With just few round of bullets, a gun and a jungle knife was all he had when he moved out dead tired in the night from his dead colleagues. By dawn he would have walked for more than twenty kilometers in the jungle. He spotted some smoke coming out of a place nearby. The village children stood and watched a man walking and staggering, almost on the verge of collapse. Before he realized anything he fell and passed out. The effect of lack of sleep and almost no food for long time was too much for anyone to bear. Jungle leeches and mosquitoes also feasted upon him all night as he did not have any protection with him. When he opened his eyes, he was surrounded by few natives and was in a dry place. It was a hut build on bamboo and was elevated from the ground. Bhagwati knew that he was in safe hands and might live to see his family.

Sound of gun shots reached the British Indian platoon. Dharam Singh’s sacrifice helped his colleagues in getting enough time to arm themselves and hide in the jungle. They were now ready for any assault and were aware that enemy is close by. Had this warning not reached them, probably all of them would have been captured or killed without much resistance. After several minutes when the firing in the jungle ceased, they waited tensely for the enemy to come by. The ambush party was ready with all the ammunitions they could gather. They were tired and almost beaten down but the face of death give them their energy back. As Bhagwati was one of the best adjusted persons in the jungle, he and his few colleagues climbed up the trees to check out the enemy. They had devised methods to pass information to their fellow soldiers by making sounds of animals and birds. They did not have to wait long. Japanese soldiers were sighted by Bhagwati within few minutes. The enemy was alert and were aware that more of the British soldiers would be hidden nearby. It was a cat and mouse game which went on for sometime. Both sides waited for the other to fire and reveal their position. After waiting for several hours, the enemy became relaxed and came out of their positions and started walking towards the lake. It was then the strike started. Enemy was surrounded from all sides and within few minutes the enemy was reduced by more than half.  

The place where the soldier Dharam Singh saw the Japanese platoon was not even a kilometer from the camping site. It was certain that if the confrontation happened, they will also get killed, being both outnumbered and under-armed. The only way which appeared to be viable was to attract attention of the group by firing at them and in the process alerting his own colleagues. Dharam picked up his carbine and moved at the opposite corner of the rock which gave him strategic view of the Japanese soldiers. He counted….. only thirty bullets with him. Probably he can reduce the number of enemy soldiers by thirty or twenty nine and keep the last one for himself. Getting killed was a better option than getting captured by Japs.

Due to rains and lack of carrying capacity, the troops lost most of their tents and had to manage sleeping in open. Fatigue and insect bites resulted in many of the soldiers getting malaria. Although it was earlier estimated that their platoon would reach the British army camp in South Burma in about twelve days time, the hostile terrain, heavy rains and fatigued soldiers delayed the march. On the fifth day the radio operator reported that the radio receiver they had has battery drain out and their connection to the outside world is lost. Almost all the soldiers in that platoon of about two hundred were unfamiliar to the terrain and used maps and compass to understand the direction. Maps also became useless eventually as rains had changed the landscape of the area completely. New streams cutting across the thick jungle made the advance of soldiers very difficult. Over and above they carried a lot of weapons and equipments which had to be carried for their own safety. They knew that the Japanese had advanced a lot and they even might intercept them in this situation. Being without arms would mean sure shot captivity and death was almost sure. Their fear came out true on the eighth day when few Japanese fighter planes spotted the platoon in the jungle and dropped few bombs on them. They kept coming back and fired through machine guns. The causality was limited to only ten soldiers who were all suffering with malaria and their stretchers were left in open when the attack happened. The platoon commander knew that enemy too will not be far and they would come chasing on foot too.

The next three months, it was only Bhagwati and my father. He was well taken care of and his health improved a lot so that he was able to do everything on his own and the coughing bots too almost stopped. Rest of the village however kept a safe distance. They could not think that someone can love his brother so much that risking getting TB was not a concern. My father ensured that most of the time he studied when not chatting with Bhagwati. These three months he came to know almost all about his four years in war. He was thrilled at the experience and equally appalled at the loss of human life which this war caused.