How Fateh took Gorkhas for a ride

Brig Sandeep Thapar

My battalion received relief orders and we had to move to Pathankot and a Gorkha (GR) battalion would replace us at Eastern Ladakh. There are several methods adopted for relief of units in stations. The most common one is that units travel from one sector to another with the minimum equipment and take over bulk of the equipment from the unit they are relieving, which in turn takes it from the unit it relieves in its new location. The system is cost-effective, but it has some negatives. During such takeovers, the unit taking over equipment (weapons, ammunition, vehicles, war-like stores) always has the upper hand. 

So, preparations started as the relieving unit was GR. Many don’t know that GR troops go by the book, officious right down to full stop and commas. If the rules say the water bottle cap should be attached to it with a string, it better be. Separate bottle and cap will not be accepted. Or if the tyre tube is required to be capped (to prevent leakage), no amount of justification — that item is available in market for Rs 50 to a dozen — will help.

The GR unit arrived under their second-in-command, the 2IC. Normally, takeover (of equipment) takes place under the supervision of 2ICs. I was responsible for my unit. The process commenced. Both unit NCO representatives met and examined the items to be taken over. Soon, problems started to arise. My senior JCO told me that saab, inhanda kuch karna paega (we’ll have to sort them out). I reassured him, “Sab theek ho jaega, saab.” But tension was building up. One morning, Havildar Fateh Singh told me, “Saab jee, they are insisting on checking functioning of each radio set!” “That’s fair,” I said, hope all sets are in working condition? “No saab, their guy is adamant that he will check all frequencies of each radio set!”

That was irritating. Normally, if the radio set was working on one frequency, it was assumed that it would function on all. Radio set PRC 25, the set in question (a portable radio), had 900 possible frequency combinations. A total of 45 such sets were to be handed over and checking each set over the entire range of frequencies was a daunting and avoidable task. But no requests helped, even their 2IC was adamant. So, we had to go through the laborious process and one evening, I got the report that the radio sets had been handed over. “Good and well done!” I messaged my team. The next morning, an agitated Gorkha 2IC stormed into my office and said, “Sir, this is unfair! Faulty radio sets have been handed over to us.” “But didn’t you guys check all of them,” I asked. “We did. They were working last night, but aren't now.” All my pent-up irritation dictated my response, “That’s not our responsibility, you checked before taking over, didn't you?” But since a lot of stuff was still to be handed over, I promised to go into details. He left and I called Fateh.

I asked Fateh that why the radio set was not working. With a smile of a cat which has recently lapped up a bowl full of cream, Fateh answered, “Saab, the problem was not in the radio set, the problem was in the handsets” (each PRC set is authorised a handset, like a telephone handset of yore with a “push-to-talk” bar; these handsets are attached to the radio set for talking). “What problem”, I asked. “Saab, we had only two handsets in working condition, the rest 43 were faulty. So, I used the two “correct” handsets to get the frequencies of all 45 sets validated,” Fateh replied. How the Gorkhas (with only two functional radio sets) got back at us is another story.