Book Extract | The Kargil War Surgeon's Testimony by Arup Ratan Basu

       Book Extract

Excerpted with permission from the publishers The Kargil War Surgeon's Testimony Arup Ratan Basu, published by Bloomsbury India

*******A Morale Boost

One evening, a call came for me from the helipad. A casualty would soon be arriving in a Cheetah helicopter. His condition was critical, and I was to examine him at the helipad and decide upon the next course of action. I set out for the helipad in an ambulance without delay. The sun was sinking behind the hills, and night was fast approaching.

Within a few minutes of arriving there, I heard the whirr of helicopter rotors. When it landed, I ducked my head to brace against the strong winds it had kicked up and ran to the helicopter along with a nursing assistant carrying an oxygen cylinder. Behind the pilot and co-pilot was a man in a dirty combat uniform. There was a big bandage around his head. He was conscious and attentive and seemed generally comfortable.

Since I had to check how deep the injury was, I slowly removed the bandage. When it was off, I was shocked at the sight in front of me. There was an irregular hole about two inches in diameter in the front of his skull. Through that hole, his brain was visible. I could see that the frontal lobe of the brain was injured. But there was no bleeding, and his vital signs were normal.

I asked him if felt any discomfort. ‘No, sir,’ he replied. ‘Just a little pain.’

I was stunned. I had never seen such a sight before. How could a patient with such a brain injury be talking coherently? This fellow had to go to a neuro centre immediately, or at the very least a hospital with an intensive care unit.

‘Well?’ Major Rajiv Dua, the pilot, asked me eagerly. ‘What now? We have oxygen for him on the chopper if he needs it.’

‘He will go to Leh right now,’ I ordered. ‘He will withstand the journey. Just fly at a low altitude.’

‘Righto,’ said Major Dua. ‘Move back then.’ We stepped away from the helicopter and walked towards the edge of the helipad. Just before taking off, the pilot looked at me. I gave him the thumbs-up and he reciprocated. And then all of a sudden, the enemy shelling started. One of the shells landed near the helipad. But there was no turning back now.

Even as the helicopter took off, another shell landed near us. But through that barrage of enemy fire, the Cheetah soared like a falcon into the sky. As I watched it fly away, I realised that my right hand had unconsciously lifted into a salute. It was a gesture expressing my deep admiration and respect for the indomitable Indian soldier and our daredevil pilots.

A few days after that a naik was brought to the hospital. He looked disoriented but was able to walk with some support. Though his vitals were normal, I noted that his face was extremely sunburnt. His skin was almost charcoal black in colour. Both his feet were of a similar colour and were covered with several small ulcers. He had been affected by frostbite.

I asked him if he didn’t have snow boots and protective gear. The naik gave me a blank stare and mumbled something incoherent. I could not understand what had happened so I asked the people who had brought him there. They told me the story the naik had narrated to them before his mind started to wander.

The naik was part of a small group of soldiers moving uphill towards the enemy when they were fired upon. Some of his comrades were killed. The rest took cover wherever they could. The naik eventually lost his bearings entirely and could not locate any of his mates. The next morning, he found himself alone on the icy mountain ridges.

He wandered around alone for a few days, spending the nights in caves. There was nothing to eat, so he survived by eating ice. He had a weapon but no ammunition left, so he took cover whenever there was enemy firing. After about a week, he was spotted by another group of our soldiers and brought back.

I started to treat the naik by first working to fix his nutrient deficiency. However, his mental state showed no improvement. Intelligence Corps officers arrived to interview the patient to find out where he had been and how he had avoided being spotted by the enemy for so long. They were trying to find out whether he had been sent back as a mole by the enemy. During their questioning, they scolded him and issued loud threats, but the naik would just mumble a few words and then go back to being silent. The Intelligence Corps officers finally gave up after four hours and walked out.

I wondered how I could cure him and decided to call the base hospital in Srinagar. One of my teachers heard the case and said, ‘It seems to be a case of war psychosis. The death of his buddies and his own near-death experience – wandering around alone in plain sight of the enemy – has shaken him up. Send him to us. We will manage him.’

The patient was sent to Srinagar the next day.

Another patient I was treating had a bullet wound in his right shoulder, and he also said that he had fallen on some rocks. However, even after surgery, the man kept insisting that he felt giddy and could not swallow food. I wondered if it was because of a head injury. But five days had passed after his fall, and his vitals were all normal. There was something amiss.

Looking closely at him again, I noticed cracks at the corners of his lips. I told him to open his mouth and was shocked by what I found. His oral cavity was an angry red, with small ulcers all over the tongue, the insides of the cheeks and the back of the throat. He was suffering from acute vitamin-B deficiency. That was what was causing him difficulty in swallowing and leading to giddiness. I asked him if he had not eaten any fruits or vegetables for a while.

‘I have just had three meals in the last three weeks,’ he replied. I was left speechless. I couldn’t understand how he was still alive, leave alone fighting on a battlefield.

The man was a sepoy of the Ladakh Scouts. He was a local boy, tough as nails. He probably would not even have gone to the hospital had he not been shot. He would have kept fighting until he fell and died out of sheer weakness and malnutrition. Fortune had saved him from that fate. I started him on double doses of vitamins and other nutrition. He was better in two days and was sent to Leh on the third day.

General V.P. Malik, the army chief, often visited Kargil. We would only hear about it on the day of his arrival. But somehow the enemy would always have prior information about the dates and times of his travels. During one such visit, as soon as the sound of the chief ’s helicopter neared, our location was pounded by enemy artillery shells. Their target was the helipad, but due to the hospital’s proximity to the target, it remained in danger of becoming collateral damage.

There were booming sounds and then a clattering like a hailstorm on the roofs of the mess and the hospital ward. It was caused by splinters from the exploding artillery shells. One of the splinters happened to hit a havildar who was standing on guard. He was rushed to us in a stable condition but with a wound on the right side of the back and a vague lump on the left side. The X-ray revealed that the lump was caused by a splinter that had become lodged in the chest. It meant that the splinter had entered from the right side of the back and, after fracturing two ribs, had travelled all the way to the other side of the body. It was stuck in the lungs, right behind the heart. Indian soldiers had to pay a price for the ‘reception’ organised for our chief by the Pakistani Army!

As we were examining him, an artillery shell landed barely fifty metres from us. There was a deafening noise and the ground shook. The patients who could run dashed for their lives and some of the others were carried to the bunkers. But I could not leave the patient I was examining and continued with my work. That was when one of the nursing assistants, Naik Ghesoo Singh Shekhawat, said to me, ‘Sir, even if we get hit by a splinter, it doesn’t matter – because you would be there to save us. But what will happen if you were to get hit? We will all be in trouble. You had better take shelter, sir.’ While I did not quite like the idea of me getting hit by a shell, his words oddly made me feel quite important.

The surgery commenced. The entire route of the splinter through the body was checked for other injuries it may have caused, and then the splinter was removed. The damage to the lung and the fractured ribs was repaired, and a chest tube was inserted after the internal bleeding was stopped. The patient recovered well and was subsequently transferred to the base hospital in Srinagar.

Occasionally, senior doctors of the Army Medical Corps came to inspect the military medical setup at Kargil. There were some who expressed their satisfaction openly and there were others who simply nodded their heads after reviewing the number and nature of surgeries performed at our hospital. We once received a visit from Major General R.K. Jaitley, an astute physician who had taught me at college. He examined all our records meticulously and spoke to several patients.
Among the major operations performed by me until then included splenectomy (repair of a damaged spleen); intestine resection and anastomosis (intestinal surgery); and thoracotomy (chest and lung surgeries). The major general commented, ‘I tell the field hospitals at other locations all the time that if the team at Kargil can do such surgeries, then why can’t you?’ I looked at him in surprise. The statement was like a pat on my back. I wondered if his intent had only been to boost my morale. Even so, I definitely felt very happy that day.

**********

Arup Ratan Basu The Kargil War Surgeon's Testimony Bloomsbury India, 2025. Pb. Pp.198

A human story of war as experienced by a doctor who was the only surgeon at the Kargil field hospital

Arup Ratan Basu's first posting as a young surgeon in the Indian Army Medical Corps was at a field hospital in the Kashmir valley. He was frustrated at being sent to a place that was not even equipped with a functional operation theatre while his classmates were taking up postings at established hospitals in major cities.

Little does the rookie surgeon know that he will soon be deputed to a small town that was turning into a dangerous theatre of war. Between 19 May 1999 and 24 July 1999, as the sole army surgeon at the field hospital in Kargil, he ended up performing two hundred and fifty surgeries, including on an enemy soldier.

Curious and sympathetic, the young surgeon engaged with his patients and colleagues and recorded his impressions in a notebook purchased at the town bazaar. He does not venture into the technical, logistic and strategic aspects of war; instead he remains resolutely focused on the people and the extraordinary price they pay. The result is a one-of-a-kind testimony, invaluable and enthralling.

Shashi Tharoor, MP, endorsed the book saying:

As the first military surgeon on call at Kargil in the summer of 1999-when Pakistani troops, disguised as goatherds, crossed over the Line of Control and besieged critical Indian peaks-Lt. Col. (Dr.) Arup Ratan Basu toiled to rescue nearly 350 of our valiant soldiers from the jaws of death. One can only imagine how helpless he, trained to be a lifesaver, must have felt seeing a steadfast stream of young men marching to their deaths at those inhospitable heights-that too in a war not of their nation's making.

In Basu's view, it's not so much about the futility of war as its untold human cost, which gets muffled beneath the nationalist pomp and clamour of any war effort-even one like Kargil, undertaken in self-defence. Yet for the parents who lose their sons, wives their husbands, and children their fathers, this is the only real consequence of war. And perhaps on no one's conscience do these deaths weigh more heavily than on a doctor's-who, for no fault of his own, could not prevent them.

A military doctor with a poet's sensitivity and talent for lyrical expression, Arup Ratan Basu has composed a haunting elegy to the lives lost and blood spilt at Kargil. And as a powerful, poignant, and heart-wrenching indictment of the debilitating cost of war, The Kargil War Surgeon's Testimony ought to be read-and remembered.

Arup Ratan Basu received an MBBS degree from the Armed Forces Medical College, Pune. He joined the Army Medical Corps in 1989 and completed a master's in surgery and post-doctoral fellowship in gastro-intestinal surgery. During the Kargil conflict of 1999, he was deputed as a general surgeon to the field hospital in Kargil, and he received the Yuddh Seva Medal for his services there. In 2001 he was deputed to Kabul, Afghanistan, immediately after the collapse of the first Taliban regime. He served there for ten months and was awarded a certificate of appreciation by the government of Afghanistan. Later, he served in various command hospitals of the Army Medical Corps and settled down in his hometown, Jamshedpur, in 2013.

(Basu has written three books in Bengali. This is his first book in English.)