Forgotten Raid on Chachro, 1971
Courtesy: Facebook
This post is dedicated to the daring #Chachro Raid that was carried out by our daredevil #Paratroopers in the 1971 Indo-Pakistan war on the Western front. It was a suicide mission but the young #commando Battalion showed what the might of the Indian Army can be! Till this day, the Chachro raid has remained a hallmark of military operations that even the elite Special Forces of the world including the #SAS studies about till this day.
Between 5th to 7th December, 1971, the Chachro Raid was executed by the bravest of the brave—the 10 Parachute Regiment, led by the legendary commander Lieutenant Colonel #Bhawani Singh—the former Maharaja of #Jaipur. The commandos who took part in this ferocious operation were all Indian #Army para commandos, who were trained in repairing automobiles and had inducted Sodha Rajputs in their ranks for navigation—all who were daredevils of their own creed.
Chachro was pretty deep inside enemy territory—80 kilometers inside the territory of Pakistan and the army found this newly formed commando Battalion to be entrusting enough to make this impossible raid.
And they would keep their word!
The Battalion was a pretty new one, splitting up from the 9 Para in 1967, and led by this legendary Colonel, the battalion was ordered to move into Chachro and destroy the Pakistani Army’s crucial supply lines and create confusion behind enemy lines.
The terrain was horrible—with the merciless desert ahead of the commandos, and all the commandos had were their gear and their vehicles alongside a fiery morale that the Pakistani army had already lost! The jeeps were loaded up with jerrycans of rations, water, ammunition, kit alongside arming every single one of them with LMGs and MMGs for going trigger happy on the Pakistani army. The jeeps were exclusively modified in Auto shops to mount machine guns and their turrets keeping in mind the ease of use!
The Battalion was divided into 2 teams—Alpha and Charlie and before this operation, the lads were already trained pretty well in Desert warfare, earning the nickname as “Desert Scorpions”. The lads had geared up 4 days ago the raid had actually begun and loading up their kit on small jeeps—they set off for Chachro. Like the WW2 British Long Range Desert Group, the lads in convoys crossed the Indian border through the merciless desert and after entering Pakistan, they realized how the route was slowly turning up more merciless with time!
2nd Lieutenant Abraham Chacko—a Para commando in the operation himself, still remembers how the silencers of the jeeps were screaming in the horrible terrain, making the convoy sound like a shrieking tank battalion charging through the desert! Their stealth was destroyed, and their cover was actually on the verge of being blown!
But their cover didn’t blow, because their cover was actually magnified! The sound of the silencers were so loud that it echoed and reached great distances in the empty desert, and hearing them—the enemy outposts abandoned and fled, thinking that they might be indeed a tank battalion closing in on them from India!
Before entering Chachro , at 7am, on the morning of 5th December—the first Pakistani round was fired on the Para commando at the Pakistani position at Kita. Kita was some 70 kilometers inside enemy territory—just ahead of Chachro and at night, the lads disembarked from their jeeps and jongas and took defensive positions around with a plan to take out the Kita base!
A plan, no less than suicide!
They rounded up one of their jeeps and saluting the others, Naik Nihal Singh—the driver of the #jeep, and charged off towards the enemy base, blasting caps with his mounted #LMG like crazy, knocking down several of the enemy soldiers who were still unprepared and unawares!
And at the same time, the other Paras took cover and set up 18 Light Machine gun positions to cover the entire Kita Base from suitable vantage points!
As the sudden LMG spray shook the enemy, the Pakistani soldiers came out front to take down the jeep, but were just mowed down by the spray of 18 LMGs all around the base! As bodies rolled down, blood o the enemy drenched the sand while the survivors managed to take some cover and return back some fire!
But the Paras were already at a far better vantage point, covering the base from the top of the sand dunes. It took a huge expenditure of ammunition and rolling of more enemy corpses for the next few hours till the surviving enemy troops left their positions and fled for their lives!
Not a single Para was wounded or killed here, while the base was filled with corpses of the enemy!
As Kita was cleared, the Paras quickly sent off a recon patrol to clear out the route towards their main objective—into the Pakistani town of Chachro. The enemy HQ at Chachro had a Wing Headquarters of the Pakistani Rangers—and the Alpha Team of the Battalion had decided to take them, alongside providing cover and fire support for the Charlie team who would do the main dance at the party. Along with that, the Battalion realized that Chachro town itself still had loads of civilians and at any cost, could they never afford innocent civilians to get hurt in the incoming battle—no matter whether they were the enemy or not!
Not a similar behavior like the Pakistani army! Our army has the decency to never extend that courtesy unlike the enemy.
And by 4am at the night of 7th December, the recon patrol gave the green light to commence the attack on Chachro.
The dawn at Chachro was filled with gunfire as Pakistani soldiers screamed as they fell to their deaths or were blown off to bits! The Rangers HQ was destroyed, supply dumps were blown off and the Paratroopers just raged a dance of death with a hail of fire and explosions in the town. The Pakistani civilians stayed inside their homes as their homes shook from the shock of explosions. Empty bullet cases scattered all around on the streets, while smoke plummeted into the skies from the fires of the burning Chachro base and supply dumps.
By the morning of the 7th, the town of Chachro was in Indian hands, with its base blown to the Stone Age. Here, excluding the number of Pakistani soldiers who had fled, the Paras let 17 Pakistani soldiers as KIA, ending up with 12 POWs!
And not a single Indian soldier ended up as a casualty—not even wounded in action! And so were the Pakistani civilians left unharmed and untouched!
But the Paras had more work to do. Chachro Offensive was just half of their plans, and they had 4 more objectives to secure. So, the Charlie team of the Battalion exfiltrated out from the area after the 20 Rajput came in to relieve them, while the Alpha team moved in to go for the further offensives. They were—
1) Capture of Virawah—Virawah fell after the capture of a small Pakistani observation post by Lieutenant Choudhary and his recon platoon. The platoon opened up mortars, grenads and small arms fire with 12 Light Machine guns that suppressed the Rangers inside. Then the commandos approached the post and the Rangers just fled in panic! Neither the enemy nor our boys fell here!
Virawah fell to the 10 Para.
2) Nagarpakar—On the first light of 8th December, the Paras attacked the Nagarparkar’s Tehsil HQ, and here, the enemy reacted in the same way. Nagarparkar fell without much of a fight.
3) Islamkot—This offensive was led by the Alpha Group. There was a possibility of the presence of an ammunition dump in Islamkot and the Alpha Group, after their rest, entered Pakistan back again on 16 December, by 7pm at night. Then, led by Captain Das, the gents moved up to the enemy camp at Islamkot, only to find it to have been abandoned!
4) Lunio Ambush—While coming back from handing over Islamkot to the relieving Indian army troops, Captain Das and his team noticed sand blowing off in the distance behind them—followed by a convoy of vehicles. They realized that Indian army vehicles couldn’t be here right now—so they fanned out and prepared the welcome mat for the enemy.
Like before, machine guns were set up—with itchy trigger fingers of the Paras waiting for the hunt.
And as the Pakistani convoy came under their range, the Paras mowed them down! The battle didn’t last long because in the first few seconds, some 18-20 of the Pakistani soldiers were chopped down, while the rest just raised their hands, willing to surrender!
This was one of the first surgical operations of its kind conducted by the Indian Army. For this operation, the beloved #Tiger”—Lieutenant Colonel Bhawani was awarded the #MahaVirChakra for his extraordinary leadership and gallantry—leading men from the front, being shot at alongside them!
The gents here captured a huge amount of Pakistani hardware. They are—
1) .30 Medium #MachineGun with tripod—1
2) British .303 Rifles—26
3) British .303 #LightMachineGun—1
4) Sten submachine gun—1
5) Pistols—2
6) .303 ammunition—10,000
7) Rifle clips and small arms magazines—44
8) #Bayonets—20
9) Double-barrel shotgun—1
10) Hand #grenades—3
My salutes to the Maroon creed and Lieutenant Colonel Bhawani Singh
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