“In
war, even victory tastes of ash.”
The adrenaline of that encounter,
where the man in the skull cap turned out to be death in disguise, had barely
faded. But as the sun dipped behind the pine ridges and the shadows stretched
long across the Devsar camp, the truth came crashing in - we had won the
gunfight, but lost three of our own. It was a hollow kind of victory, the sort
that made men stare at the ceiling long after lights out. The bodies were being
prepared to be sent home, wrapped in the tricolor, each a symbol of duty
fulfilled and a future cut short. What remained were their dreams, half-spoken,
like Lian’s smile as he had said he didn’t want to be left behind. Or the young
Bihari’s innocent promise - “Baap ke liye
cement ka ghar bana ke jaayenge.” In the cement house of memories,
loneliness had taken its permanent place.
Later when the morning sun had
barely begun its ascent, casting a dim golden glow over the regimental camp,
when the convoy carrying the bodies of our fallen comrades began its journey
home. Wrapped in the tricolor, their silent forms lay in the rear of the
vehicles, bound for the villages where families awaited news they never wished
to receive. There was a heaviness in the air, a sorrow so thick that even the
usually unshakable soldiers wore expressions of grief as they stood in
formation, offering their final salutes.
Among them was the young soldier
from Bihar, who had barely served four months with us. A recruit from the Bihar
Regiment, he had carried an infectious energy, his eyes always gleaming with
dreams. His village, nestled in the heart of the state, was home to his aging
parents who had pinned all their hopes on him. The team that accompanied his
body to his village returned with a story that weighed upon us all.
His father, a frail man with sunken
eyes and a posture that spoke of years of toil, had greeted them with a vacant
look, his hands trembling as he reached out to touch his son's lifeless frame.
"He promised to build our home,"
he murmured, his voice breaking. "A
house with cemented walls... He told me this when he left last time. He said on
his next long leave, he would make sure we would not have to sleep under a
leaking roof anymore."
The old man’s words lingered,
slicing through the silence that followed. The entire village had gathered,
their heads bowed, their eyes damp. His mother had stood at the threshold of
their mud-walled hut, too grief-stricken to move, her wails piercing the air as
she called out her son’s name over and over again. For them, he had been the
sole provider, their pillar of hope. And now, that hope lay still beneath the
folds of the flag he had so proudly served. The future of his family had been
swallowed by the dark void of loss.
The second fallen hero, PT Lian, was
from the Gorkha Regiment. He had returned just the previous evening after a
twenty-day leave, carrying with him the scent of home, the warmth of his loved
ones still fresh in his heart. He had been advised by his senior to rest that
day, to recover from the lingering daze of his holidays, but he had refused.
"Sir, I will feel lonely in the
barracks," he had said with a small smile. "Let me go with the team."
Those words now echoed painfully in
our memories, a testament to his spirit, his dedication. When the convoy
carrying his body reached Bona Devsar, his elder brother, a soldier serving in
the Border Security Force at Anantnag, was waiting. He stood motionless as his
younger brother was laid to rest on a high, flattened land, his final resting
place chosen with the honor and dignity befitting a warrior.
The burial was attended by all
ranks, each soldier standing in solemn respect. The crisp snap of the flag
being folded, the muffled sound of boots shifting on the soft earth, and the
final salute, each moment was heavy with unspoken words. His brother stepped
forward, his face a mask of grief and pride, and placed a handful of soil over
his sibling’s grave. No tears fell from his eyes, but his hands trembled as he
whispered a final goodbye.
As I watched, my mind drifted to the
words of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, words I had once read but never
felt so deeply before: “In war, whichever
side may call itself the victor, there are no winners, but all are losers.”
That truth had never rung louder
than it did in that moment. The battlefield had taken three of our own, three
men who had walked among us, shared our laughter, our fears, our dreams. Their
families had lost sons, brothers, protectors. We had lost friends, comrades.
And though the mission had been successful, the price we had paid could never
be measured in victories.
That night, as we sat in silence,
staring at the flickering lanterns in our barracks, we knew that the war was
not just fought with bullets and strategy - it was fought with lives, with the
sacrifices of men whose stories would live on in the hearts of those they left
behind. And as we prepared for the battles yet to come, we carried their
memories with us, as a reminder of the true cost of war.
“We
won that day - but in every silence that followed, we felt the void left by
those who didn’t return.”
But even as we mourned our dead and
honored their stories, a darker question festered like an open wound in our
minds: who were these boys on
the other side of the barrel?
The ones who lay dead in the
orchards or surrendered with dazed, empty expressions - were they monsters,
murderers, or just misled youth with no light left in their eyes? We had fought
them, killed them, arrested them, but we rarely got a chance to understand what
had hollowed them out from within.
What factory of hate turned a
shepherd’s son or a bright-eyed boy from Rawalpindi or Muzaffarabad into a
mindless militant with explosives tied to his chest and slogans etched into his
mind like scars?
As we cleaned our weapons and
prepared for another patrol, I found myself haunted less by the sound of
gunfire, and more by the echo of silence in their eyes - as if their souls had
left long before the bullets hit. That night, I began to understand: the war
wasn’t just outside our walls. It was being manufactured deep within them.
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