Here is my recollection of the 1965 war. I was in Lahore at the time and only 14 miles form the border. Indian army never even came near to my house let alone Lahore gymkhana which they were boasting that they had captures. Shattered dreams of the Indian army.
It was a normal day like any other. The sun was shinning, the early morning bus rush was on and as usual I was meeting a few friends at the bus stop in the hope to hop on to one of the buses to get to school. The bus duly arrived, overloaded with passengers and we squeezed our way through managing to get on the bus. On the way to school which was around 5 miles from my house everything was normal, nothing unusual. Overall, there was a certain amount of tension in the air as clashes with the Indian army on the Kashmir border had been going on for quite sometime and the danger of war breaking out was quite high. My house was near Shalimar garden which is approximately 14 miles from the Wagah border.
At school we settled down in our classes and it was around 10 AM when we heard some planes and then a huge explosion rocked our school and some windows in our class shattered. In panic we started to rush out of our classes. Our teachers were desperately trying to push us back into the classes. Pandemonium and mayhem broke loose for the next 15 minutes or so before calm was eventually restored. We didn’t know what had happened. The teachers were all huddled together and after a while we were told that the school was being closed and that we should go home. One of my friend’s drivers came to collect him and four of us jumped into his car and headed home. We were driving towards Shalimar gardens and saw people in their thousands streaming the other way. The driver told us that India had attacked Lahore in the morning and these were refugees from the border area. We were concerned and bewildered. As we were crossing the Railway Bridge on our way to our homes the planes reappeared once more and we heard further explosions. The car shook. Our driver stopped the car on the bridge, opened the door and ran away. All four of us were still sitting in the car looking at the fighter planes as they swooped up and down and forward and backwards oblivious to any danger, we were in fact enjoying what was going on up in the skies. Calm returned after a while and our driver reappeared and we resumed our journey. This was the start of the war on 6 September 1965.
I cant remember exactly but I think it was late afternoon when the than president Ayub Khan addressed the nation and announced that India had attacked Pakistan and we were at war. TV was a rare commodity in those days and most people heard his speech on radio.
Nightly curfew was announced and everyone was told to keep their lights off or if people wished to put their lights on they would need to blacken out all windows and make sure that no light could be seen from outside. The blackout was in force throughout the 17 days of the war. Also civil defence people used to patrol the streets at night making sure no one was breaking the curfew and that no Indian spies were lurking around.
Trenches were dug out in virtually all streets of Lahore for people to take shelter during air raids. The Zinda dilaaney people of Lahore never took to those trenches but used to go on roof tops to cheer their heroes fighting to protect them. There was the famous dog fight over Lahore which lasted for quite sometime and virtually the whole of Lahore was on roof tops shouting Allah O Akbar and urging on their airmen. After this dogfight the air force appealed to people to stay indoors as it made their job difficult because they didn’t wanted any unnecessary civilian causalities.
I remember one night around 4 am announcement was made in our area through mosque speakers that Indian air Force had dropped some para troopers in our areas and that we should be on the look out for them. Despite the curfew, People got out of their houses with hockey sticks and cricket bats in their hands looking for any Indian spies. Soon the army arrived there and took over the operation, from what I remember a few spies were apprehended.
A few days into the war a big long range gun was installed near our house and it used to pound the Indian positions non stop. It used to go off with a big bang and you could hear the boom of the shell being launched till it used to hit its target. After a while we became used to it’s noise.
The whole nation used to gather around their radios at news time to hear what was going on.
In a way it was a quite a civilised war in that both Pakistan and India never targeted any civilian areas and civilian causalities were very low.
My lasting memory of that war from a personal point of view which has always stuck in my mind was one evening I was standing on my roof and I saw a fighter heading towards the Indian border at very high speed and flying very low. As the fighter came overhead I waved at it thinking it was a PAF fighter and prayed to Allah for its safe return from India. Just at that moment I noticed the Indian flag on that plane and a feeling of anger came over me. Than I saw two fighters overhead chasing the Indian fighter. I waved at them and again prayed for their safe return. Somehow that particular instance has stuck in my mind ever since.
It was a war when the nation became one, they stood like a rock against the enemy and backed their armed forces to the hilt. There was pride, there was determination, there was patriotism and everyone was a Pakistani to the core. There was no fear, just determination to defeat the enemy and defend our lands.
United we stood against the aggression and defended our country. I have never seen such unity before or after that war. When an appeal was made for blood donation the hospitals were overwhelmed with people donating blood. People donated anything they could towards the wareffort and gave very generously towards housing the refugees from the border areas providing them with food and shelter.
May Allah bring that unity back to our nation.