25 years of Kargil war: The war that had been going on for the past three days on the peaks of Tololing had now stopped. The brave soldiers of Rajputana Rifles had brought each and every enemy soldier to their end with their valour and war skills. After hoisting the Indian tricolour on the peak of Tololing, there was happiness of victory on the faces of the soldiers, but their bodies had started to get tired. The soldiers did not have enough strength in their bodies to even stand. Life was still testing them.
Captain Akhilesh Saxena, who was a part of the battle of Tololing, says that after achieving victory at Tololing Peak, we all remembered that during the war that had been going on for the last three days, not a single grain of food had gone into the mouth of any soldier. The frustration of the soldiers increased more when they extended their hands towards their thermos to drink water and not even a drop of water came out of it. For a moment everyone felt that they had escaped the enemy’s bullet, but they might lose their lives because of blood.
Captain Akhilesh Saxena says that in the meantime his eyes fell on some soldiers who were about to put snow lying on the ground in their mouths to quench their thirst. The officers present there ran and caught the hands of those soldiers. They were told that if the snow had gone down their throats, they would have died in a jiffy. Actually, all the gunpowder of the shelling going on from both sides for the last three days had settled on the upper surface of the snow. And because of this the upper surface of the snow had become completely poisonous.
Worried about the lives of our soldiers, we stopped them from eating snow, but we were still worried about how to save our soldiers from hunger. They told that for immediate relief, we dug the snow up to two to three feet depth and took out the snow lying beneath it and started sucking it. We saved our lives by sucking this snow for many hours.
FIRST PUBLISHED : July 26, 2024, 10:32 IST