পাতা:বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্র (চতুর্দশ খণ্ড).pdf/৩৪০

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বাংলাদেশের স্বাধীনতা যুদ্ধ দলিলপত্র : চতুর্দশ খণ্ড
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 "To an outsider", TIME'S Marah Ciark cabled after a tour of the western front “the Indian army seemed precise, old fashioned and sane. The closer you get to the front, the more tea and cookies you get: one American correspondent complained. But things get done. Convoys move up rapidly, artillery officers direct their fire with dispatch. Morale is extremely high, and Indian officers always refer to the Pakistanis, though rather condescendingly, as “those chaps."

Abandoned Breeches

 On a visit to Sehjra, a key town in a Pakistani salient that pokes into Indian territory east of Lahore where Indian troops were advancing, Clark found turbaned men working in the fields while jets flew overhead and artillery sounded in the distance. “There are free leastalls along the road", he reported, “and teen-ages throw bags of nuts, plus oranges and bananas, into the jeeps carrying troops to the front, and shout encouragement. When our jeep stops, surround it and yell at us, demanding that we write a story saying their village is still free and not captured, as claimed by Pakistani radio."

 "As we come up on the border, the Indian commander receives us. Re recounts how his Gurkha soldiers kicked off the operation at 9 o'clock at night and hit the wellentrenched Pakistanis at midnight." “I think we took them by surprise" he said, “and an inspection of the hooch of the Pakistani area commanding officer confirms it. On his bed is a suitcase, its confusion indicating it was hastily packed. There are several shirts, some socks. And his trousers. Nice trousers of grey flannel made, according to the label, by M. Abbas, a tailor in Rawalpindi. The colonel, it is clear, has departed town and left his breeches behind." flannel made, according it is clear, has departed town and left his dreeches behind".

 South of Sehjra, Indian armored units have been ploughing through sand across the West Pakistan border, taking hundreds of square miles of desert and announcing the advance of their troops to places that apparently consist of two palm trees and a shallow pool of brackish water. Among the enemy equipment reported captured: several camels. The reason behind this rather ridiculous adventure is the fear that Pakistan will try to seize large tracts of Indian Territory to hold as ransom for the return of East Bengal. That now seems impossibility with Bangladesh, an independent nation, but India wants to have land in the west to, bargain with.

 The western part of India is on full wartime alert. All cities are completely blacked out at night, fulfilling as it were. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's warning that it would be a “long, dark December." Air-raid sirens waii almost continuously. During one IS-hour period in the Punjab there were eleven air raid alerts. One all clear was sounded by the jittery control room before the warning blast was given. The nervousness, though, was justified: two towns in the area had been bombed with a larger loss of life as Pakistani air force planes zipped repeatedly across the border. Included in their attacks was the city of Amritsar, whose Golden Temple is the honest of holies lo all Sikhs. At Agra, which was bombed in the Pakistans' first blitz, the Taj Mahal was camouflaged with a forest of twigs and leaves and draped with burlap because its marble glowed like a white beacon in the moonlight.