Half a Century Ago

No, not the Beatles invasion or the James Bond film debut that the media is now pushing and not the Cuban Missile Crisis that they will be pushing very soon. 

My memories of October 1962 are quite different.  At the time I was a 19-year old Pfc stationed in WestPac.  I still remember our Company First Sergeant, a WW2 vet and also a veteran of both Tsingtao in 46 and the Chosin Reservoir in 1950.  He ordered us to line up at the battalion supply hootch and draw our cold weather gear so that we could in his words:  <i>“go climb the Hee-ma-lie-ya mountains and defend Injia’s democracy from those g*dd*mm*d  ChiCom sons of beeches who were at it again”</i>.  This was soon after the Battle of Thag La Ridge.  We never went of course.  We were stood down a day later, as the situation resolved itself with a complete Chinese victory.  That was a good thing for us as most of the fighting took place at elevations well above 14,000 feet.

Never heard or thought much about it for decades.  My recollections were reborn lately because there is some interest in the press regarding the possibility of future Chinese naval hostilities with Japan, Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaya and the Philippines over territorial claims to the Senkakus, Spratlys, Paracels, Scarborough Shoal, Pratas Atoll, and the underwater reefs of the Macclesfield Bank.    And sure enough, India is in the game.  The state-run oil company ONGC Videsh is in an oil exploration partnership with Vietnam in the South China Sea in an area claimed by China.  There has also been some Indian military agreements with Vietnam, Singapore, Indonesia and the Philippines. And there have been a full slate of articles earlier this year on Indian defense spending including the Agni-V ICBM with range to Peking, which some in the Indian press have tagged the “China Killer”.  But some other Indian press gurus are going the opposite way calling for Hindee-Chinee-Bhai-Bhai (brotherhood).  Prior to 62 the two countries had a peaceful relationship since the Silk Road and thousands of years before that.  So I suspect a lot of the war talk is just talk and hopefully may never amount to anything.

Anyway those press accounts resparked my interest in that 62 war, and one day browsing in Andy’s fave bookstore in Denver I picked up an old copy of Neville Maxwell’s book “India’s China War”.  A hard read as the author spends well over half of the book discussing internal Indian politics and also the 19^th century British border surveyors.  But the hard read gets better in the second half.  There he goes into the incompetent strategy of the Indian leadership, both civilian and senior army generals.  Needless to say, Maxwell has an infamous reputation in India as two of the Indian leadership he criticizes were Jawaharlal Nehru and Krishna Menon, fathers of Indian independence.

However Maxwell’s claims were backed up by some of the Indian Army generals involved.  They tell a tale of the best troops in the Indian Army, including crack Gurkha battalions, sent from sea level jungles to 16,000 feet in light summer khakis with just a basic load of ammunition.  No resupply.  Deployed to untenable positions by armchair bound brass who never saw the terrain and apparently did not understand contour lines on a map.  Little to no supporting artillery and zero air support.  Junior generals and colonels who had fought well and bravely in Burma and North Africa as young Lieutenants and NonComs, but in 62 were relieved of command because of their concern for their troops and their objections to the imposed tactics and the horrendous logistics situation. No military intelligence, just a national police run civilian intelligence agency more concerned with detection of suspected military coups that never happened, and whose Director told the Prime Minister and Defense Minister what he thought they wanted to hear (Hmmm, sounds familiar!).  Other generals gave good advice that was ignored, they were considered unreliable because they were non-Hindu Sikhs or Parsees, or because they were Anglo-Indian or too pro-Sandhurst.   A Chief of General Staff of the Indian Army with no combat arms experience deep selected over much better candidates for the job because he was a high caste Brahmin like Nehru and a distant cousin.  This was a real cautionary tale.

Meanwhile the Chinese Army was warmly clothed, well supplied, and not having to struggle against the terrain on the flat Tibetan plateau. They built their own roads as they fought their way down into India.  America never sent me and my company and our First Sergeant there to aid the Indians.  But according to Maxwell, America did send a great deal of arms and ammunition though it got there too late.  And we sent an Air Force C130 squadron to help the Indian Army move troops around, but there were no close by airfields anywhere near that part of the Himalayas.  And supposedly we sent a Carrier Task Group steaming towards the IO but it too stood down before passing the Straits of Malacca.  So much for our help.  But at the time America was just waking up to what was happening in the Caribbean and not focusing on Asia.  A good thing as we did not need a war in Asia.  We never needed one and should have heeded that a few years later.