Preface

“Some wars are fought with rifles. Others are fought with memory.”

            I never imagined I would become a soldier. I was a young man who wrote poetry, who fell in love, who dreamt in verses and lived in the rhythm of rural Punjab. Life, however, had other plans. A call I had not dialed chose me, and I wore the olive green.

            A Soldier in the Fog is not just a book. It is a lived journey - a fog-wrapped path through the harsh truths of militancy, the pain of separation, the confusion of morality in the field, and the small, flickering moments of laughter and brotherhood that kept us sane in the madness of war.

            Each chapter here is based on actual incidents - some witnessed, some narrated by those I served with, and a few reconstructed from fragmented letters, memories, and emotions that refused to die. There are names changed, places blurred for discretion, but the truth remains intact, as visceral as the scent of cordite after a firefight, as haunting as a letter found in the pocket of a fallen comrade.

            This book attempts to give voice to the often-forgotten soldier - not the glorified figure in marble or medal ceremonies, but the young man who laughs, curses, bleeds, and remembers. The one who sips rum from a dented steel cup on a cold Saturday night, who receives a love letter with trembling hands, who holds a dying friend and wonders if his story will ever be told.

            It also reflects the duality that defines a soldier’s life - between duty and dream, command and conscience, the crackle of gunfire and the silence of inner battles. In these pages, you will meet brave men who fought not only terrorists but the erosion of memory. You will hear the whispers of villages that screamed in silence. And, if you read closely, perhaps you’ll sense the scent of fog - the same fog that covered our boots, blurred our vision, and shielded the truths that now rise like ghosts from memory.

        In my post-retirement years as an Assistant Registrar at Akal University, I began to pen down these stories not as a legacy, but as a confession of survival. To honor the ones who didn’t return. To preserve the laughter, the pain, and the poetry of soldiering.

 This book is for them.

This book is for the soldier whose fog never lifted.

This book is, perhaps, for you.

 Kanwaljit Bhullar

(Retired Soldier, Storyteller, Poet, Survivor)