Re: [GOABOOKCLUB] 49. POW Portuguese Military Officers Recall…
Jeanne Hromnik
--49. POW Portuguese Military Officers Recall…
Portuguese troops, 3306 in number, were taken prisoner of war (POW) in the three enclaves of Goa, Daman and Diu. Krishna Menon's lie of 7 December 1961, of "heavy reinforcements" reaching Goa, lay bare. But, history is written by the victor, not the vanquished. The ancient Greek tragedian-dramatist, Aeschylus, had said long ago, "In war, truth is the first casualty".
Including non-combatants, 4668 were taken prisoner – 3412 in Goa, 853 in Daman (shifted to Vasco da Gama aboard the INS Delhi on 31 January 1962) and 403 in Diu (shifted to Goa by the INS Delhi mid-January and lodged at the Ponda POW camp on 29 January 1962).
POWs were alive because the Indian forces did not kill them, records Portuguese cavalry / armour Captain João Aranha, himself a POW (Aranha, 2008, Page 146). When retreating from Mapusa to Panjim on 18 December 1961, he and party were spotted by IAF Hunters that flew low over them but did not open fire. The same had happened all over Goa: Portuguese soldiers were allowed to retreat but not killed.
POWs were initially held in four camps: Aquem Baixo (under 2 Bihar), Ponda (under 2 Para Maratha), Vasco (under 4 Sikh LI) and Aguada (under 2 Sikh LI). On 16 January 1962, 463 POWs from Aquem Baixo were shifted to the Alpha Detenue Camp at Ponda. There were 1,750 POWs in Ponda now, the rest were in Vasco and Aguada.
The three POW camps were brought under the 50 Para Brigade and troops of the 63 Infantry Brigade were withdrawn. Commander of the camps was Brigadier Sagat Singh who based himself at the Ponda camp. Major General Vassalo e Silva was kept in a separate house in a quiet, wooded area of Alpha.
POWs called the Alpha Detenue Camp in Ponda a “mass graveyard”.
There was an attempted escape by three POWs on 19 March 1962. The plan was simple: armed with pipes that would bring them air to breathe under mounds of refuse, they would escape in a garbage truck. The Portuguese accomplice POW in charge of garbage disposal developed cold feet at the eleventh hour (it was 6.30 pm). The camp commandant Brig Sagat Singh assembled all the POWs, surrounded them with machine guns on all sides and a firing squad in front. Then, in English, Brig Sagat Singh asked if any of them desired to exact revenge on the denunciator. Their answer surprised the brigadier. “Yes” they shouted in unison. A showdown was averted by the intervention of the Portuguese Military Chaplain, Fr. Joaquim Ferreira da Silva.
There were conflicting reports of the treatment meted out to the POWs. Some (but not all) Portuguese narratives alleged the POWs were ill-treated. Government of India documented stray cases of abuse, like at the Alpalqueiros Camp in Vasco da Gama following an attempted escape (details below), where erring Indian troops were punished.
Rev. James Knox, the Apostolic Nuncio in New Delhi, was allowed to visit the POWs in January 1962. He reported that they were being treated well and that the wounded were receiving medical attention. There were first-hand published accounts by POW officers that praised the treatment they received.
Major (later Colonel) "Minnie" Mohite, who studied at St. Paul’s, Belgaum, was with 2 Para Maratha and was Officer-in-charge of the Alpha Detenue Camp at Ponda. POW officers praised his conduct. Also praised was the conduct of Major (later Lieutenant Colonel) Earl William (“Bill”) Carvalho of 4 Sikh Light Infantry who was the first Officer-in-charge of the Alpalqueiros Camp in Vasco da Gama.
Gen Carlos de Azeredo, then a Captain, in his book Trabalhos e dias de um soldado do império (Work and days of a soldier of the empire), has words of praise for the Indian troops in charge of the POW camp at Alpalqueiros, Vasco da Gama.
This is despite the fact that Gen Azeredo was held responsible for the attempted escape of 12 POWs including a doctor from the Vasco da Gama camp on 16 January 1962 and beaten black and blue by Indian troops later punished. The dozen escapees were duped by the captain of a Greek ocean liner at Mormugao port and when they frantically turned to an Italian captain, he said he needed time to think about it and called them the next day … only to be handed over to Indian Army officials. (POW António Correia de Lima has detailed this incident in his book, O Fim dos Séculos.)
Gen Azeredo had words of anger for the way his compatriots back in Portugal received them and judged them very unfairly in a military court.
Maj Gen Francisco Cabral Couto was 26 and fresh from the military academy when he arrived in Goa on 27 March 1961. He commanded 47 Caçadores (Hunters) at the Afonso de Albuquerque military camp at Aquem Baixo-Navelim near Margao. In his book, O Fim do Estado Português da Índia (The End of the Portuguese State of India, Tribuna da História, 2006) Maj Gen Couto says the worst humiliation was when his captors forced his men “to break their weapons and arrange them in mounds”.
At the Aquem Baixo-Navelim camp he once commanded, 463 POWs slept back-to-back on a plain cement floor towards the rear of the camp. They were ordered “to dig trenches to serve as open-air latrines and had to make do with a jar of water supplied by tanks of the Margao municipality”. He admits the water shortage was caused by the Portuguese themselves who destroyed bridges and supply lines. He remembers Christmas 1961 was celebrated with some dry biscuits, which meant much in the given situation.
Among the Indian soldiers guarding them, he recognised three who had been working in Margao in recent months: one as a train TC, another as a servant at Margao’s Longuinhos restaurant and the third as a beggar sitting under a banyan tree. They were Indian military spies. He admired the discipline of the Indian army.
Like Gen Carlos de Azeredo who describes the sorry state of Portuguese fighting equipment, Maj Gen Couto describes the complete lack of resources for any meaningful defence. His unit HQ had a non-functioning generator set and he depended on kerosene lamps at night. He and his men were later shifted to the Ponda POW camp.
Colonel Carlos Alexandre de Morais in his book A Queda da Índia Portuguesa, which is arguably the most detailed account of the ops from the Portuguese point of view, describes the days of captivity at the Aquem Baixo-Navelim camp and thereafter at the Ponda camp.
Cavalry Captain João Aranha describes the captivity first in Panjim (Police HQ and Altinho), then at Ponda where he was shifted on 27 December 1961, and finally at Aguada where he was shifted on 28 February 1962 (Aranha, 2008, Pages 125-126 and Page 138).
A Cabo Verde-ian ensign, Arnaldo Ferreira, held in Daman, refused the offer to join the Indian Army, but accepted it later when transferred to a detenue camp in Goa. Another Cabo Verdian manning a machine gun nest in a roadside ditch was the fiercest Portuguese defender who held the invaders at bay from 4 am, but was bayonetted to death when finally discovered in a mango grove at first light, 18 December 1961, per locals of the time in Nani Daman.
Foreign correspondents in Goa had a tough time getting their despatches transmitted. The Portuguese transmitter at Bambolim was destroyed and the telegraph line to Belgaum cut off. A Staff Officer from Brigade HQ was detailed to collect the despatches and send them to Tactical Headquarters Southern Command by returning helicopters. Despatches were then cabled from Belgaum.
Three Portuguese media persons – journalists Urbano Carrasco (of Diário Popular) and José Neves da Costa and cameraman José Serras Fernandes (both of Rádio e Televisão de Portugal or RTP) – were held POW initially at Altinho and later at Ponda, in all for 60 days (they departed from Goa by air on 17 February 1962 for Bombay, en route Lisbon). They too had words of praise for Indian Army officers.
Carrasco on his return to Portugal did a series of feel-good articles (Diário de prisioneiro in Diário Popular or ‘Diary of a Prisoner’ in the daily newspaper ‘Popular’) meant to assuage the families of POWs back home. This led to unintended results: POWs felt the reports delayed their repatriation. Salazar was incensed to learn that the POWs in Goa were being treated as per the Geneva Convention.
Furious that his orders to follow a scorched earth policy and ‘fight to the last man’ had been disobeyed, Salazar practically abandoned the Portuguese POWs. He did not want the ‘traitors’ back any time soon. He wanted them to suffer (for “not having died for Salazar”).
As noted by Portuguese cavalry officer João Aranha, Salazar wanted them to “accept the 'holocaust' in exchange for a sung 'glory' expressed in his politically ill-thought-out and militarily ill-written [orders to the Goa governor-general]” (Aranha, 2008, Page 109).
-- 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.
Photos follow:
1. Portuguese mediamen on their release, L-R: unidentified Indian police officer, José Neves da Costa and José Serras Fernandes both of RTP, Urbano Carrasco of Diário Popular, envoy Jorge Jardim and another unidentified Indian police officer (courtesy: Visão História-Queda Índia Portuguesa, Volume 14, 2011, Page 53)
2. Some Portuguese POWs (courtesy: Sikh LI Regimental Centre and Col Harjeet Singh, Veteran, ex 2 Sikh LI)
3 & 4. Some Portuguese POWs (courtesy: Visão História-Queda Índia Portuguesa, Volume 14, 2011, Page 43)
5. Lt Gen JN Chaudhuri GOC-in-C Southern Command entering Daman with Air Vice Mshl EW Pinto in a military jeep driven by Lt Col (later Brig) SJS Bhonsale, CO 1 Maratha Light Infantry, in his trademark hat (source: unknown)
Two corrections:
1. Last week’s caption of Photo No.2 said it showed Lt Gen JN Chaudhuri GOC-in-C Southern Command entering Panjim in a military jeep. As was pointed out by a participant of the time, a highly-placed veteran of the Indian Army now, it was Lt Gen Chaudhuri with Air Vice Mshl EW Pinto being driven into Daman by Lt Col (later Brig) SJS Bhonsale, Commanding Officer 1 Maratha Light Infantry, in his trademark hat. (Photo repeated as No. 5 in the list above.)
2. RCVP Noronha was an ICS officer. Two villages – one in Bhopalpatnam tehsil of the erstwhile Bastar district (now in Bijapur district of Chhattisgarh) where he opted to serve as District Collector, called Noronhapalli and another near Bhopal, where he lived in a small, simple house post retirement called Noronha Sankal – were named after him, besides the Madhya Pradesh Academy for state civil service officers.
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Valmiki Faleiro
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fredericknoronha2
Valmiki Faleiro
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Silviano Barbosa
Sent: July 26, 2022 7:38 PM
To: The Goa Book Club <goa-bo...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [GOABOOKCLUB] Re: 49. POW Portuguese Military Officers Recall…
Valmiki Faleiro
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Silviano Barbosa
Sent: July 28, 2022 4:05 AM
To: Goa Book Club <goa-bo...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [GOABOOKCLUB] Re: 49. POW Portuguese Military Officers Recall…
Frederick Noronha
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