Lieutenant Colonel Dharam Singh at Poonch, 1947-48: The night attack that helped break a year-long siege

When people talk about Poonch, they often focus on endurance: a town under siege that refuses to fall (Representative image)

• Poonch survived a year-long siege in 1947-48 with local efforts and air support
• Lt Col Dharam Singh led a key night assault at Point 6307 during Operation Easy
• His leadership helped break the siege, enabling relief and link-up for Poonch

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By late 1947, Poonch had become one of the most precarious pockets in the first India-Pakistan war over Jammu and Kashmir. The town was effectively surrounded and isolated for months, with routes choked by hostile forces and the terrain itself making movement slow, exposed and punishing. Indian Express accounts of the siege describe how Poonch held on through a year of pressure before it was finally linked up again, a defence associated most famously with the garrison commander, Brigadier Pritam Singh.

What kept Poonch alive during that isolation was not a single dramatic rescue, but a system built under fire. One of the most extraordinary details, repeated in Indian Express reporting, is the construction of a makeshift airstrip inside a besieged town, using thousands of locals including women and children as labour. The same reporting notes that Air Commodore “Baba” Mehar Singh played a central role in the air effort that sustained Poonch.

This was the reality of Poonch in 1947-48: a garrison that could not retreat, a civilian population packed into a shrinking defensive bubble, and a supply situation that could tip from “barely manageable” to “catastrophic” with one bad week of weather or one successful enemy raid.

Where Dharam Singh fits into the Poonch story

When people talk about Poonch, they often focus on endurance: a town under siege that refuses to fall. But the siege did not end because it simply “ran out”. It ended because Indian forces mounted a complex relief operation, fighting for ridges, passes and defended features that controlled the approaches.

This is where Lieutenant Colonel Dharam Singh enters the story.

Dharam Singh commanded 1 (Para) Battalion, The Kumaon Regiment, and his official Maha Vir Chakra citation places him in the second Poonch link-up during Operation Easy in November 1948, specifically in the capture of a feature identified as Point 6307 at Bhimber Gali. The language of the citation is telling, not just because it praises bravery, but because it describes what “field leadership” looks like when the situation is messy: moving through difficult country, fighting multiple actions in darkness, and doing it without the comfort of heavy supporting fire.

In other words, if the siege of Poonch was the long test of endurance, the relief was the test of aggressive small-unit fighting. Dharam Singh’s role sits right in that second category.

Operation Easy and the problem of terrain that fights back

Relieving Poonch was never going to be a straight drive down a road. The approaches were dominated by high ground, narrow valleys, and chokepoints that could be held by relatively small forces with good fields of fire. The defenders inside Poonch could not simply “wait” for relief either. Every week under siege meant more strain on food, ammunition, medicine and morale, and more risk from raids and shelling.

Indian Express reporting frames the eventual link-up as the moment that ended the siege, after the town had held out for roughly a year.

Within that broader push, features like Bhimber Gali mattered because they were keys to movement. If you control a pass and its dominating heights, you can move men, guns, engineering columns and supplies. If you do not, you bleed for every kilometre.

The night of 7 November 1948: What his citation actually says

The cleanest, most authoritative description of Dharam Singh’s action is the Government of India gallantry awards profile and citation.

It states that on the night of 7 November 1948, during an attack on a feature, Lieutenant Colonel Dharam Singh led his battalion “extremely well over a difficult country and against a determined enemy.” It adds that to capture the feature he fought “five actions in pitch darkness without artillery support.” The citation emphasises that he stayed with his forward company and ignored personal safety, and that his conduct inspired his men and led to the capture of the feature at dawn.

Read that again and you see the core of the story. This was not a set-piece assault with comfortable preparation. It was close fighting in darkness, over broken terrain, without artillery softening up the objective, where cohesion could have snapped at any time. And it was led from the front.

That “always with his forward company” line matters because it tells you what kind of command presence this was. In that kind of battle, soldiers take cues from where the commander physically is. A battalion can either move as a single organism or fragment into separated pockets. Darkness and terrain push it toward fragmentation. The commander’s presence pushes it back toward coherence.

Why Point 6307 mattered more than a number on a map

Military writing often reduces terrain to sterile labels: Point 6307, Ridge X, Feature Y. But those features decide whether a relief operation moves or stalls.

The official profile ties Point 6307 to Bhimber Gali and the Poonch link-up effort under Operation Easy. If the relief columns were to keep moving, they had to take and hold the heights that could otherwise bring the road under fire. A single stubborn feature can pin down an advance for days, sap momentum, and expose supply and engineering elements that are essential for widening tracks, repairing bridges and clearing obstacles.

So when the citation says “eventually led to the capture of the feature at dawn”, it is not just reporting a tactical success. It is describing a small but vital unlock in a much larger operation.

The human side of leadership in a siege relief

It is easy to mythologise bravery in war, but what stands out in Dharam Singh’s citation is not just courage, it is insistence.

Five actions in pitch darkness suggests repeated contact, repeated regrouping, repeated pushing forward again. That kind of battle punishes the mind as much as the body. Men get separated. A section loses direction. Someone panics. Someone freezes. Casualties happen and suddenly the unit’s rhythm breaks.

A commander leading from the front can stabilise all of that, not with speeches, but with presence and pace. The citation’s wording makes it clear that his steadiness was contagious, and that it changed what the battalion believed was possible that night.

That is what “field leadership” really means in a relief operation. Not just issuing orders, but absorbing shock, re-imposing shape on confusion, and keeping the objective real when the only thing soldiers can see is the few metres in front of them.

Poonch survives, then reconnects

The popular memory of Poonch often blends two different achievements into one story: keeping the town alive under siege, and breaking the siege through relief and link-up.

Indian Express reporting makes the endurance side vivid, especially the airstrip and the air effort that sustained the garrison. But the siege ending depended on the relief operations outside the perimeter, the kind of fighting captured in Dharam Singh’s Maha Vir Chakra citation.

Put simply, Poonch held because people inside refused to collapse, and it was freed because people outside were willing to take the high ground feature by feature, often in ugly close combat.

Why Dharam Singh’s story still matters

Dharam Singh is not as widely written about in mainstream popular memory as some other figures of 1947-48, partly because his fame is attached to a specific hard fight rather than a single iconic “save the town” narrative. But that is exactly why his story is useful.

Wars are not only decided by the famous names. They are decided by unit commanders who fight through the night, keep their battalions together, and take the piece of ground that makes the next day possible.

His citation is also a reminder of how thin the margins were. “Without artillery support” is not a throwaway line. It speaks to constraints: supply, positioning, time, terrain, weather, and the risk of revealing plans. Poonch was a campaign where constraints were constant and improvisation was normal, from a besieged airstrip to night assaults on key features.

In that landscape, Dharam Singh’s action at Point 6307 reads like a snapshot of the entire Poonch story: stubbornness, risk, and leadership that stayed close enough to danger to shape the outcome.