Param Vir: Author’s tale no fiction

You wouldn’t guess from the manner in which Cardozo jumped off the podium on the day of the book launch that this is a man who lost a leg in the battle of Sylhet in the 1971 Bangladesh war. Nor does Cardozo’s slight frame and unassuming demeanour give you a clue that years after that fateful loss, he became the first war-disabled officer in the Indian Army to head an infantry battalion and later an infantry brigade.

‘‘It took me seven years to convince the top brass that I could do it,’’ he says.

It’s with great pride that Cordozo recalls the heliborne operation his battalion undertook during the 1971 war. A heliborne operation involves troops making a parachute or helicopter landing behind enemy lines. ‘‘History has shown,’’ says Cardozo, ‘‘that such troops can last only 48 hours by when they should be met by troops attacking the enemy from the front. In our case, this link-up happened after 10 days.’’

An error on the part of the BBC stood Cardozo and his colleagues in good stead. The Beeb, he tells us, incorrectly announced that ‘‘a brigade of Gorkhas had landed (in East Pakistan, today’s Bangladesh) whereas we were a small battalion. So the Pakistanis didn’t attack us with full force.’’

All these years later, the facts and figures roll off his tongue with ease. ‘‘Ultimately, four brigadiers, two colonels, 296 officers and over 7,000 troops of the Pakistan army surrendered to us. We were actually afraid of how they might react if they realised that we were a battalion of just 465 men,’’ he says.

The Indian side had exhausted their medical supplies when, on December 18, Cardozo stepped on a landmine that blew up his leg. There were no painkillers. The Indian troops did not even have the equipment to amputate the remains of his mangled limb. Cardozo asked his batman to cut off the leg with his khukri, a knife that the Gorkhas carry. When the chap refused, Cardozo cut the leg off himself. It seems cruel to rake up all these painful memories but the war veteran waves aside the beginnings of an apology. ‘‘It’s all right, my dear,’’ he says, ‘‘it was a long time ago.’’

But Cardozo didn’t forget. He hasn’t forgotten that when his wife, Priscilla, saw him at the Pune hospital and he pointed despairingly to his leg, she said: ‘‘Cool it, Ian. I’m just glad you’re alive.’’

He has not forgotten the pain of his loss, the struggle that followed, the people who stood by him then, and the ones who need him now. ‘‘Please,’’ he says earnestly, ‘‘will you mention in your article that I want to thank Lt General A M Vohra, the vice-chief in 1972, who gave me a break? He was impressed with how much I could do on my feet and put my case to the chief.’’

Now retired, Cardozo works with the Spastics Society of Northern India in Delhi. Suneet, the eldest of his three sons, has followed him into the Army, and also into the Fith Gorkha Rifles. Cardozo senior plays squash in his free time. And last year, he won two silver medals in the National Swimming Championship for the Disabled.

‘‘When I wanted my own battalion after the 1971 war, there was no precedent for a disabled officer heading a battalion,’’ he says. ‘‘Today, there is no limit to how high a person can rise in the Army with a disability, but that’s only in the case of the war wounded. The Army also needs to look at those who are disabled in other circumstances.’’

There’s a poem that Cardozo wrote for this book. It begins like this: ‘‘I am the unknown soldier, forgotten and ignored/When once the war is over and peace and quiet assured …’’ Well at least this unknown soldier has a face we can now place.