Page 24 - Seniors Today Jan20 Issue

bridge supported on timber piles. These were
A Huge Effort
Building a bridge, in record time, that too
under enemy fire... Satish Puri from the
1965 batch of SSPMS recalls the
operation
I was commissioned in the Corps of Engineers
(Bombay Sappers) in June 1969. After
completing the Young Officer’s course at the
College of Military Engineering I was posted to
268 Army Engineer Regiment then at Nagaland.
In Oct 1971 the regiment was moved to Kalyani
in Bengal which was the concentration area
of 2 Corps in preparation for the impending
operations in the East Pakistan. Our regiment
was allocated to 9 Infantry Division in addition
to the integral engineer regiment (102 Engineer
Regiment) due to the riverine nature of the area
of operations.
Before the operations commenced a bridge
on the river Kodia at Alamganga which lay
on the main axis of advance of 2 Corps was
washed away due to heavy floods. The river was
divided in two streams with an unstable island
in between. A field company of 102 Engineer
Regiment attempted to build up the island with
sandbags but these kept getting washed away.
This field company had to move forward with
its affiliated brigade so the task was handed
over to my company (356 Field Company). We
abandoned the effort to build up the island
and instead decided to construct a 3-span skew
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installed with the help of the local PWD, the
wooden pile caps were constructed by late
evening and we launched the 3-span Bailey
bridge overnight.
One of our companies (182 Construction
Company) was tasked with the job of maintain
the Kruppmann bridge at Boyra and its
approaches. The far bank of this bridge was
marshy and require a huge effort to build and
maintain and to get the tanks, guns and vehicles
across. The Pakistan Air Force also strafed the
bridge for a couple of days but this stopped after
their planes were shot down by our Air Force. Creativity
Once the operations commenced, I was
appointed as the regiment Field Engineer. as
Intelligence Officer and was tasked with moving
forward with the leading brigades to obtain salvation
information about obstacles, in particular water
obstacles. With a jeep, a driver and a radio
operator, I had to assess the type of obstacles,
try and measure the span, decide the suitable
equipment for the span, do a preliminary
design and send back the info so that the
right equipment could be moved forward
– all this in the hot war zone! In one move
towards Jhingergacha I had to drive through
an unmarked minefield which later took one
casualty in the field company following me.
Based on my feedback our regiment
constructed a major Bailey bridge at Nabhran
and a Kruppmann bridge at Jhingergacha, the
latter was subsequently converted to a two-span
continuous Bailey bridge constructed on the
existing concrete piers of the demolished bridge.
The regiment also carried out a number of mine
breaching tasks under artillery fire.
The Pakistani brigade abandoned Jessore and
set up their defences at Khulna which had a
narrow road approach from the North with a
river on one side a soft marshy soil on the other.
Here the Engineers constructed and operated
rafts to ferry tanks and guns forward. The
Pakistani Army surrendered soon after this
and I was fortunate to witness the surrender
ceremony at Khulna.
After the war was over and our regiment had
moved out, I had to stay back with my jeep and
a surveyor sapper for 6 weeks to map the entire
Western Bangladesh from Khustia to Khulna.