Grit and Gumption

How Capt. Neikezhakuo Kenguruse led his men from the front; and barefoot

Neha Dwivedi and Diksha Dwivedi

D Coy found three peaks, known as ‘false crests’, on their way to Lone Hill. They passed through false crest 1, where Neibu went with his platoon and found it empty. Next, they went to false crest 2, which Saxena went to with his Company and which also turned out to be empty. They then decided to make false crest 2 their fire base. Thereafter, the remaining hill and their objective to be captured was Lone Hill, for which Neibu started—with his Platoon 10—at about 2.30 a.m. on 29 June. Saxena, meanwhile, stayed at their fire base and continued engaging the enemy.

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From the west of the ridgeline, A Coy had kept the enemy busy, which gave the D Coy men a window to climb up from the east. On the way, D Coy navigated minefields to make it to their target without any more casualties. They couldn’t afford any more casualties and deaths if they wanted to attain victory.

However, despite the fact that they had a window of opportunity open in front of them, Neibu, Naik Jairam and the rest of Platoon 10 realized that there was an obstacle they had not accounted for during this attack—it was an almost vertical (70-80 degrees) rock-like incline that had to be climbed to reach the point where the enemy was. There’s a reason, I guess, why this peak is called ‘Lone’ Hill—it is indeed an isolated hill, far from the main mountain ranges of the vicinity.

The only silver lining in this situation was that the enemy was sitting at an acute angle, so if Neibu’s platoon could manage to climb up, defying all the odds, the enemy would not be able to fire at them directly. The angle of the slope they would be climbing would ensure that any fire from the enemy would miss them. For once, after a long time, the unwelcoming non-navigable peaks of Kargil had favoured the Indian soldiers a tiny bit. Therefore, the boys of Platoon 10 of D Coy were absolutely not going to give up this golden opportunity. In this war, these were a rarity, so you had to take advantage of what nature had to offer you in this terrain.

While on this side, the Lone Hill men were trying their best to climb up—their only chance to