats when almost all wore lounge suits. He had a court of inquiry organised against Sam Manekshaw for anti-national activities. The inquiry exonerated Manekshaw. Thorat had a sound plan for operations against China. Small posts near the border to give early warning of the enemy’s advance, tactically sited delaying posts to delay his advance and strong, well-prepared defences to defeat the enemy, the latter to be at road heads close by for administrative purposes. The enemy’s force would have more than 100 miles of mountainous track behind him and would be at a great administrative handicap. Kaul discarded Thorat’s plan and chose Forward Policy, saying not an inch of Indian territory would be surrendered. A totally ill-prepared and ill-provided brigade was deployed on the indefensible Namka Chu river line against the enemy on the dominating Thagla ridge. It got decimated by the Chinese in the first couple of days. After three weeks, the Chinese contacted our strong defensive position on the dominating Sela heights and sent a force bypassing Sela to the rear. The divisional commander panicked and sought permission to withdraw. The Army Chief and Army commander were present at Tezpur but did not intervene, waiting for Kaul to return from Walong Sector. When Kaul returned in the evening he ultimately gave permission to withdraw. The divisional commander conducted a disorganised withdrawal that night, without putting up a fight, and the withdrawal became a complete rout. By the 19th the Chinese reached the foothills and declared a unilateral ceasefire. The higher military leadership had totally failed. Had the Army Chief taken up matters with the PM to ensure that the Thorat plan was not shelved, and protested against the forward policy, given orders to the divisional commander to hold at all costs, the rout would have not taken place. After the war, when Thorat met Nehru and told him about his plan, he enquired why he had not been informed about the plan before the war. V.K. Krishna Menon, advocating Forward Policy, had deliberately failed to do so.
Further, had the then Air Chief gone to the PM to make offensive use of our air power when, unlike the Chinese, we had developed airfields close to the area of battle — though fewer in number we had an edge in quality of our combat aircraft. The Chinese lacked the capability to bomb our cities. Our Air Force could have inflicted crippling losses on the Chinese attacking forces and boosted the morale of our soldiers on the ground. Destiny willed otherwise. Nehru was shattered. He was desperately appealing for offensive support from the US Air Force. Churchill had faced a greater disaster after Dunkirk when the British Expeditionary Force had been destroyed and Britain was bereft of allies. In our case the bulk of our field Army was intact and we had friends to help us. Relations between Soviet Russia and China were breaking. With the Himalayan passes closing due to snow in winter the Chinese lacked heavy weaponry and we had an edge. After Dunkirk, Churchill had given a famous speech in Parliament rallying his country — “...We shall fight on the beaches... we shall never surrender.” Nehru could only say his heart went out to the people of Assam.
After the war, I was sent to study the battlefield areas for updating our mountain warfare training doctrine. I found that our experience in the Burma jungles was relevant. Strong defensive positions must not be abandoned when enemy infiltration cuts off surface communications. Defensive positions can be air-maintained. More casualties are suffered in withdrawal, which tends to become a rout, than in fighting from prepared defences. We updated our training doctrine accordingly. I also interacted with officers who had participated in the recent operations. There were three main reasons for our debacle. These were mismatch between foreign and defence policies, the military isolated from the decision-making process and Army officers having lost their elan. There is now better interaction between defence and foreign policy but this needs to be institutionalised. As for defence preparedness, unlike the Chinese, we have been lackadaisical. The recent decision to cancel the raising of a mountain corps during the Chinese defence minister’s visit is incredible.

(This concludes a two-part series)

The author, a retired lieutenant-general, was Vice-Chief of Army Staff and has served as governor of Assam and Jammu and Kashmir