The One-Legged General: Maj Gen Ian Cardozo
Valmiki Faleiro
The One-Legged General: Maj Gen Ian Cardozo
Major General Ian Anthony Joseph Cardozo ("Cartoos Saab"), AVSM, SM (Veteran) from Candolim was born in Bombay in 1937. After studying at St. Xavier's School and St. Xavier's College, both in Mumbai, he passed out of the portals of National Defence Academy at Khadakvasla as the first cadet in the history of the NDA to be awarded both the gold and silver medals. It was just the first step of this path-breaking Indian Army officer.
Commissioned in 1958 into the 1st Battalion, the Fifth Gorkha Rifles (Frontier Force), he was among the first Indian Army officers to be awarded the Sena Medal for gallantry while on a patrol on the China border in 1959. He fought in the 1962, 1965 and 1971 wars.
After the Chinese aggression of 1962, he and others raised the 4th Battalion, the 5th Gorkha Rifles-Frontier Force (4/5 GR). Gorkha troops pronounced 'Cardozo' as 'Cartoos' (cartridge). The future General was soon known as ‘Cartoos Saab’.
In 1971, he was the second in command of 4/5 GR at Sylhet inside East Pakistan as part of the 59 Brigade of 8 Mountain Division under Major General (later General and COAS) KV Krishna Rao, one of the three Divisions of IV Corps under Lt Gen Sagat Singh tasked with the thrust on East Pakistan from the east (Agartala). At the time hostilities broke out, Major Cardozo was in Wellington doing a course. He was told to report urgently for duties at Sylhet.
On 6 Dec evening, a severely undersized 4/5 GR (after battles at Atgram and Ghazipur) had reached the Kalaura railhead leading to Sylhet, a former province of Assam granted to East Pakistan in the 1947 Partition of India. The big obstacle to Sylhet was crossing the River Surma. It had no bridge.
After Maulvi Bazar fell, military intelligence, on the basis of radio intercepts, gathered that Pakistan was withdrawing forces from Sylhet to reinforce either Dacca or Ashuganj.
Lt Gen Sagat Singh, a daring paratrooper and an ace strategist, thought the enemy withdrawal from Sylhet was a good opportunity to leapfrog in a special helicopter-borne op (SHBO) across the Surma River and seize Sylhet.
The Indian Army had been using helicopters in counter-insurgency operations in the Northeast but this was the first time it was daringly – and, for the enemy, totally unexpectedly – doing this in war. The SHBO was launched from Kalaura from 7 December 1971 in 10 or 11 ageing Mi-4 helicopters of the IAF’s 110 HU.
In ‘one of the quickest heliborne operations in military history’, two rifle companies, the CO’s Tactical HQ, two sections of three-inch mortars, two detachments of MMGs and 254 men of 4/5 GR were heli-landed at Sylhet by last light of 7 December 1971. The balance part of 4/5 GR (still at half strength) with two mountain guns, some engineer personnel and an air control team were heli-landed at Sylhet by 3 am on 8 December 1971. A company of 9 Guards was landed on 9 December 1971 and reinforcements were to follow. Then something strange happened.
The BBC wrongly reported that a full brigade of Gorkhas had landed at Sylhet.
Pak withdrew two brigades from Ashuganj to tackle the intruders at Sylhet, already defended by the Sylhet garrison. To the quick-thinking Lt Gen Sagat Singh, Pakistan withdrawing forces from Ashuganj presented opportunity: it made the crossing of the Meghna River – and the race for Dacca – easier. On 9 December 1971, he withdrew all IAF helicopters from Kalaura (that were to heli-land reinforcements to Sylhet) to Daudkhandi near Ashuganj to SHBO an entire brigade of Maj Gen Benjamin Gonsalves’ 57 Mountain Division across the Meghna River into the Dacca Bowl.
With the expected reinforcements not materialising, 4/5 GR, now down to 384 men, faced an enemy twenty times its size, in terrain familiar to the enemy. The worry at HQ IV Corps was how long the tiny 4/5 GR could tie down the Pakistani forces at Sylhet. As long as 4/5 GR could do that, the race for Dacca could progress smoothly.
Lieutenant Colonel (later Brigadier) Arun Bhimrao Harolikar (“Harry”), the Commanding Officer of 4/5 GR with his 2/i-c Major Ian Cardozo, took a huge risk and dispersed the few but brave men of 4/5 GR to feign a brigade frontage that the BBC had misreported – instead of half a battalion that it actually was!
The gallant men established their reputation early on. They launched a surprise silent khukri night attack and decapitated 32 of the enemy. It was the last khukri attack in modern military history and sent a clear message, “Don’t mess with the Gorkhas or you will lose your head”.
They engaged the enormous enemy of about 8,000 Pakistani regulars for 9 days and nights, earning the sobriquet of Sylhet Gorkhas. Their number plummeted from 384 to 352, from 18 officers only seven were left at end of ops (four killed, seven wounded), but the near-tragic encounter had a happy end.
In the early hours of 15 December 1971, two young Pakistani officers with some men carrying a white flag approached the defended area of 4/5 GR with a message from the Sylhet Garrison Commander that they wanted to surrender. Lt Col Harolikar turned them away saying he had “no orders to accept surrender” and told them to return later. He radioed his brigade commander Brigadier Bunty Quinn who flew in and on 16 December 1971, accepted the surrender of two Pakistan brigades and the Sylhet Garrison. A 'David versus Goliath' outcome!
It has been estimated, conservatively, that 4/5 GR made Dacca attainable at least eight days sooner. The CO Lt Col Harolikar was awarded the MVC. Three SMs were awarded to the unit. Maj Ian Cardozo lost a leg. The loss of a leg spelled the end to an active army career.
Not in this case.
Undaunted, he got himself an artificial limb and patiently – over seven years – rehabilitated his way back to normal life. He resumed duties. Some called him “the one-legged General”. He emerged not as the fairytale type that sits on a mantelpiece. He created history: his case made Government of India change its policy towards war-disabled officers.
Command appointments were opened to war disabled but otherwise physically fit officers. He was approved for command of a Battalion, then a Brigade and finally, an entire Division, all in J&K – the first physically disabled officer to do so in the military history of India.
Thanks to him, several Indian Army officers rose up the ranks despite their physical handicap – three of them as Army Commanders, and one of them who had lost both legs.
Post retirement, Maj Gen Cardozo settled in New Delhi and authored a number of books, including the Param Vir: Our Heroes in Battle (Roli, 2003) and The Sinking of INS Khukri – Survivor's Stories (Lotus, 2006) that deals with the ill-fated warship in the 1971 war. The Indian Army: A Brief History (ed., 2007), First Five Gorkha Rifles: An Illustrated History (2008), The Bravest of the Brave: The Extraordinary Story of Indian VCs of World War I (Bloomsbury, 2016), In Quest of Freedom: Personal Accounts of Soldiers from India and Bangladesh (Bloomsbury, 2016), Lieutenant General Bilimoria – His Life and Times (on Lt Gen FN Bilimoria, 2016), The Indian Army in World War I: 1914-18 (Routledge, 2019) and 1971: Stories of Grit and Glory from the Indo-Pak War was published by Penguin Random House in 2021.
Maj Gen Cardozo is married to Priscilla, from Parra, who taught at St. Columba's School, New Delhi for 31 years. Of their three sons, Colonel Sunith Cardozo was commissioned into the same unit as his father, the 1st Battalion of the 5th Gorkha Rifles (FF) and settled in Goa after his retirement.
(This first appeared in the Marathi language in Goa’s daily, ‘Gomantak,’ 25 September 2022, and is excerpted from revised text of the book, ‘Patriotism In Action: Goans in India’s Defence Services’ by Valmiki Faleiro, first published in 2010 by ‘Goa,1556,’ISBN: 978-93-80739-06-9. Revised edition awaits publication.)
