Four Miles to Freedom , livre ebook

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80 pages

English

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When Flight Lieutenant Dilip Parulkar was shot down over Pakistan on 10 December 1971, he quickly turned that catastrophe into the greatest adventure of his life. On 13 August 1972, Parulkar, along with Malvinder Singh Grewal and Harish Sinhji, escaped from a POW camp in Rawalpindi. Four Miles to Freedom is their story. Based on interviews with eight Indian fighter pilots who helped prepare the escape and the two who escaped, as well as research into other sources, Four Miles is also the moving, sometimes amusing, account of how twelve fighter pilots from different ranks and backgrounds coped with deprivation, forced intimacy, and the pervasive uncertainty of a year in captivity, and how they came together to support Parulkar's courageous escape plan.

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Publié par	Random House Publishers India Pvt. Ltd.
Date de parution	04 décembre 2013
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9788184005073
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0480€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Published by Random House India in 2013
Copyright Faith Johnston 2013
Random House Publishers India Private Limited Windsor IT Park, 7th Floor, Tower-B A-1, Sector-125, Noida-201301, UP
Random House Group Limited 20 Vauxhall Bridge Road London SW1V 2SA United Kingdom
This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author s and publisher s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
EPUB ISBN 9788184005073
For Manbir and for all those who suffered loss or separation because of the 1971 War
Contents
Prologue
Map of Northwestern India and Pakistan
Indian Air Force POWs in Pakistan: December 1971
Rawalpindi (Midnight, 12 August 1972)
Near Jullundur (10 December 1971)
Capture
Rawalpindi (13 August 1972)
Christmas Day (1971)
Settling In
Peshawar (13 August 1972)
The Map
Waiting
On the Road to Jamrud (13 August)
False Start
Grewal
Scrounging
Welcome to Khyber (13 August)
The Simla Conference
The Wall
Landi Kotal
The Tehsildar
Aftermath
Lyallpur
Home
Epilogue
Timeline: Bangladesh War of Independence and Indo-Pakistan War 1971
Bibliography
Acknowledgements
Prologue
Two years ago I sat in Dilip Parulkar s spacious living room in Pune, listening. Dilip was holding a tiny recorder in one hand, leaning forward in a low carved chair. It was late morning and he had just come in from tennis. Still wearing his tennis shorts and jacket, this sturdy man with his square, handsome face and ready smile had now turned his energy to another task. He was starting to tell me the story of how he and two other airmen escaped from a POW camp in Pakistan. I found it strange that he didn t begin at the beginning; instead he dove into the tale very near its end.
We were sitting on the roadside, over a culvert, wondering whether to hide. But the matter was not immediately urgent, he said, for though it was broad daylight, there seemed to be no one else for miles around. The landscape on the approach to the Khyber Pass was barren and stony. When they looked down the road they could see the hills that marked the beginning of the pass to Afghanistan (and safety), but for miles around them, the land was almost flat. The only habitations visible were a few walled enclaves in the distance. Dilip wasn t sure if they were small villages or clan compounds.
So there we were, the three of us, taking a breather, thinking we might soon scoot down the embankment and into the culvert and spend the day hiding there, he went on. Then, in the distance, I saw someone riding across the field on a bicycle. The bicycle was heading straight for us so all we could do was wait as it approached. Obviously it was too late to hide.
It was a boy in his teens and a very friendly fellow, laughs Dilip. Curious, too. He wanted to know who we were and where we were from. I tried asking him a few questions, but nothing could divert him for long.
As a foreigner living in India, I had no trouble imagining this boy and his barrage of questions. India, like Pakistan, is full of gregarious young people who love to question strangers. I meet them every time I step out my door.
The conversation ended when the boy walked onto the road and flagged down a bus, not for himself but for his new friends. He was very concerned. Here were three men returning to their native country after a long absence-men who didn t know the lay of the land at all. You can t walk all the way to Landi Kotal, he told them. It is much too far to go on foot.
Thus three Indian pilots who had planned to hide in a culvert until sunset, ended up making their way up a winding road, then through a long narrow gorge to the summit of the Khyber Pass, in broad daylight on the roof of a bus.
After my introduction to a story that Dilip had told many times over the last forty years, but had never written down, I knew we needed to go back and start again, at the beginning. And I knew the effort would be worth my while. I loved Dilip s humour and his sense of the absurd. This would not be a stuffy, pompous story of battles fought and demons conquered. In fact demons would be in rather short supply in this story. Instead, it would be the tale of a man who had a dream he almost realized, told in a string of vivid, unpredictable moments, like life itself.
Faith Johnston
September 2013
Northwestern India and Pakistan

Disclaimer: Other than the official Indian boundaries depicted on the map, some boundaries are as per author s own findings and study. The author and publisher do not claim them to be official or legal boundaries. They are for illustrative purposes.
Indian Air Force POWs in Pakistan
(December 1971)
Wing Commander B.A. Coelho, 39
Squadron Leader D.S. Jafa, 37 (on 25 December)
Squadron Leader A.V. Kamat, 33
Flight Lieutenant J.L. Bhargava, 29
Flight Lieutenant Tejwant Singh, 29
Flight Lieutenant D.K. Parulkar, 29
Flight Lieutenant M.S. Grewal, 29
Flight Lieutenant Harish Sinhji, 26
Flight Lieutenant A. V. Pethia, 28
Flying Officer V.S. Chati, 25
Flying Officer K.C. Kuruvilla, 26
Flying Officer H.N.D. Mulla-Feroze, 27 (on 5 December)

Harish Sinhji s sketch in P.C. Lal s My Years With the IAF , Courtesy of Lancer International, 1986, 2008, p. 353.
Rawalpindi
(Midnight, 12 August 1972)
This time the plan worked. The final layer of plaster gave way. The three men crawled out and waited by the wall. When it seemed safe they dashed across the narrow alleyway to the back wall of the next cell block. The storm hadn t broken, but a strong wind fired dust and sand onto their faces. As for the watchman in the adjoining compound, there he was, sitting on his charpoy, perilously close. But when the men took a closer look at him, they realized he had put a blanket over his head!
The prisoners made their way along the back wall of the cell block towards the outer wall. They looked over the wall and down the lane to Mall Road, and were surprised to see a large crowd of people streaming past. Obviously a late show at the cinema had just let out. They decided to wait a few minutes.
As the three men squatted between the rear wall of the cell block and the hut in the recruiting compound, the wind grew fiercer by the moment and it started to rain. In no time the watchman tore the blanket from his head and made a dash for the recruiting centre verandah, carrying both blanket and charpoy. As soon as he had settled there, prone now, with the blanket over his head once more, the prisoners scaled the five-foot wall with no trouble.
By this time the theatre crowd had thinned out. Following Chati s directions, they turned left on Mall Road and kept walking, as if they, too, had come from a late show.
Soon it was pouring, but nothing could dampen their spirits. They were well aware that the stormy weather, first wind, then rain, was the perfect cover for their departure. It was just what they had hoped for.
Freedom! exclaimed the ebullient Sinhji as they trudged down Mall Road. His thick black hair was drenched and water was pouring as if from a spout down his boyish face, catching in his long eyelashes.
Not yet, replied Grewal with his usual caution. With his height and beard and close cropped head, he hoped to pass for a Pathan. Dilip walked alongside. He too had grown a beard for the occasion and had even had a special suit tailored by a camp attendant. Now the green salwar kurta he d had made especially for this night was clinging to him like plastic wrap.
But Sinhji was right. For the moment, they were indeed free. It was only a matter of staying free. If everything went well, the alarm would not be raised until morning. That gave them seven or eight hours before anyone started looking for them. And should they be questioned, they had their stories ready. They had decided they would all pose as Christians for they knew little of Islamic prayers and rituals and their ignorance would give them away immediately. Though none of them was actually Christian, each had attended schools with Christians and served in the air force with them, and they knew that Pakistan, too, had a number of Christians in its air force.
As for their names, Dilip and Grewal were LACs Phillip Peters and Ali Ameer, based at PAF station, Lahore. Sinhji was Harold Jacob, an Anglo-Pakistani drummer from Hyderabad in Sind. He had met the other two in Lahore during a recent gig at La Bella Hotel. All this was made up and could easily crumble under questioning. They had no idea if there really was a hotel called La Bella in Lahore, and though Grewal had once had a Christian friend whose name was Ali Ameer, it was hardly a Christian name.
Remember, said Dilip, no rough stuff. That had been their pledge from the beginning. They were honourable men, bent on a heroic task. Even if cornered, and a simple crack on the head could get them out of a tight spot, they would not take any violent action. They were going to use their wits, and only their wits.
Near Jullundur
(10 December 1971)
That morning Flight Lieutenant Dilip Parulkar took off in formation from Adampur, an Indian Air Force (IAF) base near Jullundur in the Punjab plains of northwestern India. It was the sixth day of the Indo-Pakistan War and Dilip s tenth sortie. This time, instead of providing support for the Indian Army by hitting convoys of Pakistani tanks and transport vehicles, his target was a radar station east of Lahore. The station was proving troublesome and they had been ordered to take it out.
Like all fighter pilots, Dilip had been preparing for war his whole career. In the 1965 War with Pakistan he