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 my school. The bus duly arrived, overloaded with passengers and we squeezed our way through, and finally managed to get on the bus. On the way to school which was around 5 miles from my house everything was as per 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 the 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. 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 for the day 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. We were told by the driver 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. Obviously the air force from both sides was engaging each other. 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. These are my initial recollections of that day. The Indian army never even made it to the Shalimar garden which is on the outskirts of Lahore and the funny thing was that we were listening to BBC that evening reporting the Indian army in Lahore Gymkhana.
Beautiful! Thanks for posting. Please share more accounts from those days.
My father used to tell me stories of the brand new Pakistan. Despite the violence and carnage out of which Pakistan emerged, everything seemed so simple and innocent. Things changed, we lost our innocence. I liked my father's Pakistan better than the one I found!
Ive heard a lot of tales from the time from my mother who was a kid at the time. My grandfather (nana) was a Major in the army, at the time and they lived at lahore cantt. their home was on the Harike road, just a few Kms from the Burki border and the BRB canal; the area which proved to be of greatest importance, the area where the enemy showered its greatest strenghth and the area where the countries greatest battles were fought in which a few greatest heroes wrote heroic tales of valor.
My mom tells us that she was in class 5-6 then and the morning of 6 Sep was their first day at school after a 2 mth summer vacation. they had trenches dug out in front of their home like all homes in the Cantt area for many days, but that morning they went to school normally, the neighborhood all full of military officers and their families seemed normal as usual. no axtraordinary activities.
during their very first period, an announcemtn was made and it was told that India had attacked pakistan during the early hours of the day. School, was closed for the rest of the 17 days. children began leaving for home with their parents, drivers or orderlies. My nana's orderly/batman named Hasan Din picked my mom and her siblings from school and told them a few details. on their way they saw tanks and armoured vehicles and jeeps and trucks heading for the border. they saw the roads breaking due to the tanks' weight.
at home they were of course worried about their dad, who had left in the morning for office and had left in the action get up and not the office get up. maybe he did know, maybe most officers knew but wrent supposed to tell until certain time.
he got back in the night and the whole area was ordered to carry out total balckouts. most of the neighbiors in the area had left, but our nana refused to leave. he said, death can come anywhere, we wont leave our homes. and its true, many ppl who left the front areas heading for areas in the back or in centre of the country died when a few trains were bombarded...our nana and his family remained safe alhamdoLillah.
all day during the first day all relatives from all over the city kept calling in to find out what was happening; they thought maybe every officer would know each and every detail and would give it out to everyone. ofcourse it wasnt so. our mother tells us about the massive shellings and explosions they heard which were so near by, only a few kms away that their neighborhood shook. this was the border where one of the most firce battles was being fought.
the unit defending the Burki, BRB, Harike area was that of Major Aziz Bhatti, who was awarded the Nishan-i-Haider. ammi remembers him a bit. says he was very fair skinned. his children were in her school.
later the GHQ orderd total evacuation of the area and the left for a relatives house in the city. before leaving, in the dark, the orderly captured an indian paratrooper who had just dropped in the ground near their home. he was a spy.
later on she says they used to enjoy looking at fighter planes in dog fights. ppl used to shout slogans from ground and paid little attn to safety. later pilots had orders issued for ppl to be indoors whn there are dogfights as they find it difficult to shoot down planes with ppl on the ground.
i mentioned Brig Shami in my thread in Mil&Str issues section, ammi tells us a bit about him too. a few days before the war they were at a lunch prty at some officer's home and Brig Shami was there too, he was a grey haired smart man who was there in his uniform. that proved to be his last party to attend.
after 23 sep when they returned to their home they saw shells, lying in their home, glass on windows shattered, their area had been in the fire range, enemy had come that close.
but our brave soldiers proved to be iron gates that just wouldnt open!
we salute the armed forces and right now particularly the units and men installed in the Lahore sector then.
i wish i could witness that time, go look at those places.
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*Originally posted by ehsan: *
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 my school.
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Dont tell me that you were student in 1965. You were the teacher. :p