Month: June 2020

8 Comments Posted on by Reji Koduvath Canada, Family

Marina & Motorcycle

In 1993, I met with an accident fracturing my right arm, resulting in my right arm in a cast for three months.  At that time, I was posted as a Brigade Major at an artillery brigade headquarters.  I owned a Yamaha Rajdoot Motorcycle then.  The accident resulted in the motorcycle resting in a corner of our garage. A few weeks into this sedentary state of my motorcycle, Marina, very nonchalantly asked me whether she could ride it.  She until then was riding her moped and I never took her question very seriously.  I casually explained to her the gears, clutch, brake, accelerator etc and also the methodology to start and ride the motorcycle.

Little did I realise that she will take off immediately, but she did.  She was the champion athlete in her school days and had represented her district at Kerala State level – no mean achievement.  I did not appreciate that she was still enthralled by speed, now of a different variety.  That was it – like fish to water, she took on to driving the motorcycle and I, on to the pillion with my hand in a cast, fearing the worst for my hand that wasn’t in a cast!

After three months, I was accompanying our Brigade Commander to the Field Firing Ranges.  As we entered the Cantonment on our return journey, a motorcycle zipped past us.  Marina was driving my Yamaha with the Brigade Commander’s wife on the pillion.  Our Brigade Commander looked at me in askance and said “Your wife can drive the motorcycle, but not with my wife on the pillion.  Please tell her to maintain speed limits.  If some mishap happens, you can well imagine the station gossips.” I secretly wished that I could tell him that he should restrain his wife. But then, boss is boss!!

Speed in general and other activities that cause an adrenaline rush were an integral part of Marina’s DNA. She migrated to Canada in 2002 and the family followed suit in 2004.  While on a family vacation to San Francisco in 2006, Marina was booked by the cops for driving at 100 miles per hour (mph) on a 65-mph highway.  With the consequent heavy fine, she had to pay and a steep rise in the insurance premium, I thought she had come to terms with her obsession for speed.

During our vacation to Chicago, Illinois, in 2009, Marina went Skydiving (in tandem) from 18,000 feet, a free-fall of a minute and a half.  The advantage of skydiving in the State of Illinois is that it is not mandatory to wear a helmet (even on motorcycles), but the safety goggles is a must to protect the eyes. Thus, the videos come out much better without the helmet on.

She had to prove my heavy fine hypothesis wrong when in 2010 she expressed her long cherished dream to own a motorcycle.  I tried to dissuade her saying that motorcycles are not cheap and would cost a small fortune, much more than our cars.   They require more maintenance and insurance is much more expensive. Also, you can drive it only for six months in Canada.  In addition, we also need to procure very expensive associated gear such as helmet, jacket, pants, gloves and footwear over and above the purchase of the bike.  

Unable to convince her, I was out with the ultimate weapon, statistics. I warned her that according to the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, your chances of dying on a motorcycle are 35 times higher than in a car!  Canadian Medical Association Journal says that motorcycles are the cause of 10% of motor vehicle deaths in the country, even though they only make up 2% of what’s on the road.

Her pharmacist friends and her elder sister who too is a pharmacist advised her that riding a bike to work may not be befitting a Pharmacy Manager and possibly look very unprofessional.  

All sane advice from well-wishers and yours truly did not deter her a wee bit from her avowed intention to own and ride a motorcycle. Throwing all caution to the winds, she went ahead and passed the eye test and written examination to obtain a M1 licence – the first step to riding a bike in Canada.   

The next step was to buy a motorcycle. To ride on a Canadian Highway where the speed limit is 100 kmph, a bike with an engine capacity of at least 250cc to 400cc is needed.  We visited all motorcycle showrooms from Harley Davidson to Honda – much to her great disappointment, no one was willing to sell Marina a motorcycle.  But Why?

In Canada, in order to buy a motorcycle, the buyer must sit on the bike with both feet flat on the ground while comfortably holding the handlebars.

They all agreed to sell her a smaller motorcycle – 100cc to 150cc which can be taken only on city streets – but she would not settle for not riding on the highways. And why would they not allow a light motorcycle on the highways?   While driving on Canadian highways with a speed limit of about 100 kmph, the motorcyclists need to share the road with sixty feet long commercial trucks which are also is cruising at about 100 kmph.  Due to various factors such as air pressure and airflow, a large vehicle can create heavy air turbulence. In case your motorcycle is not heavy and powerful enough, this turbulence may affect your ability to control your vehicle when passing a large one.

Well, that was the end of her motorcycle ambitions. Or was it? Perhaps, like a dreaded virus, it lies dormant in some corner of her brain to re-emerge at some opportune moment in a not-so-distant future!  

Illustrations by Sherrin Koduvath

9 Comments Posted on by Reji Koduvath Indian Army

The Broad Arrow: Decoding India’s Military Vehicle Markings

A Symbol That Commands Attention

Everyone must have noticed military vehicles plying across Commonwealth countries bearing a distinctive marking – a number beginning with a vertically upright Broad Arrow (↑). This marking, officially termed the Broad Arrow Number or BA Number, is used by the Army, Navy, Air Force, and various civilian establishments functioning under the Ministry of Defence.

Many, including those in military service, have humorously misinterpreted this ↑ symbol as This Side Up – akin to the markings on packing cartons. Does it exist so that no one erroneously parks the vehicle upside down? Is it meant to indicate the right side up in case the vehicle topples? The humour, while entertaining, misses the mark entirely.

The Historical Origins

The Broad Arrow was employed by the British to denote military property. It was also referred to as the Crow’s Foot or the Pheon. When combined with other symbols, numbers, and letters, the Broad Arrow number conveys various details about equipment – manufacturer, year of entry into service, ownership, inspection, alteration, repair, and more.

The precise origin of the Broad Arrow remains somewhat unclear, though historians generally attribute its adoption to Henry Sidney, Earl of Romney, who served as Master of Ordnance to William and Mary (1689-1694 AD). Tasked with reducing theft of British government property, Sidney was asked to imprint a mark on all official stores. He chose his family emblem – the Broad Arrow. Interestingly, prisoner’s uniforms were also stenciled with this symbol for a time, though the practice was later discontinued.

In his authoritative work A Complete Guide to Heraldry, A.C. Fox-Davies offers this illuminating commentary:

Perhaps the case which is most familiar is the broad arrow which is used to mark Government stores. It is a curious commentary upon heraldic officialdom and its ways, that though this is the only badge which has really any extensive use, it is not a Crown badge in any degree. Although this origin has been disputed it is said to have originated in the fact that one of the Sydney family, when Master of the Ordnance, to prevent disputes as to the stores for which he was responsible, marked everything with his private badge of the broad arrow, and this private badge has since remained in constant use. One wonders at what date the officers of His Majesty will observe that this has become one of His Majesty’s recognised badges, and will include it with the other Royal badges in the warrants in which they are recited. Already more than two centuries have passed since it first came into use, and either they should represent to the Government that the pheon is not a Crown mark, and that some recognised Royal badge should be used in its place, or else they should place its status upon a definite footing.

Early British military equipment was often marked B↑O, signifying that it fell under the purview of the Board of Ordnance. Later, W↑D denoted War Department ownership. By World War II, a standalone ↑ simply indicated British military equipment.

Decoding the Indian Broad Arrow Number

Now that we understand the historical context, let us decipher the Broad Arrow number on an Indian military vehicle, which begins with the symbol ↑.

The Broad Arrow is followed by two digits indicating the year the vehicle entered service. Prior to 1972, however, a single letter denoted the year of entry. The letter ‘Z’ represented 1971. From 1972 onward, with only 26 letters available in the alphabet, the system logically shifted to using the last two digits of the year of entry.

A Case Study: The Jeep of a Legend

Consider a Jeep displayed at the Grenadiers Regimental Centre in Jabalpur. It is reputed to be the very vehicle used by Company Quartermaster Havildar (CQMH) Abdul Hamid, Param Vir Chakra (Posthumous), of 4 Grenadiers, who famously destroyed eight Pakistani Patton tanks during the 1965 Indo-Pak War using the Recoilless Rifle mounted on it.

Examine the Broad Arrow number on this historic Jeep. It bears the letter Y, which would indicate a year of entry as 1970. This presents an obvious discrepancy – the vehicle was NOT in service during the 1965 war.

The repainting error becomes evident: if the year of entry into service is indeed 1968, the correct marking should have been the letter ↑W, not ↑68, according to the policy prevalent at that time.

Similarly, a Jeep marked ↑64B should properly have been ↑SB. The body of this particular vehicle does not justify its claimed vintage – suggesting questionable craftsmanship by the military workshop responsible for its restoration.

The Full Code Explained

Following the year indicator, a letter denotes the vehicle’s class. During my military service, I encountered various classifications:

  • A: Motorcycle
  • B: Car or Jeep
  • C: Light Truck
  • D: Heavy Truck
  • E: Towing Vehicle
  • F: Specialist Light Vehicle
  • H: High Mobility Vehicle (with material handling)
  • J: Snow-cut / Snow-clearing vehicle
  • K: Ambulance
  • P: Buses, Tankers & Support Vehicles
  • Q: Engineering Vehicle
  • R: Missile / Special Role Vehicles
  • X: Armoured Vehicles

This classification letter is followed by the vehicle’s serial number, assigned by the Ministry of Defence. Finally, a check alphabet appears – calculated using the Modulus 11 formula. This check digit serves as a form of redundancy check, enabling error detection in identification numbers.

Conclusion

The Broad Arrow number is far more than a whimsical marking. It represents a carefully designed system of identification, classification, and error detection that has evolved over centuries. Next time you encounter a military vehicle bearing the ↑ symbol, you will know that it carries not just equipment, but a legacy of heraldry, history, and meticulous record-keeping. It most certainly does not indicate This Side Up.

5 Comments Posted on by Reji Koduvath Indian Army

Where’s Creativity?

The Evening Before the Olive Green World : A Dinner with Gentleman Cadets

For the Passing Out Parade of our nephew, I landed at the Officers’ Training Academy (OTA), Chennai, two days in advance, to be a guest of Major Subash, our regimental officer. That evening, Major Subash’s Company Commander had invited all passing-out Gentleman Cadets (GCs) for a customary dinner. Despite my best efforts to wriggle out of it, Major Subash – a Platoon Commander – insisted that I accompany him. He wanted me to interact with the soon-to-be-commissioned officers.

Throughout the event, I remained fairly reticent, keeping to myself. I had hung up my boots some sixteen years ago and had been living in Canada ever since. What could I possibly share with these youngsters? Yet, some of the GCs persisted, prodding me for advice.

Five Pages and a Page

The advice I finally offered was simple: “Every day, ensure that you read five pages and write one page.“

A GC immediately asked, “What should we read?”

“Anything and everything – newspapers, magazines, military pamphlets, user manuals, or even porn. Just ensure you read every day.“

The cadets seemed a bit bewildered by my unexpected answer. One of them then asked, “What about saving money? Many have been advising us about it.” This, I suspected, came from senior veterans now employed by banks as Defence Accounts Specialists – catching them young, indeed.

When they persisted, I elaborated: “On joining your regiments, learn to be part of them. Be a soldier first. Learn about your soldiers, your equipment, and so on. Remember to enjoy your life. Pursue your passions, hobbies, and interests. Participate in adventure activities. Use your vacations to travel around the country – and around the world.“

“But what about savings?” persisted some who might have joined the service for a few dollars more.

The financial genius in me surfaced. “You don’t need to worry much about savings for the first three years of your service. Contribute to your Provident Fund – it will save you some taxes.”

Gifted, but Diminishing

Reflecting on that conversation, I can state confidently that every officer of the Indian Armed Forces can be classified as Gifted. Most of us came through Sainik or Military Schools, where admission required a test in Grade 4 or 5 similar to the one used in Canada to identify gifted children. If I recall correctly, ours was tougher.

After school, we all faced a fiercely competitive entrance examination for the Academy, where the qualifying percentage was a fraction of one percent. Then came the five-day ordeal of the Services Selection Board (SSB) interview – far more rigorous than anything before. Anyone who qualified through that process is genuinely super-gifted. Training at the Academies was no easy feat, especially the need to qualify in academic subjects alongside strenuous physical activities and tests.

And yet, on commissioning, the problem begins. Creativity starts to diminish.

Studying vs Learning

Officers tend not to learn – they study. Let me define the difference: what you study, you forget soon after the exam; what you learn, you retain for life. The tendency to study can be attributed largely to the grading system in most courses.

I recall an incident from my command days. We were tasked to write a paper on the tactical employment of modern surveillance devices for Army Headquarters. I asked the junior officers to produce a draft. One of them replied, “Sir, you write well. This paper is for Army Headquarters – why don’t you write it? Our efforts may not be good or creative enough.“

I pointed out how they had closed their minds to creativity. “You all went through the SSB,” I reminded them. “You were shown nine caricature images – head or tail impossible to make out – yet each of you wrote nine good, creative stories. The tenth was a blank card, but you still wrote a credible story. One hundred words were flashed at you with thirty-second intervals, and you wrote one hundred sensible sentences. Now you say you’re incapable of writing a creative paper?”

The Death of Creativity

The death of creativity begins when a young officer is given a task and told to go through an old file, paper, or Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) to see how it was done previously – and then accomplish the new task in a similar manner. Many military units have SOPs even for the most mundane activities, like organising an Officers’ Mess function. These SOPs, while efficient, are also creativity killers.

One of the first documentation tasks for a young officer is usually a Court of Inquiry (C of I), most often pertaining to a severe injury suffered by a soldier. The Adjutant invariably says, “Refer to a previous one. Carry out the C of I in a similar manner.”

If you want a young officer to be creative, you must first help him understand the purpose of the C of I: what evidence is, how to adduce it, and how to reach a finding based on evidence – not precedent. The manner in which proceedings are recorded on paper is perhaps the only thing an old court of inquiry might reveal.

The Blind Copy Syndrome

The trend of  blind copying, cut and paste begins here. It continues throughout service, steadily culling all the creativity one possessed at the time of the SSB.

Reading five pages and writing one page every day are the very first baby steps toward professional creativity and competence. As the youngsters anxiously awaited their entry into the mysterious olive-green world, what better piece of advice could I have given them?

The question is not whether they will remember my words. The question is whether they will have the courage to resist the system that slowly, steadily, silently extinguishes the creative spark that brought them there in the first place.

3 Comments Posted on by Reji Koduvath Indian Army

Military Special Trains

The story of my romance with the Indian Railways is never complete without the story of the military special. Indian Railways and the military have a close and intimate bonding. The military refer to the special coaches as ‘rolling stock’ and the engine simply as ‘power’.  The Military has its own ‘Movement Control Organisation’ (MCO) with its personnel closely integrated with the railways and located at important railway stations/ headquarters.

This special relationship goes back to the very formation of Indian Railways. One of the main reasons for establishing the railway network was to provide an effective and trustworthy method of transporting large number of troops from one part of the country to another. The colonial masters found this as an imperative requirement, which enabled the government of the day to maintain control over the vast lands it governed.

Indian Railways run these Military Special trains all the time. These trains move both in peace and in times war. Some of these trains are freighters only, while others have accommodation for personnel as well. Some military specials carry armed forces personnel for aid to civil authorities, such as earthquake or flood-relief work. Some Military Special trains have rakes formed totally by special ‘Military’ coaches in their own distinctive greens while others have rakes formed by ‘normal’ Indian Railway coaches. Some movements get decided suddenly (such as due to natural or man-made disasters), while other movements are planned well in advance – as per the strategic relocations of operational units of Indian armed forces. The mobilisation plan of military units and formations are made in close coordination with Indian Railways.

I had my first experience of travelling with our Regiment by a military special in 1983, a move from Delhi  by a meter gauge military special for firing practice of 130mm medium guns at Pokhran Ranges in Rajasthan.  We had to move to Pokharan as that was the only Field Firing Range with the Indian Army that offered 30 square km of uninhabited area to fire the guns over 27 km.  Railway lines in Rajasthan then were all meter gauge.  Indian Railways today operate mostly on broad gauge.  The gauge of the railway track is the distance between the inner sides of two tracks.   For broad gauge it is 1676 mm (5 ft 6 in) and for meter gauge it is one meter.

A 24 wagon rake for loading of the medium guns – MBFU – (M – Meter Gauge, B – Bogie Wagon, FU – Well Wagon) was placed at the military siding ramp at Delhi Cantonment Railway Station -12 for loading guns and 12 for Russian Kraz towing vehicle. The gun weighs over 8 tonnes and the wheelbase just about narrowly fits on to the meter gauge rake.  Today with broad gauge rakes, the wagons offer sufficient width to maneuver the guns.

The most crucial part of loading is to mount these guns and Krazes on to the MBFU.  I watched in fascination how the most experienced driver, Havildar Kuriakose, drove the leading Kraz towing the gun.   He drove on to the ramp and then straight through, over the wagons to the last-but-one wagon and halted in such a way that the gun was exactly adjusted in the well of the MBFU.  The gun was unhooked and he drove his Kraz in to the well of the last MBFU.  A slight wavering or error in judgement could have caused the unthinkable. It was a critical operation which only best of the specialist drivers can accomplish.

Tank drivers of Armoured Regiments too face similar predicaments driving onto the MBFU and sometimes end up in mishaps.

By nightfall, the train was formed with 24 MBFU, one first class coach, four sleeper coaches, a military kitchen car and seven wagons for carriage of ammunition and stores.  Now it was an eternal wait at the station for ‘power’- a diesel engine – to tow the train.  They had the crew – loco pilot, his assistant and guard ready, but no ‘power’.  By midnight, an engine was made available after it had towed a passenger train.  There were three halts enroute, each over six hours, all waiting for ‘power’ and after 36 hours, we were at Pokharan railway station.

The last military special train I travelled was while commanding the Regiment in 2002.  Our Regiment was mobilised from its peace location in Devlali (Maharashtra, near Mumbai) on that year’s New Year Eve.  The entire Indian Army had moved into their operational locations after the attack on the Indian Parliament building by terrorists believed to have come in from Pakistan.  The Indian Railways ensured that our Regiment, like all the other units of the Indian Army, were mobilised to their operational locations at super-high priority in two days.  The Military Special trains moved at speeds greater than that of many express trains and were accorded the highest priority.

After ten months, the move back to Devlali from Rajasthan was the opposite. An Army which did not even fire a single bullet, an army which did not fight a war had no priorities in anyone’s mind.  Our Divisional Headquarters had entrusted me with an important and critical task two days prior to the move back of our Regiment.  I was given a week to complete the task and fly back to Devlali on completion.  I did not want to miss travelling in the Military Special, that too as the Commanding Officer.  I burnt the midnight oil for the next two days, completed the task, handed it over to the Divisional Headquarters.

On the day of our train’s move from Jodhpur (Rajasthan), our soldiers loaded all the vehicles and equipment on the train.  A diesel engine was connected but now the Railways had the ‘power’, but no crew.  As many Military Special trains were run from Jodhpur taking the army back home, adequately rested crew was at premium.  We waited for 24 hours for the train to commence its journey. Our train stopped at every possible station, even to give way to freight trains.  Now we were the lowest priority in the eyes of the Indian Railways.  The onward move executed in less than two days now took five days on the return leg.

After my premature retirement and move to Canada, I very much miss my passionate association with the Indian Railways. Now, even when I travel in India, it is mostly by air, due to time pressures. Gone are the days of those never ending train journeys. I can only recollect those days with a sense of loss and nostalgia.