Nation remembers Kargil victory
	Wednesday, July 26, 2006 (Kargil): July 26 is Vijay Diwas, the seventh anniversary of the Kargil war. For many young people across the country it was the first war they ever experienced. A memorial has been built to honour Kargil heroes in Drass. Over 600 soldiers made the ultimate sacrifice for their country in the Kargil war in 1999. Family members of those soldiers are in Drass to observe a prayer meeting. The memorial is an attempt to make sure the sacrifices made by the soldiers are not forgotten easily. In May 1999, as the nation was caught in the euphoria of Lahore, the first shots of India's fifth war were being fired high up in the snowy wastes of Kargil. It was on these snowy wastes that the Indian soldier wrote a new chapter in courage and he wrote it in blood. It was a war that few, even within the army, expected or were prepared for. The first few days were lost as the army tried to figure out what had happened. "I was out of the country and was told they were militants but then militants do not hold ground," said General V P Malik (Retired), Former Chief of Army Staff. Grim mood Units of the Pakistani army had occupied the heights overlooking the strategic highway 1 alpha running from Srinagar to Leh. This highway was the lifeline to Ladakh and Siachen. India couldn't afford to let this lifeline be cut. In New Delhi the mood was grim. "I briefed the CCS and everybody realised what had happened. Everyone was depressed," said Malik. As the generals planned, troops poured into Kargil. The brief they were given was simple: do not cross the LOC but win back the peaks. To do that, they had to climb almost vertical slopes loaded with ammunition and weapons in altitudes where every breath was difficult. They had to do this while under constant shell and machine gunfire from an enemy dug in behind stone sangars. As the first few assaults died down in the withering fire from the peaks the body bags started coming back home. The mood in the nation was grim; morale was low. It was then that a 200-year-old battalion of the Rajputana Rifles showed the way. In a series of assaults it captured the Tololing ridge. It was the first victory of the war. "After Tololing I knew we would win," said Malik. New heroes As army units cleared the enemy off peak after peak, India was discovering new heroes: Anuj Nayyar, Vikram Batra, Manoj Pandey, all very young, very brave and all of them dead. The war was reaching a crescendo and the climax was the fall of Tiger Hill in July to the 18th grenadiers. This battle too had a young hero, 18-year-old Yoginder Yadav who sustained 18 bullet wounds but won the peak. More than 600 Indian soldiers fell in Kargil. The years will pass, the memories might dim and the fallen may be forgotten. But there will always be, in the hearts and minds of those who go to Kargil and look at those heights, a sense of wonder, of awe at the men who conquered them.