As I dive deep down into my academy days, the most interesting aspects of training were the practical lessons on Radio Telephony. I fondly recall how we used to sit in an open ground in small groups trying to converse with each other on the army radio sets. Our instructors strictly told us that we couldn’t use our names while talking on the radio sets. It was then that we learnt the use of appointment codes like Tiger (Commanding Officer), Lamb (Second-in-command), Lion (Adjutant) etc. That’s a different matter when I got commissioned in the army, I never found the adjutant as fierce as a lion. He was more of a lamb in front of the CO. I also got fond of the phrase on the radio telephony, ‘Nothing heard; out to you’. I used this phrase liberally whenever something unpalatable was spoken by my seniors. It was mandatory to carry one radio set by the cadets of a squadron (in NDA) or in a company of gentlemen cadets (in IMA) for the endurance runs during camps. It indeed was a heavy piece of equipment. Everyone found talking on radio sets interesting but no one volunteered to carry it during endurance runs as it was quite heavy.
I and my dear friend Raj Kumar (who retired as Colonel; a Shaurya Chakra awardee) ended up carrying most of the time apart from a few other ‘josh boxes’ who volunteered. My tryst with the radio sets continued even after commissioning. With the advent of the spring of the year 2000, my battalion, 27 Punjab had just descended at the most active hotspot, bang on the Line of Control (LC) near Akhnoor. It was the most happening place where small-arms fire and mortar fire were traded almost daily. Trans-LC raids were more of a norm rather than an exception. The then Brigade Major, the Commander’s right-hand man, had to move out on a foreign posting without awaiting relief. The commander frantically looked for an officer who could fit into the BM’s role. In those days, an officer freshly qualified from the staff course was considered to be a ‘know-all guy’ competent to dish out operational wisdom at the drop of a hat. It was sheer happenstance that I had just joined the unit after the prestigious staff course at Wellington. Without batting an eyelid, the commander requested my commanding officer to task me to officiate as the BM.
My primary task was to coordinate the mortar fire assaults on the enemy positions and the UAV flights overlooking the enemy territory recording the damage being caused to Paki bunkers in real-time. Those days, the only source of entertainment for us youngsters was the good old ‘Phillips’ transistor. One fine evening after a gruelling day in the operations room, I turned on my transistor for some well-deserved break trying to tune into the latest Bollywood hits. The song was suddenly interrupted by two men speaking in chaste Pakistani Punjabi punctuated with the choicest of expletives. I soon realized that my transistor had picked up some frequency of Paki army radio set on which two Pakistani soldiers (deployed right opposite us) were conversing in their Paki Punjabi lingo but with a different accent. As their conversation turned interesting with every passing minute, I was tempted to hang on to the conversation. While writing this, I am constrained to exclude the abuses (leaving the Punjabi readers to guess). ‘——Main keha si, 27 Punjab naal panga na layo; Tusi ik bomb sutoge oh tuhade sirr te 10 bomb sutange’ (Don’t irritate 27 Punjab. If you fire one bomb they will fire 10 bombs on your head), said one paki soldier from one post to a soldier located at another post. Another soldier was using the most vulgar Punjabi abuses against his company JCO for rejecting his leave.
I quickly noted down the exact frequency and the radio station which subsequently proved to be a daily source of entertainment as well as a good intelligence input while launching mortar fire-assaults on their locations. It was so satisfying to hear about the damages to the paki bunkers from their own intercepted conversations which were real-time rather than waiting to read the situation reports, we received the next morning from our battalions. As the CO, I had a recording (of my unit’s Baramulla days) of two militant stations talking on the walkie-talkie, ‘15 Punjab wichon nahin cross kana – puthe tange jaonge wapas nahin aoyge’ (Never attempt infiltration through 15 Punjab – you will be hanged upside down and will never come back alive). Another occasion, when I discovered radio interception on the transistor to be a double-edged weapon, was during my tenure with 14 Assam Rifles. My company post was located astride the Indo-Myanmar border at a place called Khanjang-Kuki. The concept of field and peace locations, unlike infantry battalions of regular Army, is not followed in Assam Rifles.
The Assam Rifles personnel remain deployed in the counter-insurgency environment throughout their service careers. Therefore, to compensate them for the long separation from their families, basha accommodation is catered for them to stay with their families for limited durations. It is for officers as well as troops. Being a summer break, my wife, Nidhi and daughters, Akshayata and Siddhita, had joined for a month or so. However, I followed the strict regimen of weekly area domination patrols along with my men, desperately seeking contact with the militants. I strictly observed the security protocols by never divulging the departure and arrival timings of our patrols. Even the soldiers left behind for the security of the post were kept in the dark about our movement plans for fear of their loose talk. Over some time, I found that our ‘langar’ cook was always ready with the steaming cup of ‘Chai’ and ‘Pakodas’ whenever my patrol used to reach the company base, even at odd hours. I could not resist asking him the secret of his knowing our exact arrival timings. He gave me an innocent look. ‘Sir, I always keep contact with the first lady of the company (ie my wife) who in turn keeps a tab on all your movements.
I was dumbfounded. I immediately asked my wife, how she knew about our patrol’s arrival time always. She very innocently said, ‘I keep track through our good old transistor which homes onto your radio set’s frequency on which I always find both your radio operators talking about their real-time locations; and, oh yes, and that particular frequency on our transistor is 48.700 Megahertz’ The very next day, I fired both my radio operators and started changing my radio set frequency twice a day. The most important life lesson, I learnt was always to handle the radio conversations on the radio set myself and never leave it to the chatty radio operators throughout my service life.
