DEATH VALLEY, THE BERET MATTERS

   DEATH VALLEY, THE BERET MATTERS
Nishit Dholabhai

 

Gauchar, June 27: There is something surreal about sitting by a helipad in the midst of death  and disaster and chatting about a Hollywood film. But here, among the para-commandos and the rescuers with whom I had trekked from  Jungle Chatti on the Kedarnath route, it offered a peek into the minds of the men who  were rescuers risking their own lives.   A day after that trek, these men had gone off again, slithering down from helicopters  into a gorge and on a mountainside in search of survivors and then bringing back the  bodies of the 20 men killed in the Mi-17 V5 crash.   Last week, led by their commanding officer, the bandana-strapped Colonel Sandip  Chatterjee, the men of the 6 and 7 Paras, along with rescuers from the National Disaster  Response Force (NDRF), had lopped off some trees, uprooted electricity poles and  planted explosives in the jagged rocks and blasted them to hew a helipad out of nowhere. Within hours, they also had a campsite, complete with a communications area and a kitchen. That little station in “Death Valley” had made it possible for the Army Aviation Corps’  Cheetah helicopters to land and evacuate the stranded people in Jungle Chatti over the  weekend. Mixed teams of 6, 7 and 9 Paras were dropped into the gorges here at different  spots on June 21 to extricate survivors.   Sitting by that helipad, where the stench of death mingled with the aroma of freshly brewed  tea on Sunday evening, Major Bhadoria told Captain Rajendra Panchal and the soldiers  around them the story of the blockbuster, A Bridge Too Far.“So now you understand the  value of your maroon beret?” he asked. “It is from the colour of blood.” Paratroopers and  Special Forces wear maroon berets.   Job done, we set off towards Gaurikund, a journey of just 2.5km that took nearly five  hours. The men wore T-shirts with “Airborne” embossed on them.They had had biscuits  to go with the tea as the major narrated scenes from A Bridge Too Far, starring a host of  stars such as Laurence Olivier, Anthony Hopkins, Sean Connery and Robert Redford,  which tells the story of a failed Allied attempt to break through German lines and seize  bridges during World War II. A scene in the film shows a British soldier being shot dead  by a sniper after retrieving an air-dropped container under enemy fire. When the soldier  falls, the container splits open to reveal berets.   The Paras had lived up to that beret’s spirit with daredevil rescue missions 10,000 feet  down the Kedarnath gorge a few days ago. They would again live up to it days later —  on Wednesday — to retrieve the bodies of fellow IAF, ITBP and NDRF personnel who  were in the crashed Mi-17 V5.   These Special Forces of the army had been summoned on June 20 to Dehradun. They slid  down the ropes from choppers into the Gorge of Devastation. Rescue over, evacuation was  a problem. They made that helipad in a day.An engineer surveyed the spot, wired explosives  to blow off rocks and electricity poles and cleared the ground to let Cheetahs and Chetaks  land on what NDRF commandant Jaideep Singh had thought was an “impossible place to  land”. “Be our guest,” a smiling Bhadoria had said shortly afterwards.   In the two days that we were there and through the trek we had jumped over maggot- infested bodies of people who had tried — and failed — to clamber up slopes to escape  the flood. Clothes, blankets, unused food packets and walking sticks littered the place. One night, over a bowl of khichri, Captain Panchal recalled how he had found a 14-year- old from Lucknow, who had fallen down in a landslide.   When Panchal glided down the rope from a helicopter, he found the boy digging into the  mud. “My mother and sister have gone to fetch water,” the teenager told him, glassy-eyed.  “Call them,” the boy said. Panchal had seen this before among survivors in a state of shock  who seemed as if they were beyond pain.   “Post-traumatic stress disorder,” explained the unit’s para-commando doctor, Ritish Goyal.  The boy did not know it then — his mother and sister, who got separated from him, had  been rescued by another team. The family was reunited later.   The night the captain was retelling the boy’s trauma, the weatherman had forecast heavy  rain. But the evacuation of Jungle Chatti was complete.   Next morning, equipped with ropes, carabiners (a metal loop or safety coupling used by  climbers) and wireless sets, a team was already on the way to Rambada searching for  survivors who may have climbed up the heights. As the rains lashed, L. Sunder Meetei  of the NDRF contacted commandant Singh, who had left a day earlier, to seek permission  to fall back as the risks of a landslide increased every minute. “Sir, bahut barish hone wala hai, phir nikal nahin payenge (it’s going to rain heavily, we  won’t be able to move if we do not now),” Meetei said as the wireless crackled. The  commandant flashed the green light.   Behind Meetei, the Paras’ Havildar Chand Khan offered a popular soft drink as we  prepared to embark on the treacherous return journey, first to Bhairon Mandir and onward  to Gaurikund. “Darr ke aage jeet hai,” said Khan, quoting from a tele-commercial. He  showed the thread strung around his wrist by a unit priest or maulana. “Hamare wahan to   MMGC (Mandir Masjid Gurdwara Church) hai, to hausle rakkho,” he laughed, breaking  into a Hindi film song.   Minutes later, a joint team of grey-uniformed NDRF, camouflaged Paras and a rag-tag  group of five civilians began the walk. It was a steep climb up a hill. I wonder now if that  was the hill on which the V5 crashed.Then it was time for a steep climb downhill. I slipped. “Sir, rope mat chhoriye, rope pakar ke rakkho,” the havildar, who was assigned to be my  buddy, and Goyal, the doctor, chorused. The army works in twos, almost always.It was a  50-foot drop. I did what they told me — held on to the rope and somehow found  a foothold.   The road from Gaurikund to Kedarnath has caved in at many places. Special Forces, the  NDRF and mountaineers like Avadhesh Bhatt from Dehradun created alternative routes  and accompanied over 150 pilgrims. The soldiers tied ropes to trees and rocks that rose  6,500 feet above the river that cut through the continuous gorge.The last stretch just  before Gaurikund involves scaling a cliff. Gaurikund is a ghost village, devastated by the  raging river. The Paras walked away.   The NDRF accompanied this correspondent on a 6km walk to Sonprayag.  Just before  Sonprayag, we came across a devastated mountain and an NDRF team blew a whistle —  rocks were falling. The rocks missed us.   Here, where the Son river merges into the Mandakini, the riverbed has risen by 25 metres.  Truck tyres were visible. The vehicle, swept in by a strong current, was buried beneath the  boulders.Then we saw an NDRF group waiting for us and a makeshift camp, near the  point from where the road had been devoured.There was tea at the NDRF langar.